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The Ways of Meeting Oppression

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The Ways of Meeting Oppression

In the book “The Stride Towards Freedom” Martin Luther King Jr. discusses oppression, specifically in regards to race and how it’s applicable to Negros in conjunction to the Montgomery bus boycott. In this article Martin Luther King Jr. asserts there are three ways to deal with oppression: the first being acquiescence, the second is through physical violence and corroding hatred, and the third is through non-violent resistance. Further he proffers that the first two options keep the oppressed as “oppressed” while the third option of non-violent resistance is the best option as “ the nonviolent resister agrees with the person who acquiesces that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted… with non-violent resistance, no individual or group need to submit to any wrong, nor need anyone resort to violence in order to right a wrong.” (pg 145) Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent resistance is a building block of which to create current social action and social policy, however if it were combined with a liberal feminist approach, he would be able to create more change so social and public policy. Using a liberal feminist approach, feminist theory offers several ways to deconstruct and reconstruct this system which is similar to Martin Luther King Jr. non-violent resistance. Further, this critical analysis will explore the goals of a feminist approach and how a liberal feminist approach offers more concrete suggestions on how to create social change.

Feminist theorists generally share four concerns: first, feminist theorists want to understand the gendered nature of almost all social institutional relations. Second, constructed gender relations are seen as problematic and are related to other

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