Assignment #8

Power means that you have the ability to control events and the behaviors of other people. When you have power you can choose to marginalize and or exploit people, because with power you can control the dominant narrative to marginalize people by making them feel like they are nothing or under you, but to exploit someone you can use methods like blackmailing someone to do something by always having an “or else” which is taking unfair advantage of them. To marginalize means to put off to the side, or make less important. To exploit means to take unfair advantage of someone for your own benefit. One example of both these things is Colonization because the Europeans enslaved the Native Americans, making them feel less than them, breaking them physically and mentally and they exploited them by making them work literally to death. Two more examples of power being misused is how homophobes use their their power to make fun of homosexuals for being different and how people use religion to do things horrible things.

First of all people with power are able to marginalize and exploit people because they have the authority to force the Native Americans to work to death or kill the Native Americans if they didn’t follow orders. In document #3 the spanish government created the encomienda system, which marginalized and exploited the Native Americans. The encomienda system makes the Native American tribes of certain areas commended to the rule of a spanish overlord called an Encomiendero. This document is a quote from a book titled Colonial America, written by Jerome R. Reich in 1994. A quote from this document that proves my point is “Although the spanish government always insisted that Native Americans were free citizens who must be treated humanely, in practice they were bought and sold, worked (literally) to death, and forced into virtual slavery.” This quote implies that my answer is right because it shows how people with power can marginalize people by buying and selling them which makes them feel lesser than them and also exploits them by making them work against their will.

 

Furthermore, people with power are able to marginalize and exploit people because people like Pastor James David Manning marginalize gay people by putting anti-gay messages on his marquee outside his church. James David Manning is a pastor at ATLAH World Missionary church in Harlem. He would put anti-gay messages on his marquee and one day it got vandalized, making him think is was gay people who did it, so then he tried to turn the tables to make it seem like he was getting bullied by homosexuals. He continued to put anti-gay messages on his marquee but ironically Harlem has become one of the city’s top neighborhoods for gay couples. I learned this from a quote from an article titled “Homophobic church sign causes stir in Harlem” on a website called Amsterdamnews.com, written by Cyril Josh Barker on May 3rd, 2014. A quote from this article that proves people with power are able to marginalize people is “The messages posted on the sign at the church, located at west 123rd street and Malcolm X Boulevard, don’t hold back on Manning’s message that homosexuality is against God’s wishes and the bible. This implies he was able to marginalize people by making gay people feel bad because apparently being gay is against God’s wishes and Jesus would stone them (kill them) and god doesn’t talk about straight people implying that he is cool with straight people just not with gay people. This would make gay people feel like they are lesser than straight people because we are all humans and should not be treated differently because of who they are attracted to.

 

Finally one last example of how people with power can marginalize people is by using religion to kill enemy warriors in the name of a false god. Aztec’s did this by finding the most perfect enemy warrior and treating them like a god for a year as part of their religion. Then at the end of the year they sacrifice that person for their god, Tezcatlipoca by publically dismembering them. I learned this from a document that is a seventeen year old Aztec Scribe record of his impressions of a Sacrifice Ritual which is recorded and told to Friar Bernardino de Sahagun (Several years later in 1529). A quote from this article that gradually supports my answer on how people with power are able to marginalize people is “Many of us become attached to this living god, and a terrible sadness comes over some of the women when, at the end of the year, he is taken to Chalco and dismembered in public view.” This shows how people in power,in this case the people who created this religion, marginalize certain enemy warriors, probably because they are “different”,being from a different tribe and being perfect, by giving them power, making them feel powerful, then stripping that power away by killing them. First of all who wants to die, let alone die by dismemberment, that’s cruel.