Similarities Between Let America Be America Again and How to Kill a Mockingbird
Slavery vs. the Holocaust: Why we should stop the 'struggle equation'
If you've spent any pregnant amount of time on the Net, yous've seen it – someone, somewhere opining about how [insert ethnic group] endured years of hardship, yet accept managed to reach modern day success as a people. If you haven't, I'd first like to permit you know that I envy your ability to avoid the virtually "SMH" inducing corners of the web. But to fill you in, the monologue generally reads something similar this:
AnonJim86: "History." That'southward all black people practise is focus on history. They blame it for them not having jobs, non existence able to take intendance of their families, and everything else. You lot don't see Jews blaming the Holocaust for declining in life. In fact, they're doing pretty well. Slavery and the Holocaust were really the same things.*
Uh, actually, they were not the same things – at all; though the mischaracterization of the two horrific periods as such occurs far besides ofttimes. What AnonJim86 and those of his ilk are engaging in is something I like to call "struggle-equation," and my god does it have to terminate. Equally the name suggests, "struggle-equation" is the deed of drawing similarities in historical oppression between two or more distinct groups, generally for the purpose of comparison the groups' current commonage social, political, and economic standing in relation to one another. Using our friend's comment above as an instance, a unproblematic explanation of that definition would read something to the effect of "Jewish people suffered the Holocaust, and blackness people endured Slavery – therefore, blacks and Jews should exist experiencing the same level of success."
The previous sentence should strike you as equal parts ridiculous and offensive (at least in the empathetic sense).
That's because comparing by hardship in social club to brand subjective determinations, as they relate to expectations of success, is an absurd practice. The trouble with engaging in struggle-equation is that it overlooks the distinctive, historic plight of blacks in the United States, making it difficult – if not impossible – for many people to sympathise just how black Americans continue to lag backside in areas ranging from politics to socioeconomic form. The journeying for blacks in the United states of america has been unique in every sense of the word, and neither its origin nor its progression need exist measured against anyone else'southward.
Equation is an Issue
What struggle-equation fails to consider are the latent factors encompassed inside a particular community'southward oppression – those factors that are the true determinants of a grouping'due south collective potential for advancement. To illustrate this bespeak, allow's focus on the history of black Americans. Since the days of Jim Crow, blacks (especially those in the South) have been running the figurative race of life with a weight fixed upon them; the cost of that weight being no more credible than in the economic leg of the chase. Dr. Deirdre Royster, author of Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Blackness Men from Blue-Neckband Jobs, addresses, at to the lowest degree in office, how the lack of economical parity came to be, and, how it has been perpetuated within this state. In the book, she introduces a theory she calls "Embeddedness," which seeks to explain how the racial/ethnic wealth gap came to be. The theory essentially posits this: personal and institutional contacts are valuable in connecting workers to employment opportunities – the reverse being that a lack of contacts equals a lack of chances for employment. Without these institutional ties, seemingly permanent wage and employment gaps are created.
And I hold – I concord 100% with this theory.
Though, I experience that it goes much deeper than this.
Slavery, and the Jim Crow Laws that followed, served every bit tools to secure advantages within employment, which, in this instance, meant keeping blacks excluded from the workforce. By not working, especially in the positions that demanded the most handsome salaries, blacks progressively roughshod behind their white counterparts financially, and because this do continued for many years, the disparity grew. Further, relating back to Dr. Royster's signal, existence out of the workforce meant that blacks were not able to "embed" themselves in the labor market and establish those connections which would have remained for years to come. Thus, while the latest statistics show a respectable unemployment rate of iv.7% for whites, the aforementioned cannot exist said for black Americans, whose rate of unemployment more than doubles that at 10.4%.
I requite that information to say this: these are the types of subtleties constitute within oppression that struggle-equation neglects to acknowledge. These are also the subtleties that make the practice both insensitive and oftentimes an exercise in futility. Struggle-equation doesn't closely examine the elements that make a tragedy what it was. It looks only at what happened as a whole, and what is, now. Because of this, the practice falls short in understanding how various forms of oppression tin can affect groups in different and complex ways.
Your black friends are ill and tired of hearing that slavery (and its after furnishings) was just like the Holocaust – trust me. Your Jewish friends are as well fed upward with defending themselves and their ethnic heritage against your dimwitted comparing. Admit those differences; recognize how they've come to shape the society we live in today. In one case nosotros go to that betoken, the idea of phenomena such as "white privilege" and the societal advantages that accompany it volition begin to make more sense. Finally, recognize that "struggle-equation" isn't unique to the black experience. There is no effect similar the Holocaust. There is no feel like that of the LGBTQ community.
Just put, no two struggles are the aforementioned.
Brian C. Bush is a law educatee with an interest surrounding the interplay betwixt race, gender, civilization, and the police. He can exist reached on Twitter @BrianCBush.
Source: https://thegrio.com/2015/03/19/slavery-vs-the-holocaust-stop-the-struggle-equation/
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