1. Understanding Privilege & Oppression

2. Privilege
A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group
Used on the context of social inequality
Having more comfort, ability to access society than others = privilege
Can be held on the basis of any form of social identity
Typically associated with majority groups

3. Privilege
“…unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious… like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”
-- Peggy McIntosh

4. “Check your Privilege”
A term used to bring awareness to potential hidden advantages that might skew perspectives
Important to be aware of one’s own access to society – not everyone enjoys the same access/comforts based on their identity
Unchecked privileges can lead to social issues and inequality

5. Systematic Oppression
Embedded in institutions such as: media, family, religion, education, language, economics, criminal justice and in cultural definitions of what is normal, real, correct, beautiful and valuable.
Socially sanctioned and maintains an imbalance of power

6. Social Oppression exists when one group exploits another for its own benefits and key elements are present:
Dominant group defines what is normal,
Differential treatment,
Psychological colonization of target group leads to internalized oppression,
Target group’s culture is discounted and dominant group’s culture imposed.

7. Dominant vs. Subordinate
Dominant, Oppressor:
Access to power
Economic control
Provide standards, “norms”
Privilege
Subordinate, Target:
Disadvantaged
Categorized
Differential treatment
Lack power and influence

8. TECHNIQUES of DOMINANCE: 1. Stereotypes
Mental images that are overly simplistic and exaggerated generalizations about social groups;
Selective generalizations that attribute specific traits to groups – not necessarily true;
May be used to spread misinformation and stigmatize a subordinate group

9. 2. Prejudice
Arbitrary attitudes or beliefs and unfair bias towards or against a person/group.
Based on little or no experience and projected onto entire group.
Prejudice is an individual’s internal perspective.

10. 3. Discrimination
Action based on prejudice. Excluding, ignoring, avoiding, threatening, ridiculing, jokes, slurs, violence, unfair treatment.
Discrimination is an individual’s external behavior

11. Cycle of Systematic Oppression
Justification for Further Mistreatment
(oppress based on the effects of having oppressed)
Systematic Mistreatment
of Targeted Group
Power
Control
Economics
Misinformation is Generated
(including no information)
Institutions Perpetuate & Enforce
Society Accepts
(approves, legitimizes, normalizes)
Internalized Dominance
(feeling/acting superior, often unconsciously, to the target group)
Internalized Oppression
(believe the misinformation about your own group)

12. Internalized Oppression
Incorporation and acceptance by people within a target group of the prejudices against them.
“We hate ourselves because
We grew up
And live in a society that hates us”
-- Michael Denneny

13. Assimilation's Ideals
Elimination of group-based difference; treat everyone according to the same principles, rules and standards. Also Liberal Humanism.
Belief that it maximizes “choice”. People can develop themselves as “individuals”, unconstrained by group norms or expectations

14. Assimilation Challenged
Group Solidarity: Black Power, Red Power, Women’s movement, GLBT Liberation
Assimilation implies coming into the game after it has already begun –
Blindness to difference perpetuates cultural imperialism
Aspirations to assimilate can produce self-loathing if unable to “fit in”

15. Diversity
May create the illusion of participation, when in fact there is no shared power.
Presence means very little without the power of decision making, share of the resources, development of agenda/plans, policies.

16. Becoming an Ally Comfortable with own identity,
Initiates learning about others,
Acknowledges unearned privileges,
Works to change privileges into rights that target members can also enjoy,
Willing to take risks,
Committed to taking action!