A Framework for Thinking About Oppression and Conflict
© The Author(s) 2015
Peter T. Coleman and Morton DeutschMorton Deutsch: A Pioneer in Developing Peace PsychologySpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice3010.1007/978-3-319-15440-4_44. A Framework for Thinking About Oppression and Conflict
(1)
The Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
4.1 Introduction
This paper1 provides a framework for thinking about oppression and how to overcome it.2 It considers the value premise underlying the use of the term ‘oppression.’ It then discusses the nature of oppression, the forms it takes, and what keeps it in place. In its final two sections, it focuses on awakening the sense of injustice and the strategies and tactics for overcoming injustice.
In this paper, my purpose is to provide a framework for thinking about oppression and how to overcome it. Oppression is, I believe, at the root of many of the most serious, enduring conflicts in the world today.
The paper is divided into the following sections. The first considers the value premise underlying my use of the term ‘oppression’ (4.2). The second is a discussion of the nature of oppression (4.3). The third addresses the question, “What forms does oppression take?” (4.4). The fourth asks, “What keeps oppression in place?” (4.5). The fifth addresses the awakening of the sense of injustice (4.6). The sixth provides a discussion of the strategies and tactics for overcoming oppression, which often involve violent conflict with groups in power (4.7). In the final section of my paper, I will discuss some nonviolent strategies and tactics for overcoming oppression (4.8).
My discussion will not focus on the different contexts in which oppression occurs, such as the family, work, education, and between ethnic, religious, and racial groups. There is an excellent discussion of the different contexts of oppression in the book, Social Inequality (Neckerman 2004), which presents extensive empirical data about inequality in various contexts.
4.2 The Value Premise Underlying My Use of the Term Oppression
The use of such terms as ‘oppression’ and ‘injustice’ implies the existence of a violation of a value or set of values. In employing such terms, I am adhering to the values incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. I believe there are several central values underlying the Universal Declaration: democracy, egalitarianism, and effective cooperation. Democratic egalitarianism pervades the thirty articles of the Declaration. Effective cooperation among and within nations (i.e., among the individuals, groups, and institutions which comprise national and international groupings) is necessary to create the social, material, and environmental conditions that are conducive to democratic egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is expressed in the first sentence of the Preamble to the Declaration: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world…”
In my book, Distributive Justice (Deutsch 1985: 41–42), I have written about equality and egalitarianism as follows:
The concept of equality has been discussed extensively by moral and political philosophers (Berlin 1955–1956; Tawney 1964; McCloskey 1966; Wilson 1966; Benn 1967; Pennock/Chapman 1967; Oppenheim 1968; Rawls 1971; Dworkin 1981a, b; Walzer 1983). In the vast literature dealing with equality, it is defined in various ways. I shall not attempt to summarize or critically examine this literature. My sense of it is that advocates of equality and egalitarianism are primarily opposed to invidious distinctions among people but do not assume that all distinctions are invidious. Invidious distinctions are ones that promote (1) generalized or irrelevant feelings of superiority-inferiority (if I am a better tennis player or more good-looking than you, I am superior to you as a person); (2) generalized or irrelevant status differences (if I am a manager and you are a worker in a factory, I should have a higher standard of living than you); (3) generalized or irrelevant superordinate-subordinate relations (if I am a captain and you are a private, I can order you to shine my shoes); or (4) the view that the legitimate needs and interests of some people are not as important or do not warrant as much consideration as those of other people (this may be because of my sex, race, age, national or family origin, religion, political affiliation, occupation, or physical handicap, or because of special talents or lack of talent).
From an egalitarian perspective, one is not making an invidious distinction and thus creating inequality when one recognizes, approves, applauds, honors, or shows appreciation of an unusually good performance, of a courageous action, or of a well-accomplished difficult task. Equality does not imply identical treatment of everyone without regard to particular circumstance. Honoring another’s performance does not diminish those who are not honored unless they consider themselves to be in a competitive or zero-sum relationship; if they view themselves as part of a cooperative community, they are enhanced by another’s honor.
The insistence on treating people identically, without regard to circumstance, is a pseudo egalitarianism, which often masks basic doubts or ambivalence about one’s commitment to egalitarian values.
Egalitarianism is conducive to effective cooperation in that it promotes social harmony, which in turn promotes mutual aid and the efficient specialization of function in cooperative work. (See Deutsch (1990) for a discussion of the psychological consequences of different forms of social organization.)
