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Dismantling Racism Resource Book

the rich need not feel any guilt or compunction about their concentrated wealth. In fact, they can
feel deserving and superior.

Blaming the victim leads to the victim feeling complicit with the oppression, of deserving it. As
one takes in the negative messages and stereotypes, there is a weakening of self-esteem, self-
pride and group pride. When the victim of the oppression is led to believe the negative views of
the oppressor, this phenomenon is called internalized oppression. It takes the form of self-
hatred, which can express itself in depression, despair, and self-abuse. It is no surprise,
therefore, that the incidence of suicide is high among gay men and lesbians, for they live in a
world in which messages of hatred and disgust are unrelenting. Nor is it surprising that the
differently abled come to think there is no hope for their independence or for them to receive
basic human services, for they are taught that the problem is with them, not society. Any
difference from the norm is seen as a deficiency, as bad.

Sometimes the internalized oppression is acted out as horizontal hostility. If one has learned
self-hatred because of one’s membership in a “minority” group, then that disrespect and hatred
can easily be extended to the entire group so that one does not see hope or promise for the whole.
It is safer to express hostility toward other oppressed peoples than toward the oppressor. Hence,
we see people destroying their own neighborhoods, displaying violence and crime toward their
own people, or in groups showing distrust of their own kind while respecting the power of those
who make up the norm. Sometimes the internalized oppression leads people to be reluctant to
associate with others in their group. Instead, their identity is with those in power. Hence, a major
part of every social change movement has been an effort to increase the pride and self-esteem of
the oppressed group, to bond people together for the common good.
A major component of every oppression is isolation. Victims of oppressions are either isolated
as individuals or as a “minority” group. Take, for example, those who experience rape or incest
or battering. Prior to the women’s movement and the speak-outs that broke the silence on these
issues, women who had experienced abuse were isolated from one another, thought they were
alone in experiencing it, and thought, as society dictated, that they were to blame for the abuse.
It was through women coming together in the anti-violence movement that we learned that
indeed there was something larger going on, that violence was happening to millions of women;
out of that coming together grew an analysis of male power and control that led to a movement
to end violence against women. Another example: before the civil rights movement, there were
black citizens in the South who were isolated because of their lack of access to resources, in this
case, to education and literacy. Because they could not read, they could not pass the tests that
allowed them to vote. The Citizenship Schools that began on St. Johns Island, South Carolina,
taught blacks to read the Constitution so that they could pass the test; in reading the Constitution,
they learned that they too had rights. These schools spread across the South; people came
together out of their isolation, and a civil rights movement was born.

In order to break down the power and control exercised by the few, it is clear that people of all
oppressed groups must come together to form a movement that speaks for everyone’s rights.
People will gain their human rights, justice, and inclusion through group effort, not through
isolated individual work. However, those who hold power oppose group organizing efforts and
use many strategies to destroy such efforts: invalidation, minimization, intimidation, infiltration,
etc.

Dismantling Racism Project 30 Western States Center