Opression

Oppression is the prolonged, unjust treatment or control of people by others. In the past, the definition of oppression was limited to tyranny by a ruling group, but overtime it has transformed because governments are not the only people who oppress. Today, oppression “could also mean denying people language, education, and other opportunities that might make them become fully human in both mind and body." This is seen throughout history through the actions of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, King George III in the United Kingdom and the Thirteen Colonies (the predecessor of the United States of America), and today by observing the actions of people such as Kim Jong-un in North Korea and Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Although these leaders are separated by nearly fifty years and a few centuries, both are "governmental regimes that deprive people of at least some of their human rights.”

Today, oppression can be seen in the social, institutionalized, and economic spheres across the world. Social oppression can be observed in the form of gendered, class, racial, and sexual oppression. The relationship of social oppression is one of dominance and subordination, in which one party has the ability to maintain its advantage relative over another party. Institutionalized oppression is when "established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups."

Social oppression is the socially supported mistreatment and exploitation of a group of individuals. Social oppression is based on power dynamics and an individual's social location in society. Social location, as defined by Lynn Weber, is "an individual's or a group's social 'place' in the race, class, gender and sexuality hierarchies, as well as in other critical social hierarchies such as age, ethnicity, and nation." An individual's social location determines how one will be perceived by others in the whole of society. It maintains three faces of power: the power to design or manipulate the rules, to win the game through force or competition, and the ability to write history.

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Wikipedia