Although cooperative democratic egalitarianism or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not imply that all individuals, groups, or categories of people are treated identically or have the same positions in society, it does imply that the material and social conditions that affect individual well-being are distributed so that there are not gross systematic disparities in well-being, opportunities for human development, or the rights of people, individually or collectively. Of course, due to inadequate knowledge, there is considerable uncertainty and conflict about how to create a world that would actualize the values of the Universal Declaration.
In this paper, my discussion of forms of oppression assumes that systematic, large inequalities of the kinds described earlier are unjust. Some would challenge this assumption and assert that such inequalities are inevitable and inherent in human nature as well as in the social orders of animals and humans, and that they also promote economic productivity. However, I have pointed out (Deutsch 1985: 40–41):
If a cooperative system is oriented toward increasing its economic productivity, its rational tendency will be to allocate its economic functions and goods to use them effectively, but to allocate its rewards (consumer goods) according to need or equality (if more than a bare necessity is available). However, it is also suggested that inherent pathologies in the extension of economic values throughout a society or in the temptation to accumulate personal power may give rise to an equity principle that allocates economic rewards and political power as well as economic functions and goods to those who appear to contribute the most to the group. This equity principle, over the long run, is likely to be dysfunctional for groups, economically as well as socially. Economically, by allocating rewards and power disproportionately, it enables those who are in power to bias the system of allocation to perpetuate their disproportionate rewards and power even when they are no longer making relatively large contributions to the group’s well-being. Socially, it tends to foster the introduction of economic values in all aspects of social life with a resultant loss to the quality of life. As Diesing has written, ‘A person becomes alienated from his possessions and creations when he learns to regard them as utilities which have value because other people desire them; he becomes alienated from other people when they are perceived as competing with him for scarce goods; and he becomes alienated from himself when he sees his own values as a utility based on the desires of others’ (1962: 93).
The fact that cooperative egalitarianism is found in many hunting-fishing-gathering societies as well as more complex societies indicates that oppressive inequalities are not a human inevitability (see Mead 1937; Gil 1998; Kemp/Fry 2004). Henry Levin’s paper indicates that large, cooperative, egalitarian enterprises are both more productive and more humane than their traditional counterparts, which reject cooperative ownership and management. I found similar results in my review of egalitarian systems in the laboratory as well as in the social world in my book, Distributive Justice (Deutsch 1985). I also note that anthropological reviews of peaceful societies indicate that such societies are mainly cooperative and egalitarian (see Howell/Willis 1989; Kemp/Fry 2004; Encyclopedia of Selected Peaceful Societies, 2005, at <http://www.peacefulsocieties.org>).
4.3 What Is Oppression?
Oppression is the experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice. It need not be extreme and involve the legal system (as in slavery, apartheid, or the lack of a right to vote) nor violent (as in tyrannical societies). Harvey (1999) has used the term “civilized oppression” to characterize the everyday processes of oppression in normal life. Civilized oppression “is embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutions and rules, and the collective consequences of following those rules. It refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions that are supported by the media and cultural stereotypes as well as by the structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms” (Young 1990: 41).
We cannot eliminate this structural oppression by getting rid of the rulers or by making some new laws, because oppressions are systematically reproduced in the major economic, political, and cultural institutions. While specific privileged groups are the beneficiaries of the oppression of other groups, and thus have an interest in the continuation of the status quo, they do not typically understand themselves to be agents of oppression.
4.4 What Forms Does Oppression Take?
I consider here five types of injustices that are involved in oppression: distributive injustice, procedural injustice, retributive injustice, moral exclusion, and cultural imperialism. To identify which groups of people are oppressed and what forms their oppression takes, each of these five types of injustice should be examined. For a comprehensive discussion of social psychological research related to the topics discussed later, see Tyler et al. (1997).
4.4.1 Distributive Injustice
Under this section, I shall briefly consider the distribution of four types of capital (Perrucci/Wysong 1999): consumption, investment, skill, and social capital.
Consumption capital is usually thought of as “standard of living.” It includes income as well as job and financial security and the amounts and types of food and water, housing, clothing, physical security, health care, education, sanitation, physical mobility (such as travel), recreation, and services that are available to members of a group. Clearly, there are gross differences in income and standards of living among the different nations, among the different ethnic groups within nations, among the different classes, and between the sexes. For example, compare Sudan with Canada, African-Americans with Euro-Americans, employees of General Motors and its executives, and females and males.
