Preview

Oppression In A Free Society

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
799 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Oppression In A Free Society
The only way freedom can arise is through resistance. Oppression can only be defeated if the oppressed resist against any injustices. Free societies, such as the United States of America, actually do allow for peaceful assembly to occur, as it helps create a better, more stable union. When people are angry, they are allowed to voice their opinions through civil disobedience, and consequently have a better chance of being heard by the rest of society. Because of peaceful resistance, societies are more likely to grow and change for the benefit of the people, as the world can be molded into whatever the people wish it to be.

But what about the structure of society? How may we have a functioning society if people are going to resist the laws? Critics argue that peaceful resistance will cause instability within a free society, and cause more trouble than the issue is worth. However, these are misguided thoughts: they haven't considered why there are peaceful protests to begin …show more content…
If there weren't any problems in society, then no one would protest, because there would be no point. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world; reality is filled with issues that concern a myriad of people, and oppression is a common theme. If a law limits the human rights of an individual, are we just expected to stand by and let it happen? Are we to accept the fact that great inequality exists in society, and not put up a fight? To those who critique peaceful resistance, I ask how a society can be "functioning" if people are being limited in their freedoms? Civil disobedience occurs because of an injustice within a society--it is not meant to harm the public, but rather, to save it.

Peaceful resistance has been used time and time again to fight for
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Summary Of Letter From A Birmingham Jail By Rev. Martin Luther King
    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Summary Of Letter From A Birmingham Jail By Rev. Martin Luther King

    When answering the question does peaceful resistance to laws positively of negatively impact a free society, one word takes precedence - peaceful. Too many times we overlook that word and the result is just resistance to laws. In recent days, something that was titled peaceful demonstration turned into violent protest. The violence is often the intention of the "resistance" groups from the onset. The latest example comes from those who protested the outcome of the presidential election of Donald Trump. Their intention was violence and destruction in the name of protest. Egged on by media corporations with political leanings, these enraged individuals are given a free pass. This gives actual civil disobedience no chance to create positive change. The majority of protestors have no idea what cause they are associated with, just looking for their shot to get on television. The next "protest" must outdo the last and so on and so on. It is now commonplace to destroy property, set fires and attack innocent bystanders to get your point across.…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Tom Mullen's Argue Of Civil Disobedience
    • 797 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Tom Mullen's Argue Of Civil Disobedience

    Peaceful resistance to laws positively impacts a free society because it is exercising the rights of it’s citizens as well as proving that the government is not always correct, and the biggest changes normally come about from civil disobedience. Civil disobedience has been used to speak against the United States government when it showed that those in power wouldn’t change for the better. Civil disobedience was not well known for the abolition of slaves. David Thoreau called for it in “Civil Disobedience,” written in 1849, claiming that the government showed faulty in handling slavery. Thoreau claimed “the government itself… is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it,” (Thoreau par 1).…

    • 797 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Civil Disobedience: A Rhetorical Analysis
    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Civil Disobedience: A Rhetorical Analysis

    The debate was thrust into a hotbed of discussion during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. In 1964, Morris I. Leibman was an avid anti-civil disobedience activist. He argued that there is no reason for any citizen to find an excuse to break the law because when people agree to enter society, they accept the rules that society establishes. Once you break these laws, there is no purpose to society existing in the first place. He argues that if you give leeway to certain circumstances in the law, where do you draw the line? In his mind, civil disobedience is deplorable and believes it’s the wrong way to create change. Continuing with this train of thought, Herbert Storing argued that civil disobedience would likely die out because of its irrelevance to today’s problems. He found it’s attempt to combine revolution and conventional political action into one as a blend of ideas ineffective in its approach for change. Both of these men wrote their responses to civil disobedience at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and both agreed that black people deserved equal opportunity under the law, but they felt that civil disobedience was a regressive tactic…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Cesar Chavez's Positive Impact On A Free Society
    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Cesar Chavez's Positive Impact On A Free Society

    The United States, in simple terms, was built upon a group of people who wanted change. These people knew that if they did not act, then they would not receive the change that was needed. When asked if peaceful resistance to laws positively or negatively impact a free society we must look at the past for an answer. And as the United States of America our history shows that peaceful protest positively impacts a free society. In the years of 1954-1968 African-Americans peacefully fought for the end of segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence. Laws barred them from classrooms, bathrooms, theaters, and train cars that were used by "whites." Leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. peacefully fought for freedom by speaking out to the public that all…

    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    A3 Civil Rights Citizenship And Participation

