Healing the hurts...

How do you help people heal from and overcome internalized oppression?
There are several different ways that people can work together to overcome internalized oppression. Here are some steps you can take. They are first listed, and then elaborated upon one at a time.

1. Become a close friend, ally, or mentor to individuals who are struggling with internalized oppression.

2. Take pride in and celebrate culture. Learn about and celebrate your own culture, and learn about others as well. Placing your own culture in a world context can help you understand its development and value.

3. Meet in groups with people from similar backgrounds, to heal from the emotional hurts of internalized oppression.

4. Take action against injustice and oppression. Taking positive action on your own behalf is the most powerful cure for internalized, as well as external, discrimination and oppression.

5. When you notice internalized oppression operating in groups, point it out, and help the group change direction.

6. Protect young people from the effects of oppression.

1. Become a close friend, ally, or mentor to individuals who are struggling with internalized oppression.

Friendship and caring are two of the strongest weapons we have in combating internalized oppression. All the oppressions have one message in common – that certain people are not valuable. Friendship provides a strong and effective contradiction to that message. What we communicate in our relationships and commitment to one another is more powerful than the message of oppression.

We care about our friends, family members, co-workers, or other community members. It is painful to watch them treating themselves badly or failing to live up to their capabilities. We can help our friends out when we see them acting self-destructively or being passive about conditions that negatively affect them.

For example, if you befriend a young person and make a commitment to spend time with her regularly in activities that she enjoys, you can make a big difference in how that person is able to handle the injustices that she faces growing up in a tough society. If any person knows that just one person is one her side, she can manage to believe in herself, even when everyone and everything else is telling her she’s not OK.

2. Take pride in and celebrate your culture.

Being a member of cultural group can be a source of strength. Our cultures often give us our values, our sense of ourselves in history, our humor, our identities, and our world views. We depend on our cultures to provide us with a community, a reference point, a home, and a place to get our bearings and remember what is important to us.

Even the discrimination that people have experienced and endured as members of cultural groups gives them strengths. People learn to survive, stand up for themselves, be resourceful, have a sense of humor, and bounce back. People develop a sense of what long-term commitment is all about.

Taking pride in our cultures and celebrating them is essential in combating internalized oppression, because it gives us a more accurate view of our cultures than the one communicated in the media or by the society at large.

What are some ways of taking pride in our cultures?

Reading and learning more about their cultures helps people gain perspective on how hard their ancestors fought for themselves, often in the face of great odds. Organizing a study group or book club for this purpose can be especially helpful in building community around cultural pride.
Holding cultural celebrations and practicing rituals gives people a sense of hope, joy, pride, and meaning. It helps to remind people of what their cultures stand for, how rich they are, and what they've accomplished. Cultural arts celebrations can buoy people’s spirits and remind them of their strength, goodness, and creativity.
Note: Inviting people from other cultures to these events can also be useful at times. When people from the outside understand your culture, it is an important first step in developing a group of active allies who are willing to go to stand up for your group.

3. Meet in groups with people from similar backgrounds, to heal from the emotional hurts of internalized oppression.

Re-valuation Counseling has developed a model in which people of similar backgrounds meet in groups to heal from internalized oppression. In these groups people encourage each other to remember that they are good, worthy, capable, intelligent, beautiful, etc. and that others in their culture are good as well. In these groups, people take turns talking about how their cultural oppression has personally affected them while others listen.

One of the most helpful results of meeting in groups of people with similar backgrounds is that people understand that they are not alone in their experiences of oppression or in the way they feel bad about themselves. Sharing, for example, the experience of growing up around racism, anti-Semitism, or classism, helps people understand they have feelings common to others in their group. This removes the illusion that the experience is somehow inherently their problem alone – and that they are the only source of their own difficulties, rather than problems in the society at large.

Here is the format for a healing from internalized oppression group: (For more information about setting up groups to heal from internalized oppression, see Re-evaluation Counseling in the Organizations listing under “Resources” at the end of this section.)

