Tunnel of Oppression

When we, my journalism class, were first told that we were going to visit the Tunnel of Oppression, I began picturing an actual tunnel with vivid pictures about racism and discrimination plastered across the walls. I must admit my expectations were very high.

As we walked to the Tunnel of Oppression as a class, we were met with a fairly long line. I wasn’t surprised as I was sure many others would want to see it. But I also wasn’t surprised when I found out the 30 or so students in front of our class were also there for another class, after all it was a learning experience, at least it should have been.

Before entering the actual Tunnel, we were met with hateful words splattered across the wall such as “sand nigger,” “dyke,” “cracker,” and many others. While these words have been used to spread hate and oppress the people they’ve been used on, I didn’t find it at all offensive. In all honesty I found them rather funny, and to my surprise, I wasn’t the only one. While waiting in line, a few of my classmates in front of me were laughing at the words on the wall and making a few jokes, I really couldn’t blame them though as I was doing the same thing in my own mind.

I consider myself pretty lucky though to never have grown up around such oppressive times thanks to the sacrifices that people made in the past. I’ve never experience racism or discrimination first hand, which does say that times have changed, at least here in the Bay Area.

When it was finally time to enter the Tunnel of Oppression, we were instructed to keep quiet as to not disturb the other people. After going through the entrance, I was surprised to see that it was no tunnel at all, but just a series of rooms put together. I guess it’s just because I’m a very literal person that this surprised me. As I also said earlier, my expectations were high and after looking and reading through the many panels of information on the walls, I was not impressed. In fact I was very disappointed. I don’t want to come off as a jerk, but I felt the presentation of the tunnel was horribly done. That’s not to say the people who ran this event didn’t work hard, but if they did, it sure didn’t show. Many, if not most of the displays looked like they came out of a fifth grade history project. Just like a cut and paste on colorful paper sort of thing.

There were positives to the experience though, a lot of information was available and I did learn a few things, but it just wasn’t presented well enough.

One room did really get to me and made me really think and almost cry. When I entered the fourth room, I was met with a model of a dead baby covered by a sweater splattered with blood. That was one image that I wanted to rid my mind of. It was definitely a sad reality that the deaths of murdered children and children carrying assault weapons was happening in our world today.

When the tour was all said and done, I must say I didn’t come away learning whole lot. Maybe I was being too negative, maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I’m just really a racist. Either way I do hope the Tunnel of Oppression returns next year and learns from their mistakes and improves upon them. It’d be a waste if vital information as this got away from people because of bad craftsmanship and bad presentation.