The Problem With Speaking Up For Each Other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lpPASWlnZIA

I came across the video above in a Huffington Post article and immediately recognized it's relationship to the topics of oppression and privilege that we had discussed in class. In this powerful presentation, a white woman and a black man deliver a spoken word poem titled "Lost Voices." Instead of telling stories of their own experiences, they switch roles and speak up for each other. The white woman addresses 4 separate days that "she" realized she was black, while the black man discusses different occasions that "he" experienced the repercussions that male privilege have on the life of a woman. The two deliver a line together that says, "But to tell me you know my pain is to stab yourself in the leg because you saw me get shot. We have two different woulds and looking at yours does nothing to heal mine." This targets their main point of the ways that people make assumptions about what it means to experience oppression in our society.

This related to the article Oppression written by Marilyn Frye. She describes oppression as being pressed. Those that are oppressed are restricted, restrained, and prevented of their motion or mobility. The black man and white women who delivered this poem tell about the ways they have been molded, immobilized, and reduced, just as Frye explains in this article. The two later deliver another line together that reads, "You speak no pain; you only fathom it because we told you it was there. You know nothing of silence until someone who cannot feel your pain tells you how to fix it." This reinforces their feelings on being immobilized, and the fact that others are only concerned about their lack of privilege because they have made its existence clear. The black man and the white woman have been placed in a cage because of the oppression they have experienced. Upon first glance people wonder why they are not moving forward, but when a step back is taken, it is clear that they are trapped because of their circumstances. When a black man speaks up for a white woman about male privilege, and a white woman speaks up for a man about race privilege, the oppression that both parties experience is clearer than ever. The final line of the poem reads, "The problem with speaking up for each other is that everyone is left without a voice."