Face Of Oppression Research Articles

Victims’ Reasons and Responses in the Face of Oppression

Victims of oppression often disagree amongst themselves on how best to respond to their oppression. Often, these disagreements are cast as disagreements about what strategies of resistance would be most effective. In this article, I argue that victims have a wider repertoire of responses to their oppression which reflect the different underlying reasons they have to respond. I outline three distinct reasons for action—self-respect, assistance, and justice—and the respective responses to oppression—rejection, assistance, and resistance—that these reasons call for. I then provide some general comments on how these distinct reasons and responses relate to one another. Appreciating a wider repertoire of reasons and responses can illuminate the nature of disagreement amongst victims, points to the unavoidability of conflict, and provides for a more nuanced understanding of resistance and its alternatives—an understanding that can aid in better responding to injustice.

The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris

Reviewed by: The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris Deborah Stevenson, Editor Morris, Brittney The Cost of Knowing. Simon, 2021 [336p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781534445451 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781534445475 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8-12 Alex is gifted—or cursed—with the ability to see the future of anything just by touching it. That’s an added stress as he’s already struggling to get by after the tragic death of his parents, leaving him and his younger brother, Isaiah, living with an aunt, and after the loss of his best friend, whose sister he’s now dating. When his visions tell him that Isaiah is going to die, he reaches out to the boy, and he discovers Isaiah too has a gift, the ability to see the past and its possible alternatives. Alex determines to either save Isaiah or give him the best last days possible, and the two brothers grow closer and share a greater understanding of their family history. There are some clunky and messagey moments in the storytelling, but Alex’s high-anxiety narration remains the emotional core. Morris stealthily transforms a story about a [End Page 346] teen with a nerve-wracking supernatural ability into an exploration of African and African-American history and the challenges of being Black in America. There’s some keen observation about life in a mostly white suburb, and it’s ultimately not surprising where the threat to Isaiah emerges. Despite Alex’s heartbreaks, he may convince readers that “joy in the face of oppression is its own kind of bravery.” Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Constructivism in Action: A Dynamic Group Process in Defining and Applying Principles of Social Justice

As a part of a Multicultural course, students in a doctoral program at a university in the Southwest worked together to synthesize a definition of social justice. The constructivist process implemented in this educational experience represented social justice in action, through co-construction of shared meaning. This definition, centered on Iris Young’s (2004) Five Faces of Oppression, resulted in the following: Social justice is addressing oppression, violence, exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, and cultural imperialism through counselors’ efforts and advocacy, while promoting a critical perspective of the culture of silence. Social Justice is an active, effective change on micro- and macro-levels to alter social systems and institutions, whereby improving human rights and access to resources. Social justice is actively engaging in education, advocacy, critical thinking, systemic change, and client empowerment in order to diffuse mechanisms of oppression for the purpose of assisting clients in reaching their human potential.

