What Is Privilege And Oppression In The Trouble We Re In

In Allan Johnson’s article, “The Trouble We’re In,” he talked about privilege and oppression. Privilege is when one group of people has something of value and another group of people doesn’t have it, simply because it is denied to them. On the flip side, oppression is the social factors that are passed down to people and prevent them from having a good life. One of the social characteristics that I identify for myself is that I am a well-educated student. I have only ever attended private schools, from kindergarten until college. I am very privileged to experience a private education. My parents were always able to afford the steep prices of private schools that allowed me these privileges. One example of how this privilege helped me is because …show more content…
For example, in The American Dream and The Public Schools, Jennifer Hochschild talks about this paradox between the American dream and how Americans treat public schools. The American dream is that if a person works hard, they will succeed in life and education is a really big part of this dream. However, most people don’t want to make public education equal across states, districts, or even in the same district. They aren’t following the American dream and helping poorer children succeed in school or giving them opportunities to succeed, they are taking away any chance that poor children might succeed. On the other side, in The City that believed in Desegregation, Alana Semuels talks about how Louisville, Kentucky overcame segregation laws in order to keep their public schools integrated. Cities like Detroit took the easy way out and became segregated again when they weren’t forced to be integrated. But, Louisville took the harder route and kept education integrated. They are equalizing their public schools in order to stop the oppression of children who can’t afford to go to private …show more content…
For example, in High Country Crisis, Cindy Uken explains how people in Montana have a hard time accessing proper mental health care because the state is so spread out. They don’t have access to close mental health care professionals, so therefore, the suicide rate is higher than the rest of the country. The people in Montana are being oppressed because they cannot receive effective mental health care. Using the sociological imagination, a person can look at physical disabilities as a private trouble just effecting a disabled person, but there are actually public issues that need to be addressed by everyone. If everyone just thought more about physically disabled people when building schools, offices, stores, etc., then disabled people would be able to access a wider variety of places. They wouldn’t fell as oppressed with equal