Structural Oppression(Community Dialogue Reflection)
The topic I chose to focus on was inequity that tied into the assigned reading for week six that included Iris Marion Young’s Five Faces of Oppression. The community dialogue consisted of a presentation style framework that introduced inequity, had an activity relating to inequity and had a discussion based on questions relating to the activity. The participants of my community dialogue were students and the professor from the Community Action and Social Change course. I started my community dialogue session by giving a brief recap of what inequity is, and how it tied into our readings. I also gave examples of inequity that are commonly seen with the population our community partner serves, such as income gap, gender inequality, healthcare disparities, poverty lack of affordable housing, exposure to hazards, and community social decay. The activity the class played was one that simulated inequity through a game of heads or tails. The learning outcomes were,
1) To show that more than individual characteristics shape the distribution of societal rewards.
2) To see that underlying rules of social interactions can affect the outcomes.
3) To illustrate that the sociological imagination can enhance our understanding of the social world more than individual explanations can
The players each started off with 5 coins and would find a partner and agree upon a bet and then flip a coin. The players would continue to play multiple rounds with a new partner. Once a player lost all of their coins they would be out of the game. Then another round was played where the winners of the past game kept all of their coins and all the players that lost would only have 3. The players that lost the first round had a huge disadvantage due to the winners of the past round having up to 18 coins. After the activity, the class was asked to reflect on the activity and participate in a discussion that helped the class better understand inequity.
The discussions helped me understand specific forms of inequity my classmates witness through their community partners. Most of us work with different community partners and have different experiences which helped give a more global perspective on inequity. I thought my dialogue was well thought out and structured which helped keep the class going. The only muddy moment I would say would be when some students did not want to participate during the discussions which limited the experiences we were able to hear about during the dialogue.
The reading I focused on was Iris Marion Young’s five faces of oppression. Young states, “Justice should refer not only to distribution but also to the institutional conditions necessary for the development and exercise of individuals’ capacities and collective communication and cooperation.” When people think of equity and inequity they only think of it in terms of distribution of wealth when we should be looking at it in terms of structural oppression that goes on in our world today. Young also emphasizes that equity does not mean equality, it means justice.
If students want more information on inequity I recommend they watch Richard Wilkinson’s Ted Talk, “How economic inequality harms society.” This TED Talk helps with the understanding of what contributes to inequity in our country and the harm it causes to society.