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages

    A3 Civil Rights Citizenship And Participation

    Is the use of civil disobedience warranted in response to laws that some people feel are unjust?…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Response To The Boston Tea Party
    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Response To The Boston Tea Party

    When an individual believes a law to be unjust, the act of nonviolent disobedience of that law is a means of overturning it. The First Amendment assures our right to do so. The accident of fate that placed our birth into this nation of privilege makes it our moral obligation. The physical and intellectual energy of countless dissenters before us has ensured our bubble of advantage. Strategic, peaceful…

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Social Patterns Of Oppression
    • 119 Words
    • 1 Page

    Social Patterns Of Oppression

    Oppression is defined as the exercise of authority in a burdensome and unjust manner. Discrimination is defined as actions or practices that result in differential treatment of individuals. Oppression is usually patterns of behavior like sexism which tends to force women into subservient and restricted roles. Cisgenderism, where people do not identify with their assigned gender role, but are forced to choose a role or suffer social consequences. Furthermore, ableism, lookism, ageism and sizeism are all social patterns that do not meet the social ideal of society, so these people are treated different, to an unnecessary degree. Here are examples of discrimination; Segregation, age discrimination, equal pay and compensation, disability discrimination,…

    • 119 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Definition Essay On Freedom
    • 897 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Definition Essay On Freedom

    There is no such thing as true freedom on Earth as it will be destroyed and recreated in order…

    • 897 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Civil Disobedience And The Civil Rights Movement In The 1960's
    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Civil Disobedience And The Civil Rights Movement In The 1960's

    Throughout history, civil disobedience has been the catalyst for change. Societies who have had oppressed people used civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustices they have suffered. Peaceful resistance to laws positively impacts a free society because it is plays on the conscience of the oppressors and makes it easy for people to stand up for their own rights.…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Importance Of Oppression
    • 523 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Importance Of Oppression

    I am tired. If mankind is wise then it should be tired as well. My exhaustion derives from the endless conflicts the human race has faced. Often throughout history we have faced conflicts with carrying a big stick and wars. The problem with those approaches is that the little that they attempt to solve is only effective in situations where threats are tangible. In other words, when the enemy has a face. When it comes to inequality based on genders, races, and social constructs, we have nobody to blame. There is no villain that our heroes can eliminate resulting in the end of the problem. Instead invoking social changes takes time and effort faced by much adversity from resistance to change.…

    • 523 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Oppression In The Civil Rights Movement
    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Oppression In The Civil Rights Movement

    The United States of America was founded on the concept that all men are created equal; however, it has taken us until the last fifty years to make significant strides toward equality for many minority groups. Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a vastly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence (www.history.com, 2015). In 1960, the black Americans made up 10.5% of the total population and 55% of them were living in poverty (http://www.shmoop.com/, 2015). This is just one example of how a century of oppression can affect a whole demographic.…

    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Examples Of Oppression In America
    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Examples Of Oppression In America

    One of the most thwarting situations is realizing that your fate has been decided before you get the opportunity to open your mouth. Being an African American teenage girl, there is already the expectancy that you are illiterate, incapable, and shallow. Often times we do not get the opportunity to achieve our own life stories because someone else has already assumed them for us. We are raised to believe that our elders can predict our mistakes because they have already committed them themselves. We spend the majority of our lives attempting to live better lives than those who came before us instead of dominating our own. Some of our deepest inner and outer most struggles uproot from three simple characteristics which we will never be able to control: our ethnicity, our gender, and our maturity.…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Oppression
    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Oppression

    In her essay “Oppression,” Marilyn Frye argues that women are oppressed simply because they are women, while men are not oppressed because they are men. To give an example for her claim, Frye mentions that men think they are oppressed because they cannot cry. This, however, is an example of suffering that men might feel, and it is not a legitimate reason to call the male gender oppressed. She argues that men are not oppressed because society does not restrict men with the double bind, while it does for women.…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Oppression and Discrimination
    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Oppression and Discrimination

    One way Asians adapted to discrimination was by becoming fully integrated into society by contributing to advances in technology and commerce trades.…

    • 634 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Oppression Reflection Paper
    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Oppression Reflection Paper

    Oppression signifies an authority of a dominant group over a monitory group, disengaging the minority group from society. It involves mistreatment of a group, which is founded by individual stereotypes, systematic beliefs and attitudes, which become justification for continued mistreatment of members of these groups. This paper will review three forms of oppression and how the dominant members in society use their power and privilege to influence to continue the cycle of oppression.…

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics