Talking Points #10 (Johnson)

What Can We Do?
Becoming Part of the Solution
Allan Johnson

Johnson argues that change does not lie in the present but yet looking at our past and learning from it to help change the future. The things we need to change, issues created by this use of privilege, are ongoing and need to be changed by everyone, not just the group it directly affects.

"To be an effective part of the solution, we have to realize that privilege and oppression are not a thing of the past. It's happening right now. It isn't just a collection fo wounds inflicted long ago that now need to be healed. The wounding goes on as I write these words and as you rea them, and unless people work to change the system that promote it, personal healing by itself cannot be the asnwer. Healing wounds is nor more a silution to the oppression that causes the wounding than military hospitals are a slution to war. Healing is a necessary process, but it isn't enoough."
So this quote pretty much sums up a large portion of what we have discussed this semester. It is the idea behind the Brown article, the South Bronx article, etc. All these authors and articles express how the "band-aid on a bullet wound" solution is NOT effective yet it is still practiced.
"The greatest barrier to change is that dominant groups don't see the trouble as their trouble, which means they don't feel as obliged to do something about it."
This once againsts attests to everything we have talked about. For example, the white race sees no problem with the Brown ruling because in their eyes, they did their part, their "good deed." Its like this huge, cocky attitude that the white race has. Its like they want a pat on their backs for passing Brown, for "lending their time" to "fix" something. Its also like no one else can fix it except whites. Granted, the valididty to this statement is that in a way they are the only ones who can really do something because they control most of the power being the dominante race. As repeptive as this, hopefully with Obama as president more progress can be made in sharing that "privlege" power like it should be.
"If you don't make a point of studying history, it's easy to slide into the belief that things have always been the way we've known them to be. But if you look back a bit further, you find racial oppression has been a feature of human life for only a matter of centuries."
Ok, I have a problem with this. At another point in the article, he emphasized oppression based on other fomrs of culture but the part that bothers me is that he says hundreds of years. I'm sorry, does Johnson not know of the slavery in Egypt? The Jewish culture has been oppressed for thousands and thousands of years. The Islamic beliefs go back to 7th century, which more than emphasizes the oppression of woman. 10th century brings us to Chinese foot binding...hello oppression of women! In a biblical sense, Eve was created from Adam...male dominance!! Lastly, we've got the Russians. These people have been oppresed far too much. You've got the Vikings & the Mongols, both which oppressed the Russians hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I mean, we can ever discuss the Greeks and the Romans, but I'll stop. If we want to generalized, oppression is really when any group of people/civilization takes over another group/civilization, which is pretty much the epitome of history. As long as there have been people, there has been oppression, not just "a few centuries worth." I just honestly think Johnson should stick to privlege and diversity matter and leave the history to historians.
Overall, this article was repetitive. Considering we read the same author in the beginning of the semester, it was deja vu for me. As you can tell by my last quote, I was getting very frustrated with Johnson and his "historical tidbits." Easy read, just frustrating and repetitve.

Here is a "list" of oppression-esque matters.