The Power of Protest Music: Exploring the Role of Songs in Social Change

6 | BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 84, NO. 1 84 No.1 THE POWER OF PROTEST MUSIC: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF SONGS IN SOCIAL CHANGE By Katie Rydell and Ally Bienvenu As undergraduate students pursuing teaching certification at a liberal arts college, we received pre-service training integrating experiences that extended our understanding of students’ lived realities. In the fall of 2020, we took a course titled “Teaching for Social Justice” that examined how educators can develop learners who critically engage with the world around them. Unpacking the events of the year, many conversations centered around protests. The summer of 2020 was marked by worldwide protests against racism and police brutality, from Minneapolis to Tokyo. The act of protesting has been part of the American experience since the nation’s founding, and throughout history, it has evolved to support different causes. Conducting research, we became fascinated with the role of music in protest, specifically related to movements within the Black community. We identified that exploring songs can provide an accessible lens through which students can learn about protests and the issues they address. Accumulating our findings in this article, we provide an overview of music as a form of protest to illustrate the longevity of this unique tradition. While seeking to create an inclusive space within their high school that welcomed and valued all students, specifically Black students, they understood there would be several roadblocks. One of those roadblocks occurred when they advocated for a Black History Month (BHM) celebration that highlighted the contributions of Blacks to this country and their communities. Their advocacy elicited gazes of disapproval, and attempts to generate momentum for a shared vision for celebrating it were met with an acknowledgement that the school would continue to celebrate BHM following the past status quo—to only emphasize BHM within the context of slavery. These comments, decisions, and reactions made them feel even more isolated. They recognized that this isolation was not only felt in their high school, but also in ways they experienced the world—as a White student union. The initial and frequent inquiry as to why a Black Student Union was necessaryhelped the students realize just how underrepresented they are in the spaces they inhabit, in the media they consume, and in the history they are taught. Nineteenth-Century Protest Music Hope, music, and social change share a deep-rooted connection. This bond played an integral role in American society throughout the nineteenth century in relation to the abolition of enslavement. Enslaved people and abolitionists alike utilized religious songs known as “spirituals” for protest, activism outreach, communal bonding, and personal strength. Among them were noteworthy leaders like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Hutchinson Family Singers, and Harriet Tubman. BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 84, NO. 1 | 7 84 No.1 Historically, spirituals served to inspire determination, resistance, and hope in the face of oppression. Thought to be derived from the combination of European psalmody and African musical elements, spirituals personified centuries of overcoming extreme sorrow and immoral hardships, while also inspiring the listeners to anticipate a better future.1 Through the singing of spirituals, enslaved individuals found strength and inspiration while also relaying a powerful message to hold on to dreams of freedom, for a higher power was in control. For example, the song “Ride On, King Jesus” addressed the mistreatment of individuals by their enslavers. This spiritual informed both singers and listeners that enslavers were no match for the Lord who is merciful. Hopeful songs like this encouraged enslaved people to find strength in their faith. Similarly, spirituals like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Deep River,” and “Go Down Moses” actively contributed to the abolitionist movement to purge the United States of enslavement. These songs were integral in the success of the Underground Railroad. Since it was illegal for people who were enslaved to read or write, songs were one of the sole information sharing methods available. Secret codes and hidden messages passed along in spirituals were invaluable for people escaping enslavement as they moved along various Underground Railroad points. These songs communicated messages about how to escape and warned of dangerous obstacles along the route, as well as inspiring them...

Human rights of daughters-in-law (kelins) in Central Asia: harmful traditional practices and structural oppression

ABSTRACT The familial position and social status of daughters-in-law (kelins) in ‘traditional’ Central Asian families can be characterized as low, subservient and marginalized. By adopting normative human rights discourse, this paper argues that it is an example of the relativist challenge of cultural authenticity towards the universality of human rights, specifically women’s human rights. By using participant observation which can also be qualified as experiential research, serial in-depth and informal interviews, and an analysis of posts published in social media, the forces driving the persistence of a relativist approach to kelins’ human rights such as retraditionalization, the revival of conservative Islam, an unawareness of the human rights and the patterns of authority-subordination are explored. Through a conceptual framework combining Iris Young’s concept of the ‘five faces of oppression’ and the notion of ‘harmful traditional practices’, elaborated by international human rights documents, the study conceptualizes the family position and social status of the kelins as one of structural oppression or systemic injustice, created and legitimized by informal, harmful traditional norms and practices.

Iris Marion Young’s Faces of Oppression and the Oppression of Women in the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012

Iris Marion Young’s Faces of Oppression and the Oppression of Women in the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012

Writing and identity

Using a multidisciplinary approach to social justice teaching, this article explores the often invisible impact of double consciousness on adult English language learners in the United States and provides examples of classroom practice that invite students to reflect on its effects. The experience of double consciousness is examined as it relates to English language learner identities. A Critical Language Awareness (CLA) framework and identity-conscious teaching practices are explored to encourage student participation and reflection. This approach, demonstrated through examples used in writing classes, encourages the exploration of identity in the face of oppression by interrogating social constructions and fiction and nonfiction stories containing connected themes. Three classroom lessons and consequent writing are analyzed with a critical discourse lens to examine student responses and reflections on language and identity. Student writing demonstrates that encouraging English language classes to interrogate the language of institutionalized inequity and identity formation can illuminate potential influences of double consciousness, which can empower students to think critically about their identities and choose whether to take steps to mediate the ways in which they could be affected by double consciousness.

Os macuxis riem com o jabuti ou da traquinagem ao questionamento pelo riso

RESUMO A partir principalmente de uma sequência de oito narrativas interligadas por uma risada do Jabuti, contadas pelo indígena macuxi Caetano Raposo, discute-se o riso e seus desdobramentos no contexto dessas narrativas. Além disso, busca-se leituras possíveis para o riso na organização social indígena macuxi, como o riso e seu aspecto questionador e de resistência diante da opressão.

Young, Gilbert, and Social Groups

In this paper I critique the concept of social groups deployed by Iris Marion Young in her well-known theory of the five faces of oppression. I contend that Young’s approach to conceptualizing social groups creates arbitrary and inconsistent categories, essentializes certain groups, and fails to take seriously the complexity of pluralism. I propose that Margaret Gilbert’s work in social metaphysics provides a more philosophically robust account of social groups that serves as a helpful corrective to Young’s approach. Gilbert’s account of “we”-ness, as well as her theory of the nature of individuals and collectivities, provides a helpful vantage point for critiquing Young’s project and its emphasis on the social process of differentiation in the formation of social groups.

Black Joy, Black Love and COVID-19: A Reflection on Self-Care and Community in the Midst of a Pandemic.

Joy is defined as a feeling of great happiness and pleasure. Joy has also been described as divine purpose in action, paying homage to our ancestors, and the celebration of sacredness. Choosing joy in the face of oppression, violence, and global pandemonium can be viewed as resistance and self-care in current day. This essay serves a personal narrative of one Black woman's experience during the 2020 pandemic of COVID-19. The author recounts her experience centering self-care utilizing ancestor reverence, spiritual practices, creating community and embracing love and joy.

Just Because We Don't See It, Doesn't Mean It's Not There: Everyday Resistance in Psychology

AbstractThis article outlines some contentions within conventional Western psychology and across the social sciences to define what counts as legitimate forms of “resistance” amongst members of historically marginalized groups (e.g. people of Color, working class/poor groups) in efforts to push back against injustice and foment social change. Without an expansion of what is understood as resistance, the discipline risks imposing narrow models and reifying deficit narratives about marginalized groups' capacity for resistance. In contexts where overt forms of resistance (e.g. marches), may lead to incarceration, deportation, death, or other egregious punishments, people located in “tight spaces” of oppression may engage in everyday off‐stage practices of resistance that are covert and not observable to those in positions of privilege or who exercise state power. This article encourages psychologists to take a political stance in solidarity with marginalized groups to acknowledge that not all forms of resistance are observable or measurable. This stance can allow psychologists to begin to dismantle deficit narratives of people mistakenly understood as being passive in the face of oppression and instead observe agency, aspirations for change, and resistance.

African American Alphabet

This article is a performance piece meant to explore the stressors upon the African American community. In the face of oppression and overwhelm, poetry provides an empathetic insight to overwhelm. This poem is meant to be read aloud. Its rhythmic onslaught of information is metaphoric.

