View of Colonialism through Truths and Tales

814 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: effect and impact of colonialism

This week’s readings discuss the truths about colonialism and how it has impacted different races on a global level. The tales aspect of the readings covers individual experiences of racism and how the victims now view their oppressions in order to cope with these traumas. The truth behind colonization is that it has caused the dispossession of subordinate groups from their land, their rights and their communities. The readings have examined the environments in which different communities have had to re-evaluate their social structures and approaches towards racism. These communities have found themselves falling behind in their fight to break apart from years of oppression. How has the view changed within racialized communities accepting and resisting racism brought on by their oppressors as a result of colonialism? The changes within challenging colonial discourses has allowed for oppressed groups to adapt with changes in post-colonial tactics.
In Taiaiake Alfred’s article, “Rebellion of the Truth,” the author discusses how the Canadian First Nations community in Whistler struggles with the politics of their band leaders and government in regards to the possession of their lands. According to Alfred, the Onkwehonwe community struggles with maintaining their lands financially. The leaders of the clan believed rather than preserving the heritage of their ancestors, selling the lands would give them a long-term economic benefit. Alfred explains how the clan leaders had to change their perception in order to stay afloat financially and to be able to have the freedoms of challenging the oppression of losing their land. The author explains with the following statement: “Even moderate activism, the tame and constrained legalism of t...

... middle of paper ...

... and minority groups will need to work together with any challenges that arise.
It is evident from this week’s readings and the Loomba text that racial discourses towards marginalized groups are not intended to bring invisibility amongst targeted women. The themes truth and tale bring together the experience and perceptions that colonialism conveys to the real experiences and stories of oppressed groups in a vivid manner. These experiences connect to the oppression of women and how they have developed through social discourses and concludes that change towards resistance is evolving within the changes of the environment. In order for the irregularities of equality amongst minority groups to balance out, there needs to be an adaptation in how one perceives and approaches their oppressions in order to resist and challenge the transgressions faced in everyday life.

Show More
Related

  • Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia

    1446 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...usion that race is deployed "in the construction of power relations."* Indeed a "metalanguage" of race, to use Higginbotham's term, was employed by colonial powers to define black women as separate from English women, and that process is deconstructed in Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, Anxious Patriarchs. However, Brown's analysis rests mainly on the shifting English concepts of gender and race imposed on colonial society by the white elite, becoming at times a metalanguage of colonial gender. Nonetheless, Brown's analysis of overlapping social constructions is instructive for understanding the ways gender and race can be manipulated to buttress dominant hierarchies.

    Read More

  • Racial Microaggressions and Injustice: A Review of Rankine's Citizen

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ranikine’s addresses the light upon the failed judicial systems, micro aggressions, pain and agony faced by the black people, white privilege, and all the racial and institutional discrimination as well as the police brutality and injustice against the blacks; The book exposes that, even after the abolition of slavery, how the racism still existed and felt by the colored community in the form of recently emerged ‘Micro aggressions in this modern world’.

    Read More

  • Buried in the Bitter Waters by Eliot Jaspin

    713 Words  | 2 Pages

    Of course I do not consider myself to be a racist, or a bigot, but I am aware of socially conditioned stereotypes and prejudices that reside within. That awareness, and the ability to think for myself, has allowed me to approach issues with clarity of mind and curiousness at the social interactions of various movements. Buried in the Bitter Waters, by Elliot Jaspin, has easily awakened my sensibilities and knowledge of modern era race relations in the United States. I read each chapter feeling as if I had just read it in the pages before. The theme of racial cleansing - of not only the colonizing of a people, but the destruction of their lives and livelihood – was awesome. The “awesome” of the 17th century, from the Oxford English Dictionary, as in “inspiring awe; appalling, dreadful.” Each story itself was a meditation on dread and horror, the likes of which my generation cannot even fathom. It is with that “awe” that I reflect in this response paper.