Sen, for example (in Sen/Dreze 1999: Chap. 7, 140, in the book titled India, Economic Development, and Social Opportunity) writes: “Women tend in general to fare quite badly in relative terms compared to men, even within the same families. This is reflected not only in such matters as education and opportunity to develop talents, but also in the more elementary fields of nutrition, health, and survival.” He estimated that there are “more than a hundred million missing women,” in Asia and North Africa, as a result of the unequal deprivations they suffer compared to men. In other words, the survival rates of women compared to men is considerably lower than could be expected when these are compared to the relative survival rates of men and women in Europe, North America, and sub-Saharan Africa, where the differences in consumption capital available to males and females are not as unequal.
Investment capital “is what people use to create more capital” (Perrucci/Wysong 1999: 10). Income is related to consumption capital and also to wealth, which, in turn, is related to investment capital. Generally, wealth is distributed more unequally than income. The inequalities among nations, within nations, among ethnic groups, among the social classes, between the physically impaired and unimpaired, and between the sexes are apt to be considerably greater with regard to investment than consumption capital. In 1998, in the United States, the top 10 % of the population possessed 68.7 % of the financial assets, while the bottom 90 % had only 31.3 % (Scholz/Levine 2004), and this discrepancy has undoubtedly increased since then.
Skill capital is the specialized knowledge, social and work skills, as well as the various forms of intelligence and credentials, that are developed as a result of education, training, and experiences in one’s family, community, and work settings. As Perrucci/Wysong (1999: 14) point out: “The most important source of skill capital in today’s society is located in the elite universities that provide the credentials for the privileged class. For example, the path into corporate law with six-figure salaries and million-dollar partnerships is provided by about two-dozen elite law schools where children of the privileged class enroll. Similar patterns exist for medical school graduates, research scientists, and those holding professional degrees in management and business. People in high-income and wealth-producing professions will seek to protect the market value not only for themselves, but also for their children, who will enter similar fields.” It is evident that those in non-privileged groups in many societies will have much less opportunity to enter elite universities and to acquire the skills and credentials which would have high market value.
Social capital is the network of social ties (family, friends, neighbors, social clubs, classmates, acquaintances, etc.), which can provide information and access to jobs and to the means of acquiring the other forms of capital, as well as emotional and financial support. It is the linkage that one has or does not have to organizational power, prestige, and opportunities. The social capital that one can acquire and maintain is affected by such factors as one’s family, social class, membership in particular ethnic and religious groups, age, sex, physical disability, and sexual orientation. In most societies, the ability to acquire and maintain social capital by those who are underclass or working class, disabled, elderly, members of minority, ethnic, religious or racial groups, or women is considerably more limited than the ability of dominant groups. Personality, undoubtedly, also plays a role: one could expect that individuals who are ambitious, sociable, intelligent, and personally attractive will acquire more social capital than will those who are not.
To sum up this section on distributive justice (Deutsch/Coleman 2000: 56): “Every type of system—from a society to a family—distributes benefits, costs, and harms (its reward systems are a reflection of this). One can examine the different forms of capital (consumption, investment, skill, social) and such benefits as income, education, health care, police protection, housing, and water supplies, and such harms as accidents, rapes, physical attacks, imprisonment, death, and rat bites, and see how they are distributed among categories of people: rich versus poor, males versus females, employers versus employees, Whites versus Blacks, heterosexuals versus homosexuals, police officers versus teachers, adults versus children. Such examination reveals gross disparities in distribution of one or another benefit or harm received by the categories of people involved. Thus, Blacks generally received fewer benefits and more harm than Whites in the United States. In most parts of the world, female children are less likely than male children to receive as much education or inherit parental property, and they are more likely to suffer from sexual abuse.”
