Given the nature of some of the responses I received over my article “The Oppression™ Olympics,” it is clear that I failed to effectively communicate my point. To those who interpreted my article as laughing at the experience of marginalized people and promoting the message that equality is stupid— I am sincerely sorry. This was not the message I wished to convey.
The point of my article was to highlight the ugly perversion inherent in creating a hierarchy of oppression.
Many different groups experience marginalization due to variables outside of their control. The participants in my piece represent real experiences of real groups, and intersectionality, as conceived of in academia, helps elucidate the range of possible, unique oppression.
But outside of the ivory confines of academia—and even occasionally within— intersectionality is sometimes being applied to rank or compare marginalization in a manner I find worrisome.
Racism is brutal and far-reaching, but white, unemployed coal miners from an impoverished town should not be implicitly told that their complaints are invalid.
As a cashier and later as a janitor, I have worked with white male teenagers too poor to afford a driver’s license. I have also worked with a female Guatemalan immigrant who works over 50 hours a week between two jobs to barely get by. She also deals with sexual harassment and overt anti-immigrant sentiments.
While both people experience different forms of marginalization that correspond to different variables—age, race, and gender— they both face unfair structural barriers that need to be dismantled, regardless of who faces more.
While nobody on the Left is literally demanding a competition between the oppressed, I believe that a vocal contingent is using rhetoric that explicitly and implicitly makes some groups feel like their experiences are unworthy of complaint. In turn, many in these groups vote for conservative candidates and become resentful of fellow humans who are also suffering.
Can a person of conscience engage in rhetoric that pits marginalized groups against each other?
It may be hard to understand what I mean if you only talk about intersectionality with your professors and likeminded peers, but my argument might make more sense if you spend time in working class environments and with people who are not college educated.
You should not read my piece and laugh at the plight of the participants. You should, however, read my piece and feel deeply uncomfortable watching genuinely oppressed people vying for legitimacy and support, and then, ask yourself: are some on the Left accidentally causing this?
I may have failed to get my message across through satire, but judging by the number of reactions, it is clear that I hit a sensitive spot of our collective conscience and sparked a lively civic discussion. The Hill News will gladly serve as a space to carry it out.