We put a lot of stock in the word “oppression.”
Our nation’s mythology begins with hapless colonists oppressed by a tyrannical king, even though those who led the revolution would have been considered pretty comfortable at the time.
The idea that coming to America will free immigrants from the oppression in places like Syria and South Sudan is bellowed from the mouths of politicians and reflected on the podium of the Statue of Liberty. For most of us, though, oppression is lost in the misty past, as much a source of pride as a collective memory.
But the word oppression retains political power, so much so that privileged county clerks like Kim Davis can claim religious oppression for being forced to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
There’s no real oppression happening in that case, of course, but that’s hardly the point: The word “oppression” has become the way we make a public case out of having to do something we don’t want to do.
Sadly, this has the effect of diluting the power of the word, and so we don’t recognize oppression when it really happens; we are blind to our own complicity in the systems of oppression that characterize contemporary life.