4.4.2 Procedural Injustice
In addition to assessing the fairness of the distribution of outcomes, individuals judge the fairness of the procedures that determine the outcomes (see Lind/Tyler 1988, for a comprehensive discussion of procedural justice). Research evidence indicates that fair treatment and procedures are a more pervasive concern to most people than fair outcomes. Fair procedures are psychologically important because they encourage the assumption that they give rise to fair outcomes in the present and will also in the future. In some situations, where it is not clear what “fair outcomes” should be, fair procedures are the best guarantee that the decision about outcomes is made fairly. Research indicates that one is less apt to feel committed to authorities, organizations, social policies, and governmental rules and regulations if the procedures associated within them are considered unfair. Also, people feel affirmed if the procedures to which they are subjected treat them with the respect and dignity they feel is their due; if so treated, it is easier for them to accept a disappointing outcome.
Questions with regard to the justice of procedures can arise in various ways. Let us consider, for example, evaluation of teacher performance in a school. Some questions immediately come to mind: Who has ‘voice’ or representation in determining whether such evaluation is necessary? How are the evaluations to be conducted? Who conducts them? What is to be evaluated? What kind of information is collected? How is its accuracy and validity ascertained? How are its consistency and reliability determined? What methods of preventing incompetence or bias in collecting and processing information are employed? Who constitutes the groups that organize the evaluations, draw conclusions, make recommendations, and make decisions? What roles do teachers, administrators, parents, students, and outside experts have in the procedures? How are the ethicality, considerateness, and dignity of the process protected?
Implicit in these questions are some values with regard to procedural justice. One wants procedures that generate relevant, unbiased, accurate, consistent, reliable, competent, and valid information and decisions as well as polite, dignified, and respectful behavior in carrying out the procedures. Also, voice and representation in the processes and decisions related to the evaluation are considered desirable by those directly affected by the decision. In effect, fair procedures yield good information for use in the decision-making processes, voice in the processes for those affected by them, and considerate treatment as the procedures are being implemented (Deutsch/Coleman 2000: 44–45).
One can probe a system to determine whether it offers fair procedures to all. Are all categories of people treated with politeness, dignity, and respect by judges, police, teachers, administrators, employers, bankers, politicians and others in authority? Are some but not others allowed to have a voice and representation, as well as adequate information, in the processes and decisions that affect them?
It is evident that those people and groups with more capital are more likely to have access to political leaders and to be treated with more respect by the police, judges, and other authority figures than those with less capital. Also, their ability to have ‘voice’ in matters that affect them is considerably greater.
4.4.3 Retributive Injustice
Retributive injustice is concerned with the behavior and attitudes of people, especially those in authority, in response to moral rule breaking. One may ask: Are ‘crimes’ by different categories of people less likely to be viewed as crimes, to result in an arrest, to be brought to trial, to result in conviction, to lead to punishment or imprisonment or the death penalty, and so on? Considerable disparity is apparent between how “robber barons” and ordinary robbers are treated by the criminal-justice system, between manufacturers who knowingly sell injurious products (obvious instances being tobacco and defective automobiles) and those who negligently cause an accident. Similarly, almost every comparison of the treatment of Black and White criminal offenders indicates that, if there is a difference, Blacks receive worse treatment.
4.4.4 Moral Exclusion
Moral exclusion is about who is and is not entitled to fair outcomes and fair treatment by inclusion or lack of inclusion in one’s moral community. Albert Schweitzer included all living creatures in his moral community, and some Buddhists include all of nature. Most of us define a more limited moral community.
Individuals and groups who are outside the boundary in which considerations of fairness apply may be treated in ways that would be considered immoral if people within the boundary were so treated. Consider the situation in Bosnia. Prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Serbs, Muslims, and Croats in Bosnia were more or less part of one moral community and treated one another with some degree of civility. After the start of civil strife (initiated by power-hungry political leaders), vilification of other ethnic groups became a political tool, and it led to excluding others from one’s moral community. As a consequence, the various ethnic groups committed the most barbaric atrocities against one another. The same thing happened with the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi.
At various periods in history and in different societies, groups and individuals have been treated inhumanly by other humans: slaves by their masters, natives by colonialists, Blacks by Whites, Jews by Nazis, women by men, children by adults, the physically disabled by those who are not, homosexuals by heterosexuals, political dissidents by political authorities, and one ethnic or religious group by another.
When a system is under stress, are there differences in how categories of people are treated? Are some people more apt to lose their jobs, be excluded from obtaining scarce resources, or be scapegoated and victimized? During periods of economic depression, social upheaval, civil strife, and war, frustrations are often channeled to exclude some groups from the treatment normatively expected from others in the same moral community.
