Luna Malbroux’s discussion on The Four I’s of Oppression explains how oppression shows up in our everyday lives, many times without our conscious awareness of it. I found this to be an important topic in my life because of the population I work with. Blackstone Valley Prep is a charter school that is “intentionally diverse.” The sending districts we serve are Linoln, Cumberland, Pawtucket, and Central Falls. Anyone who knows anything about Rhode Island knows that those are cities with vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Ideological oppression is normalized oppression. It is what starts to shape us from before we are even born. This type of oppression is so dangerous because it is often seen as common sense or just the way the world works. Malbroux gives the example of gender differences. The usual boys don’t cry and girls should be pretty.
Internalized oppression is a belief that one group is superior over another group. In our society, that is a white dominant culture. The representation of whites in the US far outweighs any other group. Movies, TV shows, and more importantly politicians are more often white. At my school, we work hard to make sure every culture is represented. With black history month coming up we are currently doing a door decorating contest celebrating various people of color. My door is the late great Kobe Bryant.
Interpersonal oppression is when people are treated differently based on who they are. This comes from internalized oppression. It can show up in the world as an exclusion of certain groups. Malbroux talks about microaggressions as being a part of this. For me, as a gay woman, people often assume that I can handle fixing things with tools, unfortunately, they are wrong.
Institutionalized oppression is what we see socially through political issues and funding. School systems that are in poorer areas are funded less than those from high socioeconomic areas. We have a significant number of families applying to our lottery each year from the Central Falls and Pawtucket districts.
Hi Molly, I am happy to hear that you and the staff at Blackstone Valley Prep go out of your way to bridge socioeconomic gap between the students at your school. I like that you celebrate black history month, and the door decorating is a great idea! My daughter's music class explored African American musical influencers, I thought that was brilliant as so many genres of music and musical legends were in fact influenced by African American song writers from the early 20th century. It is important to positively influence these children at a young age and to teach equality because evidently, we lack it in the world we live in.
ReplyDeleteHi Molly. On reading about your school and its diversity, the school I teach in is the total opposite! The majority of students and staff are white and from middle class families. Diversity is something that I wish we had more of. I teach 2nd grade at a school in Exeter/W.Greenwich, a rural community. I've always taught Black History during the month of February. Because of time restraints and our curriculum, some of my second grade colleagues put this topic on the back burner, only teaching bits and pieces of it if they have the time. To me, this is more important than our reading curriculum. This teaches them about the wrongs of oppression, opening up their eyes to what not to do.
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