Blog Post #2: The 4 I's of Oppression

 Terms like  “racism”, “ableism”, “ageism”, “sexism” reference prejudice against social groups, and we can all think of examples of this, but something that I thought was really interesting about this piece and Luna Malbroux’s video, The 4 I’s of Oppression, is that it explains HOW these ideologies are “able to perpetuate in society and over time”, how these pillars are interrelated to work as a system and be systemic injustices.  “Oppression manifests itself in four overlapping and interdependent ways; individually as internalized oppression; socially as interpersonal oppression; it is reinforced through institutional oppression; and perpetuates across time and space as ideological oppression”.  Malboux explains (in her explanation, she used racism as the example of prejudice) these I’s together to create a system.  

 

When looking for more information and to try to deepen my understanding of it, I came across this website, linked here, which included the graphic below.  For me, these two graphics gave me a more in-depth understanding to kind of “put it all together”. Malbroux asks viewers to think about how the “I’s”  intersect with each other, the image below, the “Interlocking 4-I Model”, illustrates how interpersonal, institutional and ideological all can create internalized oppression, “the way individuals absorb belief systems that contribute to feelings of false supremacy or false deficiency within themselves in relation to others”.     

I can think of an example of this theory with the welfare system and low-income familes.   Ideologically those in politics/leadership roles, typically wealthy and white, the “socially dominant group” have a value system that the government should help those fortunate, minority groups, the poor - which sounds altruistic and great in theory.  It seems like “common sense”.  The interpersonal component to this is that when that group addresses, or talks about the minority group, the poor, the working class, it is a “we are here to help you”, sure, it may seem kind, but it also perpetuates the idea, the feeling that they are superior and need to help those “beneath” them.  My paternal grandmother was a single mom with four children, my grandfather was not involved and my father grew up in poverty.  His family received food stamps, government assistance and he still talks about the “government cheese”.  Due to his family’s financial situation he was involved in a summer work program “for poor kids” as he puts it, working at his high school cleaning, these are the examples of the institution - sure, these things were in place to help his family, but they separated him and other students like him from the others - like Malbroux states in the video, it manifested and reinforced the ideology that low-income, broken families were different, less than.  My dad always felt like he was treated differently because of it, he was “the poor kid”, the kid without a dad, a much less common thing in those days, where he grew up.  He experienced interpersonal oppression because they were low-income, because he did not have a father around, and therefore internalized those feelings and the belief system that he was less than, resulting in a “strong drive to over-achieve in order to feel valued”.