Fear and Indifference Reinforce Oppression and Individual Courage - Essay Example

Fear and Indifference Reinforce Oppression and Individual Courage In human history, different groups experience oppression because of racial, gender, and class differences. Oppression refers to long-standing unjust treatment and control. Not everyone is aware of oppression that continues in modern times, especially when one lives in a democratic country like America where human rights and freedoms are enshrined in the Constitution. Oppression affects certain groups because of human prejudice and discrimination against whomever they consider as “the Other,” especially women, gay people, racial groups considered as inferior, and even against the rich. Fear and indifference reinforce oppression that creates social inequality; ending it starts with firm individual convictions that begin like a flame before burning across the society it wants to change. When people fear to protect the oppressed or to fight because they are oppressed, they are reinforcing oppression through silently allowing it to continue in their society. Wendell Steavenson interviewed women who both represent or vilify women rights. Hend Badawi participated in the Tahrir Square to depose Mubarak and his repressive regime. Though she is a good example of a person who fights for her rights, her conservative family punished her for her activism. Steavenson quoted Mona Eltahawy, a feminist writer, who said: “The regime oppresses everyone, but society represses only women” (33). Society oppresses women, not only by participating on socially stigmatising and physically and emotionally hurting women who fight for their rights, but also by remaining silent on their pleas. Silence can be accompanied with fear, like those who no longer pressed charges against the police for physically and sexually harassing them through public virginity tests (Steavenson 35). By not talking about their fears and fighting their oppressors, they are strengthening the resolve of their oppressors to treat them as second-class citizens. Alex Ross talks about another gender issue, this time, the fight for gays’ demand for equal rights and freedoms. Gays in the 80s were afraid to come out because of discrimination and violence against them (Ross 47). Like women, gay people experienced oppression that made them fearful of even expressing the desire of changing how society sees and treats them. By remaining invisible, gay people have unwillingly contributed to the repression of their gender. These are examples of how fear stopped victims and bystanders from resisting oppression. Aside from oppression, indifference also reinforces social inequality. Ian Frazier takes a unique cause that not everyone wants to respond to- the cause of resisting taxing the rich. With a sarcastic tone, he notes that there is no good in taxing the rich because they have enough money and power to oppose taxation in different legal ways. Frazier says that the fundamental reason that the rich fight additional taxation is something that resonates with the urgency of fighting all kinds of oppression: “It will $imply never fly, becau$e 0f 0ur di$tinctly American $en$e 0f fairne$$.”(39). He is right because the root of resistance is the notion of fairness. Definitely, there is also nothing fair in having an inequitable world where there are very few rich controlling and owning majority of wealth and natural resources in the world. But the point is that every law impacts another group unfairly in one way or another. Those who say that the government should tax the rich are blind to the rich’s interest, while the rich is indifferent to the needs of the government and the rest of the social classes. Indifference allows the oppression of others to continue. Like Frazier, Ross notes how silence, apart from active discrimination, stops gays from enjoying equal human rights. During the 1980s, gay people were dying from AIDS and the government did not actively respond to it. They were indifferent to diseases that killed gays because for them, gays were seen as inferior citizens. Indifference enables people to look at the oppressed and treat them as second-class citizens who cannot and should not fight for their rights. Loius Menand focuses on how the indifference of the U.S. and Great Britain allowed genocide and ethnic cleansing to happen in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. One of the most chilling points he made is that Britain and the U.S. already knew about the concentration camps in Poland that killed the Jews, but they refused to bomb the railroads that transported the Jews to gas chambers (77 Menand). Indifference in this scale is so deadly it can lead to genocide and ethnic cleansing. Indifference can be as oppressive as direct oppression itself. If individuals and institutions can cause oppression, individuals can change society and end oppression. Oppression happens when people do nothing, whether they are victims or bystanders. Steavenson asserts that the revolution inspired women to end oppression in their personal lives. Eltahawy says: “They realize that, if they can stand up to Mubarak, they can stand up to their fathers and their mothers and their brothers... [a realization of a] double revolution” (34). As a result, women like Badawi are fighting back the controls of her culture on her life. Ross agrees with Eltahawy and affirms the role of individual convictions and struggles in starting social changes. He says that when more and more gay people went out of the closet, they started a revolution of social acceptance for their gender (26). Social inequality will continue if individuals stay mum. Once they resist oppression in their own personal lives, however, they create a spark that will generate a fire of social changes. Oppression lasts up to modern times because society holds deep-seated gender, racial, and social prejudice. The idea that one is superior to another gives them perceived power and right to suppress the latter. When this thinking is ingrained in culture, politics, economics, and social institutions, it produces oppression for minorities. To fight oppression starts with an individual conviction that says enough is enough. Individuals mobilize and rise- spreading the fire that changes the society that controls and delimits them. One spark can lead to a raging fire that renews society from within. Works Cited Frazier, Ian. “All Mine.” The New Yorker 12 Nov. 2012: 39-40. Print. Menand, Loius. “Bloc Heads: Life Behind the Iron Curtain.” The New Yorker 12 Nov. 2012: 77-84. Print. Ross, Alex. “Love on the March.” The New Yorker 12 Nov. 2012: 45-53. Print. Steavenson, Wendell. “Two Revolutions: What has Egypt’s Transition Meant for its Women.” The New Yorker 12 Nov. 2012: 32-38. Print. Read More