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I hold Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton personally responsible for having seriously overloaded the collective “oppression” brain circuitry of America. Bad, bad candidates for the supreme leadership of what is still the richest and most powerful country in the world. Naughty! You’re both grounded! Now go to your rooms and think about what you’ve done!

To date, I personally have based my own worldview of oppression upon (a) the fact that every human society on Earth is a patriarchy and (b) the timeless wisdom of Twisty Faster, quoted below:

[Twisty's] views revolve around evidence that patriarchy is a violently tyrannical but nearly invisible social order based on an oppressive paradigm of class and status fetishizing dominance and submission. Patriarchy’s benefits are accrued according to a rigid hierarchy at the top of which are rich honky adult males and at the bottom of which are poor female children of color.

Now, it hasn’t bothered me–the above definition is sufficient unto my needs–but not everybody seems to feel that level of zen about the precise degree of shafting being inflicted upon the folks who are in-between rich white men and poor nonwhite girls–those who possess some traits of the privileged group (say, being male) but not others (say, being poor). ‘Smatter of fact, some people are really, really obsessed with it. Really obsessed. I thought about linking to some examples of said obsession but quickly realized that the supply so far exceeded my demand that I’d run out of text space before I even got to say anything more on the subject. But I kid you not; it is everywhere; you have but to Google it or even just read the front page of any newspaper.

I don’t think anybody can really argue about “rich” and “adult” being the characteristics of the hands that hold the vast majority of the benefits in our world, nor that possessing the characteristics of “poor” or “child” puts you right down at the bottom of the heap. So right away, we can start sorting our remaining human beings into their oppression hierarchy!

FIRST: Rich white men

2nd: rich white women, rich nonwhite men and rich nonwhite women

3rd: poor white men, poor white women, poor nonwhite men, poor nonwhite women, rich white boys, rich white girls, rich nonwhite boys and rich nonwhite girls

4th: poor white boys, poor white girls and poor nonwhite boys

LAST: Poor nonwhite girls

But oh, the jostling for the lower places on the ladder within the lateral groups listed above! It’s kinda amazing, honestly.

(You’d think everybody would be jostling for the HIGHER places. But not during the 2008 Oppression Olympics, they ain’t.)

Everybody has an opinion. But I am not into opinions. No indeed. I am an engineer, and we don’t DO opinions. Specifically, we do spreadsheets. We actually are capable of being sexually aroused by a really good spreadsheet, which is probably more information than anybody out there wanted…sorry…back on topic: I am going to share with you now what I believe to be the true answer to the burning question: Who really is gonna medal here? and it is based upon just a few humble spreadsheets. You just can’t get any better than that.

For my research,* I turned to the noble sources of Time and Forbes online magazines and men.style.com, the online home of GQ magazine. See, what I was interested in also was both what the oppression ranking would be worldwide, and what it would be in the US specifically–just in case it wasn’t the same. For the worldwide perspective, I look at Time’s 2007 list of the 100 most influential people in the world and Forbes‘ list of the 400 richest people in the world (though I only looked at the first 100). For the specifically US perspective, I looked at men.style.com’s list of the 50 most powerful people in Washington DC.

First, Time. This is the breakdown by gender and race. (Note to anyone interested: there were no poor people and no children at all. Of the 106 people listed–they had some couples and partners to knock them over the 100 mark, as did the other lists–only 7 of them were not independently wealthy and only five of them were under the age of 40.)

54 white men
27 nonwhite men
19 white women
6 nonwhite women

Well. That’s pretty clear-cut. But before we commit ourselves to making a permanent record of this oppression hierarchy, let’s confirm it with our secondary worldwide source, which honestly is gotta be better anyway–Time measures “influence,” whateverthefuck that means, and the choices are overwhelmingly made by Americans, which has gotta lend bias to the situation. Forbes on the other hand measures money, which is a nice hard unambiguous indicator.

Forbes’ list:

67 white men
23 nonwhite men
9 white women
0 nonwhite women

Well. That’s even MORE clear-cut.

The WorldWide Oppression Olympic Medalists have been determined!

Gold for Most Oppressed: Women of Color
Silver for Most Oppressed: White Women
Bronze for Most Oppressed: Men of Color
Nothing Because You’re Not Being Oppressed Based On Your Race or Gender, Get Over It**: White Men

Oh but wait!! I said I wanted to see if the US is different. The Time list, while indicating a similar pattern to the Forbes’ list, is less extreme, and it definitely is American-influenced. So let’s look at the men.style.com breakdown:

44 white men
7 white women
3 nonwhite men
1 nonwhite woman

So the US’s Medalists are a little different. Imagine…

The United States Oppression Olympic Medalists:

Gold for Most Oppressed: Women of Color
Silver for Most Oppressed: Men of Color
Bronze for Most Oppressed: White Women
Nothing Because You’re Not Being Oppressed Based On Your Race or Gender, Get Over It: White Men

So now everybody can stfu. You’re welcome.

*No, of course this isn’t any kind of scholarly research study. It’s a blog, for cryin’ out loud.

**However, you can still be oppressed based upon your lack of wealth! All is not lost for you. See the very first hierarchy in the post.