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Internalized Dominance Internalized dominance refers to internalizing and acting out (often unintentionally) the constant messages circulating in the culture that you and your group are superior to the minoritized group and thus entitled to your higher position. Examples include: Rationalizing privilege as natural (“It’s just human nature—someone has to be on top.”) Rationalizing privilege as […]

Dominant groups have the most narrow or limited view of society 110 because they do not have to understand the experiences of the minoritized group in order to survive; because they control the institutions, they have the means to legitimize their view (“I worked hard for what I have, why can’t they?”). Minoritized groups often

limited opportunities to present it for themselves. Oppression is cultural. Oppression is embedded in all dimensions of culture. Referring to the iceberg diagram from Chapter 3, consider how the norms of what constitutes deep culture (the unspoken and unconscious rules) are gendered and manifest in government processes and policies. These norms privilege men. Women who

Oppression is historical. The under-representation of women in government is not simply the result of the last federal election in a given country. Women’s exclusion from government in the United States and Canada well into the 21st century illustrates their long-term overall exclusion as citizens, guaranteeing that they would have no role in deciding how

Dolores Huerta (b. 1930) Huerta is a pioneering labor and civil rights leader, and the cofounder (with Cesar Chávez) of the United Farmworkers of America. In 1955 she became involved with a grassroots organization (the Community Service Organization) that was fighting police brutality in the community and pushing for improved public services. It was there

Social Stratification In Chapter 3 we discussed how individuals belong to various social groups. For the purposes of understanding socialization, we described how important it is for individuals to recognize the significance of these social groupings. For the purposes of understanding oppression, we must also understand that these groups are given different value in our

Common shorthand within the discipline is: Prejudice > Discrimination Prejudice + Power = Oppression Oppression involves institutional control, ideological domination, and the imposition of the dominant group’s culture on the minoritized group. No individual member of the dominant group has to do anything specific to oppress a member of the minoritized group; the prejudice and

How do people often respond when their prejudices are pointed out 97 Now interview two people (other than those engaged in the activity with you), asking them to do what you did. What patterns do you notice in the responses? How did an awareness of your prejudices (or preconceived ideas) influence the decisions you made

All Humans Have Prejudice and Discriminate Just as all people have prejudices, learned from socialization, all people discriminate. So, the blind woman in our previous example may also have prejudices against us because we are sighted. Based on her previous experiences with sighted people, she may assume that we are ignorant about people with disabilities

Patterns to Practice Seeing 1. Practice identifying patterns at the group (rather than individual) level. For example, in workplace meetings or other public spaces, practice seeing which groups are included and which are not. 86 2. Practice naming people by their key social groups. For example, “Tina, a white able-bodied cis-woman, went to the store.”