Oppression and Inequality of the Black Population - Essay Example

Oppression and Inequality of the Black Population Oppression and Inequality of the Black Population Cultural Oppression and High-Risk Status of African Americans The Population of the Oppressed Group The African Americans faces the issue of persistent cultural oppression. The effects of oppression mostly focus on political and economical oppression as the primary sources of the social problems. This paper will identity and examine cultural expression to produce cultural estrangement, spiritual alienation, and attenuation of Black collectivism (Krieger, 2011). African Americans have the ability to advance and prosper while they continue to experience obstacles in affirmation and empowerment. Origin and History of Oppression and Inequality The African American experienced brutal forms of injustice and dehumanization in United States history. The tenacity to survive embeds in the history of African American resistance and intense desire to be free. One of the greatest successes in American history is the survival and continuation of African American. Historically the African Americans have undergone brutal forms of injustice and dehumanization. The people continue to survive and function with remarkable resilience. The tenacity to survive embeds in the history of African American resistance with an intense desire to remain free. The oppression in the modern day has a subtle, seductive, and insidious characterization. The form of oppression by seduction eliminates oppression by terror, regulates cultural values and interpretations. The regulation of values and interpretations as cultural imperialism and universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture in the establishment as the norm. The cultural imperialism refers to the cultural oppression as a worldview of divergent cultural and ethnic groups to share a common geopolitical space have unequal validation. Inequality exists in the value of divergent interpretations and life experiences. The European ancestry has more power relative to racial groups, their experiences and interpretations dominate American socio cultural landscape (Turner & Singleton, 1978). The experiences and interpretations of European Americans in comparison to other racial groups is a credible representation of the American experience. Eurocentric domination expresses the cultural oppression to imposition and universalization of the diverse and distinctive interpretative frameworks of European Americans. While Eurocentric domination has unfavorable repercussion on the ability of the groups to express, their traditional cultural perspectives, African Americans are the most conspicuous victims. The involuntary entry of African Americans as slaves and their prolonged and intergenerational captivity renders them exposed to vilification from cultural oppression. The intergenerational bombardment of the cultural denigration continues to tarnish the quality of modern United States relations in the slavery legacy. The slavery legacy contributes enormously to the misappropriate representation of African Americans in many social problems categories. Much of the attention devotes to unravel the effects of oppression on African Americans to attribute political and economic dimensions. Societal Attitudes This article contends that cultural oppression expressed through Eurocentric domination to generate three different risk factors that limit African American ability to advance and prosper in America. They include cultural estrangement, spiritual alienation, and attenuation of Black collectivism. Cultural Estrangement The most comprehensive repercussion of cultural oppression for African Americans is the risk of unappreciative ancestral homeland in the traditions and customs. The risk endangers a form of alienation in the traditional cultural values. The term cultural estrangement is synonymous with cultural amnesia in the collective loss of memory and content of the group history and traditions. The existence of cultural amnesia is a sign of oppression where the people will no longer have a cultural reference point. For instance, European Americans and African Americans have two distinct socio cultural histories. Some of the dominant cultural themes in Europe include competition, individualism, and materialism while in Africa the focus is on a spiritual and interdependent understanding of human beings. The main implication of cultural estrangement for African Americans is the culture disorientation. Cultural disorientation preclude African Americans from knowing and validating traditional cultural worldviews Internalization of African Americans generates a sense of ethnic self-depreciation or a low cultural, ethnic, racial esteem. Low cultural, ethnic prevents African American from having a favorable cultural nurturance necessary in the development of self-confidence. The psychological distortions of low cultural ethnic for African Americans include White supremacy. The African Americans are vulnerable to the influence of European Americans.. African Americans are at risk of believing that European American culture is applicable to all people that have proclivities. Attenuation of Black Collectivism On a considerable degree, the survival of