[PEN-L:11421] Class and Oppression

["James Michael Craven" <CRAVJM@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just as a thought exercise, note the bases of oppression (gender,
class, race, ethnicity, age, sexual preference, religious/non-
religious affiliation, linguisitc group etc) and the note various
forms of oppression (unequal pay, subjection to violence in the home,
police harassment, no access to legal representation, probability of
acquiring and suffering various types of diseases, subjection to
arbitrary and capricious dismissal from employment, brutal conditions
and forms of labor, subjection to domination and brutalization in the
household, subjection to draft/death in the military, subjection to
sexual harassment, etc etc. then, if possible (controlling for
intervening variables) compare the "typical":

a) Gay White Male Investment Banker vs "Straight" White Male
Sharecropper
b) White Female Investment Banker vs Poor White Male Sharecropper
c) African American Male Investment Banker vs Poor White Male
Sharecropper
d) etc etc.

Noting of course that various forms of discrimination operate to
exclude or make rare, people from certain groups being found in some
of the above-mentioned categories (e.g. few women investment bankers
etc) and noting that within class (e.g. poor white women vs poor
white males etc) should also be examined, I think that typically,
class is still the fundamental basis of and determinant of degree of
overall oppression. Of course ranking victims and degree of victimhood
can be an unconscionable exercise that can serve to obfuscate forms
and levels of oppression in particular and in general.

I believe that qualifying and rank ordering forms and levels of
oppression (implicitly we do that in giving different sentences for
different types/levels of crimes against persons and in tort damages--
which is not to say that the typical rank orderings that usually put
property before people are correct) I think that considering all the
possible combinations and permutations, social class governs
fundamentally.

                                 Jim Craven

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