"Unlearning Oppression{"

 Unlearning Oppression

By Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.

No child is brought into this world as a racist or sexist or homophobe.  Oppression must be learned through our childhood socialization processes.  While the home environment provided by our parents is crucial to learning both oppressive and anti-oppressive behaviors, cultural institutions such as schools, religious institutions, and mass media also play a central role.

For many years I taught classes at local college and universities I called “Unlearning Oppression”.  While the formal titles of these classes was typically “Race, Class and Gender in American Society” I insisted upon dealing with ageism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of oppression.

In these classes my goal is to create a climate in which students can both deal with their own issues as people who are oppressed and deal with their issues as people who are oppressors. 

My title derives from the pioneering work of Erica Shereover-Marcuse, a critical philosopher and educator who became well-known for leading workshops on “Unlearning Racism” in the Bay Area during the 1970s.  

Shereover-Marcuse, was the third wife and student of Herbert Marcuse, the German-American philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

While I never took part in one of Shereover-Marcuse’s workshops, her compact and insightful lecture notes formed the pedagogical core of my classes.

To unlearn oppression and to dismantle the foundations of our “dominator culture”, we must acknowledge our everyday oppressive practices.  Moreover, we must engage in critical self-reflection, get the correct information, deal with our negative emotions, gain insight into our own passivity and become actively anti-oppressive.

Oppression is the acts and effects of domination, including ideological domination and institutional control.  Oppression operates through unequal and unjust institutional constraints which bring harm to at least one other group and which serves to the benefit of another social group.  This harm comes about through coercion, or the use of unjustified force.

There are many systems of oppression in the US, including racism, imperialism, patriarchy, heterosexism, ageism, ableism.  These are interlocking societal, economic, moral and religious values that keep many people down to ensure the power and advantage of a few groups of people.

There are three different forms of oppression:

1. institutional oppression–which occurs through the ‘normal’ ways that society operates.  No individually-motivated hatred needs to be in operation for institutional oppression to work. Example: A white real-estate agent shows a young Black couple houses in parts of town he feels they’d feel most comfortable, thus enforcing racial segregation.

1. interpersonal oppression–which occurs between individuals and is usually based on personal prejudice. Example: a man continually interrupts a woman while she is speaking.

1. internalized oppression–when members of an oppressed group oppress one another and their own group. Example: a group of gay men pick on another who is more feminine

We are all potentially both oppressors and oppressed. While we often have a dualistic logic imagining that there are those “with power” and those “without power” the reality is much more complex.

We learn oppression through our own oppression as children. Early childhood experiences are central to developing “power over” mentalities.  Essentially we hurt others because we have  been hurt ourselves.  

In our society we often experience mistreatment as young people—through physical violence but also through invalidation and disregard of our feelings. As a result, we tend both to internalize this mistreatment by accepting it as ‘the way things are’, and externalize it by mistreating others.

Thus adultism and the oppression of children are at the heart of my understanding of the nature of oppression in modern society.

Depending on the context all individuals possess varying amounts of penalty and privilege.  Because all of us have been children we have all been potentially oppressed.  Because all of us  (presumably) are adults we can all be oppressors of children.  But age is just one system of oppression.

The interlocking system of oppression in which penalty and privilege vary by race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability, etc. is called the “matrix of domination” by Patricia Hill Collins.  

Intersectionality identifies the multiple overlapping sources of penalty and privilege. So someone may be disadvantaged by being African American and gay, but privileged by being male and able-bodied.

Everyday oppression refers to those practices which, while so much a part of our everyday lives that they seem normal and thus go unquestioned, discriminate against members of some “minority” group.

Everyday oppression routinely occurs within interactions and includes all actions, verbal and nonverbal, which result in negative consequences, regardless of intentionality.  Thus, oppression does not have to be blatant, conscious or deliberate.  Therefore, many well-intended people are unaware that their actions are oppressive.

Everyday oppression sometimes occurs through inaction rather than through overt actions.  The passivity of well-meaning people, fueled by ignorance and indifference, is critical to the operation of dominator cultures.  We often live in denial, refusing to acknowledge the consequences of our behavior.

Types of Everyday Oppression

• stereotypes are faulty generalizations that we make about groups of people;
• misinformation about group differences (ethnic groups, genders, sexual minorities, ability groups, etc)
• discomfort dealing with cultural and social differences;
• apprehension about different groups
• taking privileges (as whites, or males, or temporarily able-bodies, or…..)
• paternalistic attitudes (“we need to help those poor people”);
• self-righteous liberal pride (“but I’m colorblind”, “we have gay friends”,….)

Unfortunately many people, deeply engaged in the liberation of their own group, seem not to be able to see their role in oppressing others, and how that comes full circle and perpetuates their own oppression.

In my classes I urge students to become “allies”—people who stand with all marginalized people, speaking out against acts of oppression wherever and whenever they happen.
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When my mother, Peggy Mellinger, was 12 years old she caught the polio virus in a local swimming hole, leading her to become paralyzed from the waist down.  

In spite of these obstacles she completed a four-year college degree (which in itself was rare for women in the early 1950s), raised three children and became a successful business woman.

I remember as a child going with her to the Eastside Mall in Springfield, Mass. and noticing how the normal exchange of eye contact between strangers (called “civil inattention” by sociologists) was absent from her presence in public life.  People would either stare or avoid eye contact all together.

I used to think that my mother had a “problem”—being “disabled” and that society needed to accommodate her problem so that she could have a chance to thrive.

Recently, in a sermon on ableism my pastor, Rev. Julia Hamilton stressed the importance of “relocating the problem”.  

Rather than the presumption that people should not be disabled we need to accept that disability is inherent part of the human condition. The problem does not reside in the differently able-bodied person but in the society that does not accept disability as just the way things are.

I had never thought of things in that way before. I realized then that unlearning oppression is lifelong task that we never fully complete and that there will always be new insights to acquire,  new facts to learn and tender emotions to process.  The important thing is to never give up!