Moral exclusion “is perhaps the most dangerous form of oppression” (Young 1990: 53). It has led to genocide against the Jews and gypsies by the Nazis, the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, the autogenocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the mass killings of the political opposition by the Argentinian generals, widespread terrorism against civilians by various terrorist groups, and the enslavement of many Africans, to mention only a few examples of the consequences of moral exclusion.
Lesser forms of moral exclusions and marginalization occur also against whole categories of people—women, the physically impaired, the elderly, and various ethnic, religious, and racial groups—in many societies where barriers prevent them from full participation in the political, economic, and social life of their societies. The results of these barriers are not only material deprivation but also disrespectful, demeaning, and arbitrary treatment as well as decreased opportunity to develop and employ their individual talents. For extensive research and writing in this area, see the work of Opotow (1987, 1990, 1995, 1996a, b, 2001).
4.4.5 Cultural Imperialism
“Cultural Imperialism involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture and establishing it as the norm” (Young 1990: 59). Those living under cultural imperialism find themselves defined by the dominant others. As Young (op. cit) points out: “Consequently, the differences of women from men, American Indians or Africans from Europeans, Jews from Christians, becomes reconstructed as deviance and inferiority.” To the extent that women, Africans, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, etc. must interact with the dominant group whose culture mainly provides stereotyped images of them, they are often under pressure to conform to and internalize the dominant group’s images of their group.
Culturally dominated groups often experience themselves as having a double identity, one defined by the dominant group and the other coming from membership in one’s own group. Thus, in my childhood, adult African-American men were often called ‘boy’ by members of the dominant White groups but within their own group, they might be respected ministers and wage earners. Culturally subordinated groups are often able to maintain their own culture because they are segregated from the dominant group and have many interactions within their own group, which are invisible to the dominant group. In such contexts, the subordinated culture commonly reacts to the dominant culture with mockery and hostility fueled by their sense of injustice and of victimization.
4.5 What Keeps Oppression in Place?
Here I consider other factors that that contribute to the maintenance of oppression: the superior power of the dominant group; the social production of meaning in the service of legitimating oppression; the self-fulfilling prophecies arising from oppression; and the distorted relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor.
4.5.1 The Superior Power of the Oppressor
Elsewhere, I have discussed different forms of power (Deutsch 1973), as have many others. Here, I am focusing on ‘competitive’ power, the power to control, dominate, or exploit another person, group, or nation whose power is not sufficient to prevent such domination or exploitation, rather than on ‘cooperative’ power, where it is to the benefit of each other if the other’s power is enhanced. Such resources as wealth, status, size, weapons, intelligence, knowledge, organizational skill, internal unity, respect, affection, allies, and a reputation of being powerful are some of the bases of power. Effective power depends not only on the control or possession of resources to generate power but also upon the motivation to employ these resources to influence others, skill in converting these resources to usable power, and good judgment in employing this power so that its use is appropriate in type and magnitude to the situation in which it is used.
It is evident that a group’s possession of highly effective power increases its chances of getting what it desires. Therefore, one would expect that the members of high-power groups would be more satisfied with their groups and more intent on preserving the status quo than would members of low-power groups. Given this asymmetry in power and satisfaction, it also could be expected that pressures for change in the power relations are most apt to come from low-power groups. The question naturally arises: How do high-power groups use their power to prevent or contain such pressure from low-power groups?
There are several basic ways: control over the instruments of systematic terror and of their use; control over the state, which establishes and enforces the laws, rules, and procedures which regulate the social institutions of the society; control over the institutions (such as the family, school church, and media) which socialize and indoctrinate people to accept the power inequalities; and interactive power, in which repeated individual behaviors by those who are more powerful confirm the subordinate status of those in low power. In addition, there are the self–fulfilling prophecies in which the behavior of the oppressed, resulting from their oppression, are used by the oppressor to justify the oppression; and the distorted relation between the oppressor and the oppressed.
4.5.2 Systematic Terror
As Sidanius/Pratto (1999: 41) point out in their excellent book Social Dominance, systematic terror can be official, semi-official, or unofficial. “Official terror is the public and legally sanctioned violence and threat of violence by organs of the state toward members of a subordinate group” (as in the behavior of South African police toward Blacks during the Apartheid period). Semi–official terror is violence or intimidation carried out by officials of the state but not legally sanctioned by the state (e.g., the death squads in Argentina composed of paramilitary organizations), while unofficial terror is perpetrated by private individuals from dominant groups, often illegally, with the tacit approval of public officials (as in the lynchings of African-American men accused of having sex with White women).