    Read More

  • Aboriginal Poverty In Canada

    1073 Words  | 3 Pages

    “In about half of the Dominion, the aboriginal rights of Indians have arguably been extinguished by treaty” (Sanders, 13). The traditions and culture of Aboriginals are vanishing at a quick pace, and along it is their wealth. If the Canadian Government restore Native rights over resource development once again, Aboriginals would be able to gain back wealth and help with the poverty in their societies. “An influential lobby group with close ties to the federal Conservatives is recommending that Ottawa ditch the Indian Act and give First Nations more control over their land in order to end aboriginal poverty once and for all” (End First). This recommendation would increase the income within Native communities, helping them jump out of

    Read More

  • The Colonies of Culture:The Postcolonial Self in Latin America and Africa

    2368 Words  | 5 Pages

    The colony is not only a possibility in the geographical; it is a mental dominance that can imperialize the entire self. Entire continents have be domineered, resources completely dried, and at colonialism’s usual worst, the mental devastation of the indigenous culture has left a people hollow. Indigenous culture is no longer that. In the globalized world, no culture is autonomous; culture cannot breathe without new ideas and new perspectives, perspectives that have traditionally come from the people who have lived within the culture. But, the imposition of dominant cultures has certainly benefited from culture’s own vulnerability, as global similarities now exist throughout most different, yet not separate cultures. Postcolonialism is imperialism with a mask on, nothing less. As Franz Fanon puts it “that imperialism which today is fighting against a s true liberation of mankind leaves in its wake here and there tinctures of decay which we must search out and mercilessly expel from our land and our spirits.”

    Read More

  • The Intersections Of Race, Class And Gender In The Anti-Racist Discourse Analysis

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    With this understanding it can be acknowledged that one can be an oppressor at one point in time but be oppressed at another. These roles are constantly changing based on a variety of factors. Integrative anti-racism allows a better understanding these social oppressions. The author argues that in order for oppression to be vitally explored, the factors that create oppression must be realized. Oppression gives material advantage to the oppressor. "All social relations have material

    Read More

  • Argument Against Native Sovereignty in Canda

    2281 Words  | 5 Pages

    This paper supports Thomas Flanagan's argument against Native sovereignty in Canada; through an evaluation of the meanings of sovereignty it is clear that Native sovereignty can not coexist with Canadian sovereignty. Flanagan outlines two main interpretations of sovereignty. Through an analysis of these ideas it is clear that Native Sovereignty in Canada can not coexist with Canadian sovereignty.

    Read More

  • The Indian Act In Canada

    940 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Indian Act no longer remains an undisputable aspect of the Aboriginal landscape in Canada. For years, this federal legislation (that was both controversial and invasive) governed practically all of the aspects of Aboriginal life, starting with the nature of band governance and land tenure. Most importantly, the Indian act defines qualifications of being a “status Indian,” and has been the source of Aboriginal hatred, due to the government attempting to control Aboriginals’ identities and status. This historical importance of this legislation is now being steadily forgotten. Politically speaking, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal critics of the Indian act often have insufferable opinions of the limits of the Indian Act’s governance, and often argue to have this administrative device completely exterminated. Simultaneously, recent modern land claim settlements bypass the authority of the Indian Act over specific groups.

    Read More

  • Interpreting Choy's and Taylor's Short Stories: Issues of Modern Racism and Prejudice

    1382 Words  | 3 Pages

    people of different ethnicities. Such harm is observed in the history of North America when the Europeans were establishing settlements on the North American continent. Because of European expansion on the North American continent, the first nations already established on the continent were forced to leave their homes by the Europeans, violating the rights and freedoms of the first nations and targeting them with discrimination; furthermore, in the history of the United States of America, dark skinned individuals were used as slaves for manual labour and were stripped of their rights and freedoms by the Americans because of the racist attitudes that were present in America. Although racist and prejudice attitudes have weakened over the decades, they persist in modern societies. To examine a modern perspective of prejudice and racism, Wayson Choy’s “I’m a Banana and Proud of it” and Drew Hayden Taylor’s “Pretty Like a White Boy: The Adventures of a Blue-Eye Ojibway” both address the issues of prejudice and racism; however, the authors extend each others thoughts about the issues because of their different definitions, perspectives, experiences and realities.

