"The Scourge of Internalized Oppression" (The flip side of racial, class, & gender oppression)

Stanton-Salazar B. Biddle (Ed.), Social class, poverty, & education.

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Stanton-Salazar, R. D. (2001). Defensive network orientations as internalized oppression:

How schools mediate the influence of social class on adolescent development. In B.

Biddle (Ed.), Social class, poverty, & education. (Missouri Symposium on Research and

Educational Policy) Vol. 3. New York: Routlege-Falmer.

The Scourge of Internalized Oppression [excerpt from chapter]

Across western capitalist societies, social oppression inevitably creates distress in

subordinated people, usually beginning in childhood with conditions of material

deprivation, distressed and overburdened parents, problem-plagued communities, resource-

poor schools, and systematic invalidating messages by mainstream institutions (i.e., the

media, the school, the police and penal system). Two socialization mechanisms operate to

turn repeated distressful experiences into chronic thought and behavior patterns (Aguilar,

1995). The first has to do with the hidden injuries of class, race, and gender (Sennett and

Cobb, 1972). The second has to do with the unavailability of institutional means to enable

young people and adults to interrogate how systemic forces wreck havoc on young people’s

emotional and intellectual development (Freire, 1972; 1973; Giroux, 1988). These two

mechanisms combine to define the nature of what is called “internalized oppression.”

The process begins with regular or systematic insults to young people’s fragile inner

selves, creating emotional distress and injury. Developmental psychologists tell us that the

human mind and body is normally able to recover from such insults through emotional

discharge (e.g., crying, expressing anger or outrage) (Miller, 1997). Social oppression

(classism, racism, and patriarchy), however, systematically situates children and young

people in settings and relationships which are perceived unsafe or threatening or

unwelcoming of emotional discharge. As a result, such discharge is blocked, with the

resultant feelings suppressed, then eventually repressed. Ego defenses are then built to

protect the self. Ego defenses, however, are notoriously unreliable. Subsequent hurts

stimulate previous injuries, while emotional discharge is again blocked. This cycle leads to

distress patterns which become manifest is many ways; in the absence of mediation via


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culturally-healing practices (e.g., ethnic-based rituals, family social support, religious

ceremonies, time-honored cultural mythologies), distress patterns emerge as forms of

alienation (rage, fear and distrust, normlessness, hopelessness, social estrangement, prejudice

and bigotry). Lipsky (1987) states that more often than not, distress patterns among

oppressed people get played out in the only two places deemed “safe” to do so.

First, upon members of our own group--particularly upon those over whom we have

some degree of power or control, our children. Second, upon ourselves through all

manner of self-invalidation, self-doubt, isolation, fear, feelings of powerlessness and

despair (Lipsky, 1987, p. 1).

The second mechanism of internalized oppression has to do with the unavailability of

cultural or institutional practices oriented toward illuminating how group members have

played host to the system, and thus have unwittingly aided in regulating their own

oppression (Friere, 1972; 1973). This structured unavailability also includes those

dialogic practices which allow group members to identify and reinforce those cultural

forms that have served historically to foster resiliency and positive meaning in the

community (Giroux, 1988).

These distress patterns also become manifest in young people’s developing network

orientation, motivating some to avoid, reject, or subvert various relationships within the

domains of family and school. The adaptive responses of a growing segment of inner-city

minority youth is a case deserving particular attention. Many of these youth exhibit a social

character which patently rejects the apparent accommodation and conformity of immigrants,

while adopting the most excessive aspects of individualism, sustained only by a highly

adapted, defensive, and peer-focused communalism (Vigil, 1988).

Key features of this collective network orientation include a degree of mistrust or

wariness, born of social conditions within the family and community that foster competition

for scarce resources. Thrust into such situations, “trust is not simply a given, but something


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to be calculated” (Sánchez-Jankowski, 1991, p. 24). Persistent calculations and wariness,

however, usually leads to self-reliance, a personality characteristic thoroughly romanticized

in the media as a core American value, but which fades into a perverted fantasy in the face of

sociological evidence showing middle-class folk as deeply embedded in resource-rich

networks and relationships (Fischer, 1982; Warren, 1981). Self-reliance leads inevitably to

social isolation, an emotional and social detachment from those within the family,

community, and school who are capable of providing valuable forms of social and

institutional support. Mistrust, self-reliance, and social isolation do not leave open many

possibilities for pro-social coping strategies, or for social integration within key institutional

arenas, such as the school.


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Defensive Network Orientations as Internalized Oppression:

How Schools Mediate the Influence of Social Class on Adolescent Development

By

Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar Department of Sociology

University of California, San Diego

MISSOURI SYMPOSIUM ON RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY:

SOCIAL CLASS, POVERTY, AND EDUCATION

February 17-18, 1998 TO APPEAR IN: Social Class, Poverty, & Education. Edited by Bruce Biddle. Missouri Symposium on Research and Educational Policy, Vol. 3. New York: Garland.

March 29, 1998 Stanton-Salazar, R. D. (2001). Defensive network orientations as internalized oppression:

How schools mediate the influence of social class on adolescent development. In B.


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Biddle (Ed.), Social class, poverty, & education. (Missouri Symposium on Research and

Educational Policy) Vol. 3. New York: Routlege-Falmer.

Outline of Chapter

TOWARD A NETWORK-ANALYTIC MODEL OF MINORITY YOUTH SOCIALIZATION Theories of Socialization and The Design of Educational Interventions Tales of My Expedition THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NETWORK ORIENTATIONS IN MINORITY YOUTH DEVELOPMENT Networks as Conduits of Class and Racial Privilege and Oppression Network and Help-Seeking Orientations and Child Development Institutional Influences on Network and Help-seeking Orientations The Scourge of Internalized Oppression The Importance of School Personnel in the Socialization of Working-class Youth IMPLICATIONS FOR RADICAL EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTION Concludingcomments.

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"The Scourge of Internalized Oppression" (The flip side of racial, class, & gender oppression)