Relevance Theoretical Interpretation of Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”

For certain, one does not need to be a colossal voracious reader as to arriving at what Maya Angelou is driving at in virtually all her works. Of course, Maya is not just a fantastic poet but also a renowned storyteller, a fearless activist, a peculiar autobiographer, a gifted singer and playwright whose works generally provoke some sort of empowering flash of thoughts in that they are mostly soused in a struggle to overcome prejudice and injustice. As a matter of fact, Maya Angelou’s works are evidently frontal and a host of them have been literarily torn in and out. Hence they are glaringly a projection of self-awareness even in the face of oppression. It is on this stroke that this present study seeks to dig deep into the most confrontational work of Maya Angelou, her assertive but reliant poem “Still I Rise” so as to come by other extra-linguistic significations therein. And when a study tends to incorporate other varying meanings in a particular data in relation to context, it is, presumably, under the purview of pragmatics whose preoccupation is to accentuate meaning on context basis. But pragmatics is such broad a discipline with several frameworks. Therefore, even though this paper is going to be very much encompassing in the course of this study, its object of attention is to pragmatically study just a fraction of Maya Angelou’s works, her poem “Still I Rise” to be precise with a viable context-based theory, Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory.

Public health, systems change, justice and the work of the kingdom

Disparities in population health statuses are tied to inequities in society, and not just differences in personal decision-making and behavior. Christians should (and must) play a role in confronting these inequities, based upon three biblical themes: 1) the instructions in the book of Leviticus regarding the Sabbath year and the Year of Jubilee as a way to protect the economic system from producing insurmountable inequities and degrading the environment; 2) the eschatological image of the New Jerusalem in the book of Isaiah, with its focus on shalom in contrast to a religion focused on personal piety in the face of oppression and social injustice; and 3) Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom, which include its imminence and the counter-cultural nature of its ethic. The notion of the kingdom can be applied in the lives of Christians, particularly those involved in public health, through individual acts, corporate acts in the context of the church, and state-led actions to bring about social change to achieve social justice. Social change can be described as an act of reconciliation in which systems of society are redeemed by the power of kingdom principles.

A critical evaluation of the social justice implications of the Colombian government’s English-Spanish bilingualism policies

ABSTRACTThe National Bilingual Programme was launched in order to promote English learning in Colombia. The failure of this programme and subsequent iterations is well-documented, and research has also examined some of its negative effects for different societal groups. However, a comprehensive study of the social justice implications of Colombia’s national bilingual programmes has not been carried out. Using Young’s framework ‘the five faces of oppression’, the current paper shows how different groups experience different forms of injustice as a result of the implementation of Colombia’s national bilingual programmes and their focus on language as a means to the end of economic development. It is argued that the the Colombian government’s policy approach instrumentalises foreign language learning and diminishes the importance of the other purposes of learning a foreign language. Furthermore, this study shows how a lack of consideration of contextual factors from a social justice perspective can lead to shortcomings in policy implementation and the neglect of social justice issues. The conclusion suggests that bilingual policies need not be oppressive and outlines ways to ensure socially just English-Spanish bilingual education in Colombia.

REGENERATIVE DISCOURSES IN CONTEMPORARY AFRO-BRAZILIAN WOMEN WRITERS

Drawing on James Scott’s idea of “hidden transcripts” in Domination and the Arts of Resistance, this study theorizes on progressive hypothetical discursive sites as moving from the continuum of the harsh slave master to the site of the free black among friends and family. Instead of the fear of articulation or the need for masking that operates in the public transcript frame, the alternating hidden transcript frame suggests a less explicit fear of articulation in the face of oppression. In addition to highlighting recent works on issues of gender, identity, and citizenship in Brazil, this essay argues that a new wave of regenerative discourses is emerging among Afro-Brazilian women writers however few and far between. These works demonstrate conscious regenerative acts from the viewpoints of rejection of victimhood.

Embodying the erotic: cultivating sensory awareness through dance/movement therapy

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the intersection between the erotic, embodiment, and empowerment. It explores how the erotic and oppression live in the body by reviewing the literature and research from the fields of psychology, somatic psychology, as well as the theories of poets and activists. Sensory awareness of the erotic can transform oppression. A body-based lens for resisting, transforming, and developing resiliency in the face of oppression is critical for cultivating sensory awareness. Using Caldwell’s (1996) Moving Cycle, this paper explores ideation for how the erotic can be accessed, connected with, moved, and transformed using a somatic model for healing.