    Read More

  • Aboriginal

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    This paper will critically discuss the oppression the Indigenous peoples of Canada have experienced through examining the loss of socio – economic stability and environmental spaces due to past and present actions of the Canadian government.

    Read More

  • The Role of Social Movements in Fighting Racism

    1326 Words  | 3 Pages

    Some people define race as if it is something solid or concrete, but what they don’t see is that it is a “social fabrication”(Mathew Desmond, Mustafa Emibayer,2009;2). Race is based on the difference in physical appearance which is determined, for example, by the most apparent trait; skin color. Inequality emerges when people living, whether on the same sovereign terrain or across continents, are not treated with the same amount of respect and not given the chance to engage their rights in a free and fair manner. Race and inequality are often linked together because of the “issues that began in the 1800s”(NFB;Journey to Justice;2000) such as racial segregation. Over the years issues of race and inequality have decreased dramatically. How did racial inequality decrease and through what? To study this case, two theories need to be put in practice, “resource mobilisation theory and new social movement”(Tremblay;2013).

    Read More

  • Ethnic Studies

    1038 Words  | 3 Pages

    The structure of a society is based on the concept of superiority and power which both “allocates resources and creates boundaries” between factors such as class, race, and gender (Mendes, Lecture, 09/28/11). This social structure can be seen in Andrea Smith’s framework of the “Three Pillars of White Supremacy.” The first pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery and capitalism. In a capitalist system of slavery, “one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labor market while the profits of one’s work are taken by someone else” (Smith 67). From this idea of viewing slavery as a means of capitalism, Blacks were subjected to the bottom of a racial hierarchy and were treated nothing more than a property and commodity that is used for someone else’s benefit. The second pillar involves the logic of genocide and colonialism. With genocide, “Non-Native peoples th...

    Read More

  • The Practices and Processes Shaping Racism in British Society

    1818 Words  | 4 Pages

    The concept of racism is a relatively modern term that made its appearance in the 18th century. The practices and processes that have helped shape racism in British society today must be looked at as a series of ideologies, that have been built into British institutions and organisations as a consequence of the historical contexts of colonialism and imperialism. However, ideas of race and differences between races are rooted even earlier than this, even as far back in history as the 16th century. Even though racism can operate on levels of both individual racism and institutional racism, it is the later that will be looked at in this essay together with the historical context of Colonialism, and the political ideologies in the form of the Immigration acts that have shaped and still shape racism in British society (Mason 1995).

    Read More

  • Black Skin White Mask Analysis

    1136 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her blog posting “ ‘Noting to Say’: ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ and Gender,” Emma Jeremie Mould discusses the double bind women of color find themselves in. First, they are overdetermined by the racist discourse of the Whites. Second, black women find themselves codified within the discourse of native men. In addition, she contends that some Western feminists analyze the plight of black women from the top down, through an approach that reinforces a racialized hierarchy among women.

    Read More

  • Colonialism And Imperialism In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

    1706 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout history, many individuals and or communities have experienced marginalization. These individuals and or communities have been oppressed not in just one part of the world, but many different parts of the world. Oppression can vary from colonialism and imperialism to marginalization. Even though, colonialism and imperialism go hand in hand they are different. Colonialism is when one nation rules over another and exploits the resources to benefit the ruling nation. Imperialism refers to the practice of where a nation extends their power by politically or economically taking control. While the marginalization’s of minorities was unavoidable given the idea of modernization, these minorities re-asserted their self-worth to overcome oppression.

    Read More

More about View of Colonialism through Truths and Tales

Open Document