Meet in groups of 6-10 people at a regular meeting time.
It is best to have an agreement of confidentiality.
Each group should have one main leader, but everyone should see themselves as responsible for making the group go well.
To start, each person has a turn to talk about what they appreciate about their culture/group and something that is has gone well in their lives since the group last met.
Each person has a turn each meeting to think/talk/feel while the group pays attention to them. No one interrupts the person during this time. During this turn, the person has a turn to talk about their experiences as a member of this group. It can be helpful to talk about early memories of being targeted or oppressed.
People may experience emotional feelings as they talk about these experiences. Feeling emotions is part of the healing process. Laughing, crying, trembling all help people heal from the hurts of oppression and reclaim their pride, humanity, and power.
When these groups meet over an extended period of time people build more safety to talk about important issues.
Support groups can be very helpful, but only if members ultimately turn from discussion of how they were victimized to real support for taking control of their lives and developing strategies for doing so. Good support groups can be tremendously helpful; ineffective ones can be nothing but opportunities to share bad experiences and slide deeper into helplessness. A good leader or facilitator can make all the difference. See Chapter 21, Section 2: Creating and Facilitating Peer Support Groups.



4. Take action against injustice and oppression.

When people take a stand against injustice and oppression it can be a strong antidote to internalized oppression. Taking charge of an unjust situation and setting it right goes miles in healing people from the oppression and injustice they have endured over time.

Example:

In the book The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (see Resources), Ms. Robinson talks about the sense of pride that she and others felt when determined and committed Blacks joined together for the bus boycott.

Before Monday was half gone, Negroes had made history. Never before had they united in such a manner. There was open respect and admiration in the eyes of many whites who had looked on before, dubious and amused. Even clerks in dime stores, all white, were more cordial. They were heard to add, after a purchase by a black customer, "Y'all come back and see us," which was a very unusual occurrence. The black customers held their heads higher. They felt reborn, important for the first time. A greater degree of race pride was exhibited. Many were themselves surprised at the response of the masses, and could not explain, if they had wanted to, what had changed them overnight into fearless, courageous, proud people, standing together for human dignity, civil rights, and, yes, self-respect! There was a stick-togetherness that drew them like a magnet. They showed a genuine fondness for one another. They were really free--free inside! They felt it! Acted It! Manifested it in their entire beings! They took great pride in being black.



5. When you notice internalized oppression operating in groups, point it out, and help the group change direction.

In some organizations people tend to criticize each other, get into fights, lack discipline, and undermine or attack leadership. These problems have a range of causes. Oftentimes, the cause is, to some extent, due to internalized oppression. This is especially true if all or most of members of the group or organization are from a similar cultural background. Unfortunately, the more harshly a group has been treated, the more these dynamics operate. Again, this is not the fault of the group that has been targeted. Nevertheless, in order to make a group successful, this dynamic should be recognized and turned around.

How can you tell when internalized oppression is the source of the a difficulty a group? Although there is no sure formula, you can look for some clues that might help you make an educated guess. Some questions that might provide clues:

Are people acting towards each other in ways similar to how the larger society mistreats them? For example, if the particular group is stereotyped for not being intelligent, do people act towards each other as if they were less than intelligent?
Do these problems exist throughout the organization? If the problem shows itself in many different settings, it may be more likely that it is internalized oppression that is the main difficulty, rather than a few individuals’ problems.
Be careful here. Systematic problems in the organization may signal internalized dsicrimination or oppression, or they may be indications of problems with leadership, structure, or the character of the organization itself. Many organizations that don’t involve people who’ve been discrimianted against have systemic problems. It only makes sense that many that do involve marginalized groups also do. Only if the problems seem to mirror the treatment of the group in question by the larger society should you consider that they may stem from that treatment.



