Daily Oppression and Victimization: Real or Assumed?

Marian Shah

A while back, a letter in my alma mater’s student newspaper said, "One hate message is just the last thing I need along with all the disrespect and oppression I face on a daily basis.” A few questions came to my mind. A daily basis? I wonder how many examples they can give. If people are honest with themselves, are all the hard knocks they face “daily” really due to racial or gender oppression, or are they just assuming? Will the politically correct campus activists admit that reality bites for everyone, not just their designated “victim” groups?

In online debates or real-life discussions with college students, many day-to-day inconveniences and hurts are defined as “oppression.” People claim that they were shoved on a train, rejected for a job, treated harshly by a deli clerk, ID-carded by a security guard, or any number of inconveniences, and they chalk it all up to racism and sexism.

I can offer some examples. My undergraduate African American Studies professor told our class how he was trying to help a woman with car trouble, alongside a white man. He claimed that the woman ignored him but listened to the other man, and he attributed it to race. The catch? She knew the other man, but did not know my professor. Is it racism or just human nature to talk to those we know and ignore those we do not? Another famous conspiracy theory is the idea that “all women make 75 cents on the man’s dollar.” Feminist activists use it to convince society that every woman will be offered a paycheck that is 25% less than that of a man walking into the same job, the same day, with the same resume. This widely misused and exaggerated statistic still lives in women’s studies and social work courses today, despite being debunked a while ago [1, 2].

Of those complaining about the indignity of daily pushes, shoves, security, and snappy strangers, I wonder how many are from large cities. If anyone has lived in New York longer than a month and has never been snapped at, shoved during rush hour, or especially after 9/11, screened by security, then I do not believe them. These things are a part of city life, regardless of who you are.

As a blonde, Caucasian female, I still experience the following “disrespect on a daily basis:”

--Rude McDonald’s and Starbucks clerks who mumble “Whaddyawant lady” and don’t say “Thank you.” In the words of the online complainers, “They don’t even treat me as a human!”

--A coworker who treated me like a 5-year-old child and verbally attacked me.

--A security guard who regularly refused to let me into the building because I was a temporary worker. She put me through a daily 15-minute procedure just to get to work.

--People on the subways yelling "Scuse you!" in murderous voices, one even lecturing m like a naughty child for bumping her.

Some would say that I was disrespected at work or on the subway because white men like to talk down to minority women, except that both the coworker and the subway lecturer were female and I am white! Further, I can be sure that the building access situation was not racial profiling. It was, however, due to security and anti-terrorism measures. Political correctness will not solve the fact that the world is full of mean people, stress, and rules we don’t like.

Furthermore, although it is tempting to take a college major to “make a difference” or “expand your horizons,” doing so will not land you a job. A Women's or African American Studies major will result in little more than admission to a PhD program in that subject or a low-paying internship. To self-disclose a bit, I personally learned this the hard way. I majored in psychology “because it was interesting,” even going on for the master’s. It then took several temporary and retail positions before I landed a corporate job. Did I struggle because I was female? Perhaps, but I also know that a finance or accounting major would have gotten me this job about four years sooner than the liberal arts major I “enjoyed.”

In college, I saw many students make the same mistake, many female and minority. Perhaps the feminists are right that women are “socialized” into the lower-paying liberal arts fields. Another distinct possibility is that those same activists brainwash young women into believing that there is little hope for them in “male” professions, so they should might as well just major in something they enjoy. The same goes for minority students. Amber Pawlik relates a story where a women’s studies professor met with an African American female student solely to convince her that due to her race, she should not expect success or steady employment [3].

Let’s say that in a case like the one Pawlik describes, the female or nonwhite student decides that the odds are stacked against her. She therefore switches out of the career-oriented major and into a consciousness-raising one like Women’s Studies. After graduation, she discovers that the corporate world won’t hire her, and her activist friends tell her to blame discrimination, not her resume. This is a case of imagined oppression, because the real culprit is lack of qualifications. Participating in protests and reading about “systems oppression” will not do much for the resume.

Please do not think that this article intends to deny the existence of all oppression and prejudice. However, although oppression no doubt exists, much of what seems like it is simply real-world unfairness and hard luck. Although many will experience discrimination in their lifetimes, it probably will not come from the rude McDonald’s cashier or the Citibank director who won’t hire a history major. Nobody in this world is entitled to a job, unlimited room on the rush hour subway, or royal treatment.

When campus activists redefine real world inconveniences and competition as “the oppression and disrespect you will face on a daily basis,” this is a problem. Most freshmen do not come in considering a cranky subway rider or rejection of a weak resume to be a hate incident. That changes when their “Whomever’s Studies” professors declare that every struggle is due to race and gender, and that by “changing the system,” the world will become a perfect place. When students start expecting a perfect world, and can then play victim and point a falsely accusing finger when things don’t go their way.

People in all groups face rude New Yorkers, strict security guards, a competitive job market, the need for relevant job experience, and other things that are not fun. Brainwashing people to think that every frustration is due to group victimization is will not prepare anyone for real life.


References:

[1] DePasquale, L. (2002). “Feminists tout ‘wage gap’ as social injustice to women.” Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute [online]. http://www.cblpolicyinstitute.org/wageequity.htm.

[2] Fact & fallacy: "Where's my 26 cents?": Choices explain gender wage gap (1998). Employment Policy Foundation [online]. http://www.epf.org/pubs/newsletters/1998/ff4-6.asp.

[3] Pawlik, A. (2003). Manufacturing campus radicals. Men’s News Daily [online]. http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/p/pawlik/03/pawlik090403.htm.

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Marian Shah is a freelance social commentator. Raised moderately liberal, the events of 9/11 inspired her to move farther right and begin writing. Marian encountered such a liberal bias in college that she often had to hide her opinions to succeed in class. She writes for OpEds.com, LadiesAgainstFeminism.com, and Free Republic, and plans to publish a book. She is married and lives in New Jersey.

mjsmoller@hotmail.com