Internalized oppression: if we can’t see that it’s systemic, we have no choice but to believe it’s personal

Of all the pieces I’ve read about Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, this article by Elie Mystal hit particularly hard: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Long Pause Explained Racism and Sexism in America.

The article nails so much, from describing Ted Cruz as “the office manager who never learned how to use PowerPoint” to “the small-minded and condescending white people arrayed against her” on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the experience of watching her being put through “crucible of white approval.”

Oooof.

She ends up reflecting at the end of the article on Judge Jackson’s “long pause” and the all too familiar calculation of risk and necessity for restraint that she had to put into play, in stark comparison to Kavanaugh’s hearings just a few years earlier.

“That pause, that moment, that clear difference in the range of human possibilities afforded to Jackson and Kavanaugh—that’s racism, folks. That’s sexism. That silence was a clearer definition of the thing than I could give in a thousand words. I can’t prove it, but I saw it. And Jackson saw it. And Booker saw it. And Padilla saw it. And I can only hope that people of good faith and decency saw it too.

Because if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.”

The thing is, we can’t always see it, even when it is happening to us.

I’ve been thinking lately about the BIPOC folks and also white women and others who don’t align with power and privilege who earnestly declare they’ve never been treated differently in their lives or at least in their careers.

I get not wanting to “be a victim.” And I don’t like to question people’s experiences.

But when you can’t see that how you’re treated has a systemic/cultural component, the only conclusion left is that it’s personal - which means that either you deserve the way you were treated poorly, or the ways you’ve had to work harder are invisible to you.

I would have to say that for most of my life, I didn’t think I was treated much differently either. Sure, there were racial slurs and other microaggressions, but I mostly assumed everyone was treated the same way I was, especially professionally. It wasn’t until the 2016 campaign and election that I looked around at how my white counterparts were reacting and realized, wow, I have lived amongst and alongside these people but what I have experienced is very different. There was something about the way liberal white progressives were horrified that someone so racist and sexist as Donald Trump could be elected President when I had feared it all along. I thought that everyone knew that racism was alive and well while at the same time was paradoxically not aware of how much it had affected me. My relative privilege, both racial and socio-economic, and my relative professional success had made it hard to see.

But what I’ve come to realize is that sometimes it's not so much about how I'm treated but how others are treated preferentially in a way that I'm not. There's an ease of access that privilege provides and the absence of it can be hard to identify. It’s hard to identify that something is missing until you know that others have it.

An example I often think about is how I was once offered a job and when I was asked why, I was told amongst other reasons, "because you're not shy." That made me feel good at the time - I was proud of that.

Three years later it suddenly came to me - would they ever have said that to a white man?

The assumption when I walk into a room is that I'm shy.

And yeah, sometimes it can work to my advantage when I break that stereotype, but how else is it impacting me that I'm not even aware of?

Sometimes when BIPOC folks and others who don’t align with power and privilege say they’ve never felt they’ve been treated differently, it’s because they’re in spaces where it’s not safe for them to say otherwise, for fear of being viewed as “ungrateful” or triggering a defensive reaction that causes retaliation. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve had staff say one thing in a meeting but privately message us or tell us the real and very different story - it’s heartbreaking... and sometimes very necessary.

Other times it’s in a private space, and the internalized oppression is also heartbreaking. I remember weeping at my desk in 2016 when I realized I had long denied my race even to myself in order to be safe and convince myself I wasn’t at any disadvantage.

At what cost though?

Unpacking all of this is not easy - as a friend of mine responded when I shared a shorter version of this on Facebook, it can be like experiencing decades of trauma all at once.

It is not a process to be taken lightly, without tools, support and community.

Ultimately I have found it healing and freeing to confront the truth, process it through my entire body, and to be able to better see things for what they are, and to slowly undo the oppression I have internalized.

And that I’ve created a career for myself where I can be truly seen and valued for who I am, not all the time, and not with everyone, but for much more of the time, it is hard to imagine going back.

Banner photo by Jackie Hope on Unsplash

Internalized oppression: if we can’t see that it’s systemic, we have no choice but to believe it’s personal

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