The Four "I"s Of Oppression

 After reading and watching The Four I's of Oppression with Luna Malbroux, I gained a deeper understanding of these different levels and types of oppression. The four "I"s discussed in both the text and the video were ideological, internalized, interpersonal, and institutional oppression.

Ideological: To my understanding of these sources, Ideologies are society-built, rooted in culture, and passed down through generations. Ideologies tend to be the safe option or in-the-box thinking if you may. It is ideas and stereotypes that have been passed down and created to be the norm, and if you were to go against them or think differently you get scrutinized and looked down upon which can be very harmful and leads to oppression of those with different ideologies that may not be widely accepted.

Internalized: Internalized oppression comes from not fitting in ideologically or stereotypically with everyone else. When the idea of what is viewed as highly or worthy does not fit in with someone's characteristics, it often leads to "false supremacy or false deficiency within themselves in relation to others". These feelings lead them to think that the dominant group is simply better than them to the point that they'd choose them over themselves or someone like themselves. When people have this internalized oppression they try to compensate by overachieving in other areas in hopes of some approval, praise, or even some type of equality with the more dominant group because they don't see themselves as worthy or likable as them. Overachieving can be detrimental to someone's self-esteem and mental health because it means that they are finding their worth through an extrinsic motivation rather than an intrinsic one.

Interpersonal: This oppression ranges from thoughtless, impulsive comments to acts of violence, similar to Ideological oppression. What this does is normalize these biased behaviors and violence when expressed among groups with the same bias and beliefs. This is kind of like an unspoken kind of oppression/segregation. The people doing it might not be intentionally excluding others but the people being excluded see that they are not welcome and are left feeling "diminished, exploited, attacked, and dehumanized".

Institutional: Institutional oppression generally consists of larger communities of people like schools, neighborhoods, laws, etc. An example of this is the school funding system. Schools that are in more white dominant communities tend to have better resources and funding as opposed to schools in a mainly POC community.