African American emanates from their survival and advancement with a common goal of racial equality and justice. A similar opposition creates considerable tension among African Americans to sustain a collective focus. Racial inequality in access to education, social status, wealth, and cultural esteem associate with cultural oppression. That can risk compromising overall vision of group advancement for personal gain. The compromise may be particularly observable in post segregation era, where the blacks acquire greater access to citizenship rights and privileges. Some of the factors that attenuate collective focus include material deprivation and internal class stratification. Material deprivation Some researchers suggest that material deprivation brings oppression to contribute to inordinate attraction to the material items. For many years, African Americans have undergone untold suffering in slavery, engendered mass and intergenerational material deprivation. The deprivation continues to discern data indicating African American to lower family and household incomes than do European American families. The unrelenting experience of the disparities for African Americans associates with intergenerational racial injustice to place many African Americans in intimate agony (Hancock, 2012). The acquisition of material objects and wealth helps the oppressed group to advance itself. The assumption is that a long-standing intergenerational material deprivation places African Americans at a higher risk to capitulate American consumption. The European foreigner dresses in fashionable apparels as a method to compensate for stigmatization of poverty. It also serves as a means to embellish impoverished people economic status since people use clothes to evaluate one’s wealth worth. Many African Americans experience poverty and low-income status. African Americans spend a higher percentage of after-tax income on apparel in comparison to other American consumers. The confluence of consumerist is the experience of intergenerational material deprivation. Most of African Americans are vulnerable to view greater access to material goods as an indication to declining significance of racism. The expansion of American consumerism occurs at the heels of abolition of racial segregation to increase consumer options and mobility of African Americans. The new freedom comes at the expense of diminished emotional attachments those traditional centers on racial affiliation. African American personal identity and social connection to influence gratification and other emotions generate by product consumption. The adoption of a consumerist world-view by African Americans and the promise to offer for emancipating them from stigmatizing intersection of racism and classism to enervate bonds of racial solidarity that African American feel concerning the past. Spiritual Alienation It is the disconnection of non-material and morally affirming values from concepts of human self-worth and from the character of social relationships. The disconnection precludes people conjoined with a Supreme Being and from believing that every living entity formed from universal source. It also focus on extreme emphasis on individualism and materialism to create a cutthroat morality to combat social environment. Social Oppression Matrix Theory Racial and ethnic difference in outcomes such as education, employment, income, and wealth documented use a single-race data. The theory of Social oppression matrix theory believes that Blacks should unite and work together because they suffer in a similar oppression. . They can overcome or ameliorate their shared condition through black solidarity. The theory acknowledges the existence of anti-Black racism in America and calls on those that suffer under it to act collectively and end oppression or reduce its impact on their lives. The goal of the political programs to free blacks from anti-Black racism and observes black solidarity as a necessary means to an end. Individual Level- the dismemberment of emotional attachment causes objectified in secular rationalism. Objectification is a hallmark of Euro centrality based societies to render them highly susceptible to values That undergirds the ideology and practice of domination Institutional Level- African American has great exposure on a belief that is at risk to internalize strong affiliation of Judeo-Christian tradition. Data from several surveys demonstrate that African Americans are Christians and have a high-church attendance. Social Cultural Level- African-Americans perceive oppression especially Euro centric domination as a natural phenomenon. Class Stratification Great socioeconomic class inequality weakens the collective focus in the African American community. The civil rights movement and Black power gains propel a large number of African Americans in the middle and upper classes. Concomitantly, a growing number of underclass of African Americans lack apt training and skills to enter the legitimate labor market. The parallel phenomenon creates an increased class schism in the African American community. The United States Census Bureau uses a Gini ratio to measure income inequality. Many explications that have greater than the income inequality for both European and Hispanic Americans