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Personal Narrative: Tunnel Of Oppression

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I approached the table skeptically, eyeing its urbanesque sign with more than a little suspicion. "Will Work for Change, " it read. "Tunnel of Oppression." The girl behind the table smiled warmly as she swiped my Zip Card. She explained, briefly, that if anything inside the tunnel was hard to look at or triggering, I didn't have to look at it. On the outside I nodded, but on the inside, I scoffed. I'm stonger than I look, I thought to myself. Nothing you or your tunnel can throw could ever shake me so badly. To prove it, I vowed to look at every exhibit on display. They told me that it would take about twenty minutes to experience the tunnel. I was in there for over an hour, reading every blurb and watching every animation. My mediocre expectations …show more content…
Racism. Cultural Appropriation. Most startling to me was the glaring fact that many people contribute to these evils unconsciously. I read about microagression, which can be defined as unintentionally harmful acts of racism. Microagression is just one of the many stains our country bears from it's history of systematic racism. We witness microagression every day: comments like "I understand; I have black friends", "You're not like other black people", innate expectations that other races will assimilate to dominate white culture, and groundless suspicions regarding people of color are just a few …show more content…
Graphic photographs surrounded me, and suddenly I understood the warning I'd been given at the mouth of the tunnel. Nevertheless, I forced myself to look, thinking that to shy away from the fate of these people would be to dismiss and dishonor their suffering. Tearstained Syrian faces and explicit photographic evidence of the Isis killings looked right at home among the grainy, black-and-white images from a 40's death camp. Firsthand accounts from both horrors were plentiful, and designed to put you in the place of the oppressed. They were extrordinarily effective. I stumbled from the mouth of the tunnel in a sort of daze, my heart

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