Components of Systemic Oppression

 

I think there are several components to this: first, systemic oppression begins with a significant body of misbeliefs that are asserted and defended. By significant, I mean in at least two ways — first, misbeliefs that seriously devalue and dehumanize a group of people and second, misbeliefs that are broad, spanning multiple disciplines. So you end up with dehumanizing, degrading, disparaging beliefs that reinforce one another across science, philosophy, theology/religion, medicine, language etc.

 

The second component is the lifespan of these misbeliefs — they are longstanding.. not just a few decades, but over many generations and even centuries. This is not to say that they are static — quite the opposite actually, as they tend to evolve and adapt over time. But you can go back fifty years or a hundred years or even 200 years and find variations of these misbeliefs persisting.

 

The third component is that these misbeliefs confer exploitative power to one group over the oppressed group. This provides the profit motive for the retelling and defending of these misbeliefs over generations. Whenever these misbeliefs are challenged, there is a feeling of loss of power and profit and so an ideological battle is triggered to reassert lost ground.

 

The final component is that these misbeliefs are encoded in culture, religion and law. Given a large body of misbeliefs that confer exploitative power, it becomes quite easy then to reinforce these as cultural norms and practices, religious rules and rituals and finally as laws written to punish those who refuse to submit.

 

Given all of these components, the result is that entire societies develop a collective consciousness around these misbeliefs, including in some cases the oppressed groups themselves. And this ongoing effect plays out in many different ways, all of which are systemically oppressive with economic, educational, political, legal ramifications etc.

 

So — good examples to call out are misogyny and white supremacy... all or most of these components are present.

 

A key thing to note though, is that we are born into these structures — they are in the air and water so to speak, of cultures, which make them both subtle and powerful, thus hard to detect. To do nothing is to perpetuate them, but they are incredibly hard to root out and destroy.... but it must be done.

 

Even if you don’t agree, hopefully this provides some framework to differentiate between simple prejudice and more systemic issues.