in the post segregation era belong to middle and upper classes. In the 1830s, feminists’ movement dialogue concerning dominance and difference (Ferber et al. 2007). The women movement grapples with complexities in sexual orientation, class, and race. Gender limits Black women full inclusion in the anti slavery movement. Fellow African Americans urge civil activist to end the public speaking since she makes the movement to appear “unwomanly.” The battle for suffrage led to African American forming their own chapters in Women’s Christian Temperance Movement. As the White women focused on the issue of suffrage, African American women directed their energies on the issue of equality, suffrage, racism, racial justice, and inclusion. Those issues depicted challenge both Black men and Black women. In every wave of racial injustice, that faces Black women and Black Social Oppression of the Black people: Collective self-determination theory Population of the Oppressed Group The study theoretically frames and supports the view that dominated groups engaging behavioral self- surveillance to restrict their sexuality. The author posits that sexual behaviors and attitudes in America reflect dominance and inequality patterns in the structures of sexual inequality. Americans moral dispositions take for granted the structured locations in the stratification order (Ferber at al. 2007). The data find that Black women, Black men mostly belong to the low socioeconomic status differ in amount of sexual capital they possess to reflect their position in a stratified society. Origin and History of Oppression and Inequality Historically blacks seek liberation from the burden of social oppression. Black leaders call on black Americans to become a unified collective agent for social change. The entire society composed of blacks and non-blacks agree that it is essential for black people to achieve full freedom and social equality to fulfill the American dream (Ferber et al. 2007). The study finds that black women bear the most effect. Findings implicate the importance of understanding the expressions of intimacy conditioned by group dominance. Different studies demonstrate that social construction of sexual behavior and attitudes bear gender and racial differences. Most of the studies fail to examine theoretically on the importance of social hierarchy and oppression in relation to the process. The existing research on the sexual practice remains largely theoretical. Research that exists overlooks the role of the social oppression to explain sexual inequality in everyday living to support sexual attitudes and behaviors that reflect patterns of dominance and inequality. Societal Attitudes Multiracial inequality: Contemporary philosophy of race develops disciplinary context characterized by a consensus in biology and physical anthropology. Racial Identification: The sharing of a common group is not the satisfactory criterion for being members of the same group Racial Appearance: The attachment of the moral order differs by race, class, and gender stratification that determines the ability to acquire sexual capital in the field of sexuality (Bailey et al. 2011). Collective self-determination theory is a theory that illustrates the need for Black Nationalism. The theory is essential for black solidarity whose aim is to liberate people from racial oppression committed to emancipator group solidarity must embrace and preserve distinct black identity. The advocators of black collective self-determination embrace a distinct social identity. The benefits of the theory include a familiar free-rider problem where some blacks make relevant sacrifices to bring out racial equality in a complacent way. From Angela Davis book called Women, Race, and Class depicts the curious conjuncture of race and sexuality in United States in the expression of Black Rapist. That view reaches zenith in the 20th century. During that period, Americans have the obsession of sex and fearful black sexuality. The West perceives Black experience as social critic and chronicler. Black self-hatred and self-contempt has to do with the refusal of many Black Americans to love their Blackness. References Bailey, T. M., Chung, Y. B., Williams, W. S., Singh, A. A., & Terrell, H. K. (2011). Development and validation of the Internalized Racial Oppression Scale for Black individuals. Journal Of Counseling Psychology, 58(4), 481-493. Ferber, A. L., Herrera, A. O., & Samuels, D. R. (2007). The Matrix of Oppression and Privilege Theory and Practice for the New Millennium. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 516- 531. Hancock, T. G. (2012). Facing Structural Inequality: Students Orientation To Oppression And Practice With Oppressed Groups. Journal Of Social Work Education, 48(1), 5-25. Krieger, N. (2012). Methods for the Scientific Study of Discrimination and Health: An Ecosocial Approach. American Journal Of Public Health, 102(5), 936-945. Turner, J. H., & Singleton Jr., R. (1978). A Theory of Ethnic Oppression: Toward a Reintegration of Cultural and Structural Concepts in Ethnic Relations Theory. Social Forces, 56(4), 1001-1018. What Is Internalized Racial Oppression And Why Dont We Study It? Acknowledging Racisms Hidden Injuries. (2010). Sociological Perspectives, 53(4), 551-572. Read More