In a letter to his son, Ta-Nehisi states “That wisdom is not unique to our people, but I think it has special meaning to those of us born out of mass rape, whose ancestors were carried off and divided up into policies and stocks”(Coates, 2009) Slavery, an extreme example of oppression (more specifically exploitation), transformed early America into an economic power. The exploitation of black people for free labor made the South the richest and most politically powerful region in the country. Young defines exploitation as “the act of using people’s labors to produce profit while not compensating them fairly”(Young, 2004), in the case of slavery which Coates aforementioned, the slave owners greatly profited from the exploitation of the essentially free labor of their slaves. Exploitation occurs when a group’s labor is taken advantaged of by another group without …show more content…
Young addresses how a dominant group has the influence to change the perspective of the individual’s view of their own group. The dominant group can shape the perception of what is normal and can stereotype any group. This stereotyping can cause oppression to the individual and the notion of invisibleness because they are being defined by outside groups who do not hold their own interests in mind. Perhaps the greatest injustice of cultural dominance is that it allows the dominant group to impose its own interpretations of social life upon all others. This affects what is invested in, both in terms of cultural products and in terms of economic decisions –– how we value some neighborhoods, cities and regions over others, whether we see certain uses of public funds as ‘good investments’ or ‘bad investments’ and whether we value public education of all children or just some children. Ultimately, cultural imperialism serves to reinforce marginalization and powerlessness in non-dominant groups. Kozol uses the experience of a young African-American high school student named Mireya as an example of how cultural imperialism can be internalized by the non-dominant group. Mireya exclaims that she planned on attending college and would rather much take an AP class as opposed to being forced to take sewing and head dressing classes; however, a young male African-American classmate named Fortino responds with