Do individuals in the organization struggle with self-esteem, have difficulties in taking care of themselves, or treating themselves well in other ways?
Even if you don't know for sure if internalized oppression is the main problem, it may at least part of the difficulty. In any case, many of the following recommendations will help any group that suffers from continual arguing, criticizing, undermining, or other related problems.

What can you do when you notice or suspect internalized oppression going on in a group?

Visibly model how to treat others with respect, and set a good tone. For example, if everyone is criticizing the leader, you can point out his good qualities and accomplishments. If you lead the way in doing this, people will notice. One person can often steer the whole group by stepping outside a negative pattern.
Take some time in a meeting for people to appreciate each other and notice what the group has accomplished. When people feel discouraged about their progress, they are more prone to treat each other badly.
Point out the difficulty without blaming anyone: You can say something like, "Let's take a step back and look at how this meeting is going. Do you think if we all made an agreement to not interrupt or criticize each other, we could accomplish more?
Explain to people about what internalized oppression is, and how you see that it operates in your organization. Explain, as you see it, how people are hurting each other; and point out the similarity to how society hurts the group as a whole.
If the problem occurs in a meeting, have people break into pairs in which each person gets a turn to vent their feelings while the other person listens. Then have people come back to the business of the meeting.
Take a stand and be firm. Whenever group members are putting each other down or acting in a way that has negative consequences, you can take a principled stand against what is occurring. Your stand will set a tone that others may be inclined to follow.
Welcome new members into your group. Often groups with similar backgrounds become cliquish. They can tend to exclude new people much in the same way that their group has been excluded by the larger society. Establish a policy to welcome new members and get them into the center of the organization quickly.
Ground rules can be helpful here as well. The kinds of ground rules that are mentioned above for support groups – no interrupting, listening carefully, disagreeing with ideas rather than people, etc. – can set a tone of respect and acceptance that in itself can do a great deal to change people’s views of themselves and others.



6. Protect young people from the effects of oppression.

Internalized oppression makes its biggest impression on children, because they don't have any context for understanding the injustices of society. It is easy to personalize the negative messages that are coming at you if you don't have a framework for understanding oppression.

There are a few ways to help young people understand oppression and protect them from its effects. First, it helps to explain to children about how and why oppression works so they have a framework for understanding it. This can help a young person make sense of the mistreatment they experience or witness, rather than blaming themselves or others in their own group for it. For example, if you give African-American children a history of slavery in the U.S., they will be able to make more sense of why racism operates today.

Teach young people to be proud of who they are and of their background and culture. Equally important, teach them the value of setting and working toward goals, and of not getting discouraged when things don’t go their way. People who’ve internalized discrimination or oppression may quit when faced with difficult circumstances, seeing themselves as incapable of overcoming setbacks. If children grow up with self-respect and with the understanding that occasional setbacks are a normal part of life, to be overcome by planning and hard work, they’ll keep moving forward in both good times and bad.

We can also set up environments for our children in which they and their cultures are cherished. For example, we can make schools become multicultural institutions. Teachers and administrators should understand the importance of integrating the histories and cultures of many groups into the curriculum. School staff should understand how to treat children equitably and have high expectations of every student.


In Summary
Ordinary people are as intelligent and capable as the "experts." We have the capacity to figure out how to solve problems and transform our communities into places in which everyone has opportunities to live a full and satisfying life.

Internalized oppression holds people back, by undermining their confidence and by making it difficult for them to work together. It is painful when people limit themselves as a result of the discrimination and oppression they have experienced.

Fortunately, we can understand how internalized oppression works and what to do to overcome it. Simply understanding how it works can help people turn around some situations. Healing from and overcoming internalized discrimination and oppression will go further in making communities more effective. Undoing internalized discrimination and oppression may be a key issue for fully empowering communities so they can do the work that needs to be done.

We encourage the reproduction of this material, but ask that you credit
the Community Tool Box: http://ctb.ku.edu