Issei Baseball: The Story of the First Japanese American Baseball Players by Robert K. Fitts

Reviewed by: Issei Baseball: The Story of the First Japanese American Baseball Players by Robert K. Fitts R. Zachary Sanzone Robert K. Fitts. Issei Baseball: The Story of the First Japanese American Baseball Players. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. 344 pp. $29.95. Not everyone knows that the Japanese love baseball. Next to the United States and Latin America, Japan’s love for baseball knows no bounds. While this tidbit wouldn’t surprise most avid baseball fans, few of them actually know the extent of Japanese baseball history. As a baseball writer and historian, I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. I knew about Japanese pitcher Eiji Sawamura, who in 1934 at the age of seventeen struck out Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Charlie Gehringer, and Lou Gehrig. I also knew that General Douglas MacArthur wanted the Japanese to start playing baseball as soon as possible after their surrender in September of 1945 to create some semblance of normalcy again. But between those two facts, I knew nothing at all about Japanese baseball, which is why I was excited to read and review Issei Baseball: The Story of the First Japanese American Baseball Players. Written by Robert K. Fitts, who also authored Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan, Issei Baseball is the story about Japanese immigrants who came to America at the turn of the twentieth century. They formed the first Japanese professional baseball club, playing teams throughout the American Midwest between 1906 and 1911. Before I picked up this book, I didn’t even know that there was a Japanese baseball team in America in the early twentieth century. But through Fitts’s engaging and well-researched book, readers not only learn about the young Issei (Japanese immigrants), and the bigotry they faced throughout their playing days but also learn about how these players helped create a positive outlook on the Japanese for Americans. Fitts’s introduction provides a brief but engaging overview of baseball and the Japanese, effectively setting up a strong context that readers will be able to understand and appreciate. We initially learn that baseball came to Japan along with Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. His arrival led to the breakdown of Japan’s efforts to remain isolated, which led to a modern Japan. Wanting their children to be able to adapt more easily to Western culture as the twentieth century approached, Japanese families sent their kids to private schools where they learned to play the game of baseball. Nisei—Japanese people born outside Japan—used baseball as a way to bring people in their neighborhood together to discuss business and local issues. During World War II they played in the internment camps as a way to maintain morale in the face of oppression. While the book itself focuses on the pioneers of Japanese American base-ball, [End Page 212] all this knowledge about baseball’s role in Japanese history strongly compliments the narrative. I was particularly interested to learn more about the Japanese players’ American barnstorming tour in 1906. The tour, which lasted over half a year, saw American entrepreneur Guy Green’s Japanese Base Ball Club cover 2,500 miles and play around 170 games. What makes this chapter, and the book itself, so engaging is the brief historical references that Fitts makes throughout the book that give more meaning to the places where the team played. For example, the team played in Irving, Kansas where an 1879 tornado killed a girl named Dorothy Gale, which allegedly inspired L. Frank Baum to write The Wizard of Oz. Something else I found particularly interesting was how people in Topeka, Kansas were obsessed with Japanese culture. Ads for Japanese goods ran in local newspapers while local women dressed in traditional Japanese clothing for tea parties. Fitts’s ability to briefly but clearly reference these pieces of information breathes life into the book that many authors cannot effectively do. He’s able to balance the details of his narrative without going off on tangents or giving additional unnecessary information. Fitts’s use of quotes lifted from newspapers that covered the game is also very effective...

Hate Speech, It s Two Faces of Oppression: 'Cultural Imperialism' and 'Violence'

Hate Speech, It s Two Faces of Oppression: 'Cultural Imperialism' and 'Violence'

The Scarlet Professor as Spectacle: Responding to the Opera from a Queer Studies Perspective

<i>The Scarlet Professor</i> as Spectacle: Responding to the Opera from a Queer Studies Perspective