Quotes & Sayings About Internalized Oppression

These neighborhood was our first home as a community but, once Italians began to gain status as "full" Americans, they moved out of the communities that they co-habited with other immigrants and people of color. The rootedness in this community shifted into a dissention of difference and of privilege. In order for Italian-Americans to mark their new social location under assumed "Whiteness," they had to make a physical move away from the marginal communities of color. The discussion ended in my favor but would mark the beginning of a long struggle of unpacking the internalized oppression and discrimination that marked my family's identity of "White"-working class-Italian-Americans learning to assimilate while keeping their hyphenated identity. Learning to build bridges between my different borders and my passions has been a continual process for me. — Lachrista Greco

Want to talk third wave feminism, you could cite Ariel Levy and the idea that women have internalized male oppression. Going to spring break at Fort Lauderdale, getting drunk, and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of patriarchal society that you no longer know what's best for yourself.
A damsel too dumb to even know she's in distress. — Chuck Palahniuk

Being a victim of oppression in the United States is not enough to make you revolutionary, just as dropping out of your mother's womb is not enough to make you human. People who are full of hate and anger against their oppressors or who only see Us versus Them can make a rebellion but not a revolution. The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor. Therefore, any group that achieves power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values. — Grace Lee Boggs

Without deep work on yourself, how will you avoid re-creating your own internalized oppression in all that you do? — Charles Eisenstein