Oppression in Reality

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.   To oppress, means to have unrestricted authority over someone, treating him or her with harsh punishment.  This quote illustrates that the people who are being oppressed and feel held down by some kind of authority, need to demand freedom and speak up.  The narrator of “White Woman of Color” expresses how she was always feeling discriminated and oppressed when she came to New York.  In New York she was considered white even though she is Dominican.  She wasn’t black enough to be considered a different race which connect to one of the quotes in this story which is “one drop of black and you were black”.  Basically saying if you were white you were white, if you were anything else you were black.  “They couldn’t grant me any states as a “real” Dominican because I was white.”  This quote truly express how oppressed she must have felt and that she wasn’t even considered her own culture just because her skin color didn’t match up correctly with her race.

            She soon realized something that truly killed her confidence and self-esteem.  After college she was looking for jobs and said “…-the inevitable questionnaire would accompany my contract in which I was to check off my race: Caucasian, black, Native American, Asian, Hispanic, other.” (Alvarez 5) As a Dominican she was unable to identify herself feeling alone and devalued.  “The truest answer might have been to check off other.”  This is when she felt upset, Americanized, “whiter”, and even devalued of her own culture.  To elaborate, “My values, the loss of my catholic faith, my lifestyle, my wardrobe, my hippy ways, and my feminist ideas separated me from my native culture.”  (Alvarez 5)

It is dehumanizing to oppress a human or animal in any way, but sometimes we don’t act upon our desired efforts to speak up.  It takes an immense amount of effort to speak up from the narrator’s standpoint in A White Woman of Color, and reach a high authority that can take care of her racial issues.  Protesting is the only measure that seems to work when citizens decide they want to speak up and not be oppressed anymore.  When citizens decided to protest, other people understand the troubles that these protestors go through, and eventually authorities make a change.  For example, “The National American Woman Suffrage Association raised more than $14,000 to fund the event that became one of the most important moments in the struggle to grant woman the right to vote, a right that was finally achieved seven years later.” (Time blog)  If these women had never stood up for themselves and demanded freedom then the oppressor (government) would have never done anything to change that.  Authority never makes changes unless there are constant demands such as protests.  These women demanded freedom and they now have the right to vote.