I really appreciate the explanation of the difference between oppression and the daily and regular troubles of the human condition. Even though this article on oppression was written 21 years ago, the same incorrect feelings about what oppression is and how it looks and feels are still pretty much commonplace. I’ve heard too many white people over the course of my life that believe that they are oppressed and a recipient of racism. Even more ironic is that most of those people were men, men who were well on their way to inheriting fortunes and being handed a career and life by the men who raised them whether they claimed to dislike it or not, and even men who already owned and operated a business of their own however small, that enjoyed the benefit of selling out of stock for long stretches of time. A majority of the people who enjoy the freedom of living their lives without the fear of the accompaniments of doing that living under an oppressive system still either deny the existence of it, minimize its effects and consequences, enjoy it because it clearly benefits them, or simply don’t believe in it altogether. And even in the people that I believe don’t fall into this category there is an incredibly slim portion of them that actively want to and try to do something to change it, or even provide help to those people it oppresses day in and day out. 

One thing that I saw both articles touch on is the way that white people and men in regards to a patriarchal society live and operate behind a kind of veil that keeps them from seeing clearly what is being done on the other side of that veil. And I pick the word “veil” intentionally, because to me there is no possibility that those things are ever completely blocked from view or consciousness. It is there, and on the other side of it are people constantly lifting that veil, shouting from the other side, telling them that the veil exists and what is happening behind it, all to very, very little real progress in anything but appearances of how much work has been done and what times we now live in and a cry of how hard it is to live their lives having to think about other people that are not on the inside of the veil.