Systematic terror may not be necessary to keep a subordinated group in its place, if they think the social institutions controlled by the dominant group, as well as their daily interactions with its members, are tolerable. Or, it might be that their socialization and indoctrination by the social institutions controlled by the powerful have led them to accept and internalize the values and ideology of the dominant group. Even so, a harsh, dominant group in a totalitarian society may find it expedient, as well as self-affirming, to keep salient the potential of systematic terror, through its occasional arbitrary use to encourage the continued internalization of its values by the subordinate group and the toleration of the injustices it is experiencing.
4.5.3 Control over the State
In a self-reinforcing cycle, the powerful in any society control the state, and control of the state increases the power of those who control it. In the United States and other Western democracies, large corporations and wealthy individuals are the primary funders of political campaigns, political parties, and political candidates; they also own and control most of the mass media. Additionally, they provide the support for most of the private policy-planning network—the think tanks, research institutes, policy discussion groups, and foundations—that help to set the national policy agenda and to establish policy priorities (see Perrucci/Wysong 1999, Chaps. 4 and 5 for a detailed discussion). The result of the foregoing is an immense bias in the political system favoring large corporations and the economically privileged in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government. The effects of this bias are evidenced in which groups experience the various forms of injustice described earlier in this paper. In the United States, it is apparent that such minorities as African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, the physically impaired, single mothers, and children have relatively little power and are more likely to be poor and to suffer the other injustices associated with poverty. At the global level, a similar process occurs: the large multi-national corporations, the more powerful nations, and wealthy investors are able to influence the processes and practices affecting international trade, aid, and investment to their own advantage and often to the detriment of the people in third-world states.
4.5.4 Control over Socialization and Indoctrination
The development of discontent among the disadvantaged and outrage among the oppressed are often aborted by the socialization and indoctrination institutions of society. The family, school, religious institutions, and media socialize and indoctrinate the oppressed to obey authority and be aware that punishment for disobedience will be severe, to view the disadvantages they suffer as legitimate, or to have faith that they will be compensated for them in the afterlife. The rewards and punishments for accepting or challenging authority and the status quo in the here-and now, as well as in the afterlife, are presented vividly and repeatedly in both the myths and practices of the society and its indoctrinating institutions.
4.5.5 Interactive Power
This form of power has been defined by Harvey (1999: 43) as “the power to take the initiative in a relationship: in beginning or ending a relationship, and in insisting on its being modified, and in taking a number of communication initiatives like the power to begin or end a specific contact (like a conversation), to insist on being listened to and on being given answer to reasonable and pertinent questions.” The socially privileged, typically, assume that they have the right to control the interactions in their relationship with members of subordinated groups. Challenging this assumption can be risky for a subordinate and, as a consequence, it usually goes unchallenged. The repeated, everyday experience of being treated as an inferior produces a public image of being an inferior, which may be internalized as an image of self-inferiority. In the socially privileged, in contrast, such interactions will produce a public image of superiority and a corresponding self-image. Such non-egalitarian everyday interactions between the socially dominant and the oppressed help to keep the system of oppression in place through the public images and self-images they produce and perpetuate.
4.5.6 The Social Production of Meaning in the Service of Legitimating Oppression
Under this heading, we will provide some illustrations of how the various institutions of society and facets of its culture implicitly “proclaim the superiority of the oppressor’s identity” (Noel 1994: 7). The oppressors use ‘history,’ “the law of nature,” “the will of God,” ‘science,’ “the criteria of art,” and ‘language’, as well as the social institutions of society, to legitimize their superiority and to ignore or minimize the identity of the oppressed.
Some illustrations (see Noel 1994, for a more detailed discussion) follow:
The Declaration of Independence starts with “We the People” but the ‘we’ did not include Native Americans, slaves, women, or youth.
‘History,’ as it appears in the textbooks, is mainly a series of events that involve “great men” such as conquerors, kings, presidents, or successful revolutionary leaders. They were the ‘winners;’ the losers, if mentioned, are usually presented in a derogatory manner. The history of women, African-Americans, Native Americans, children, the aged, homosexuals, the physically challenged, and other minority groups are too insignificant to be noted except as problems.