Oppression

"Oppressed" redirects here. For the Welsh band, see The Oppressed. For other uses, see Oppression (disambiguation).

Oppression derives from the concept of being weighted down, and is often depicted as such. Here, a political cartoon shows a Jew laboring under the metaphorical oppression of the Russian Tsar

Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium.

Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination when the injustice does not target and may not directly afflict everyone in society but instead targets or disproportionately impacts specific groups of people. No universally accepted model or terminology has yet emerged to describe oppression in its entirety, although some scholars cite evidence of different types of oppression, such as social oppression, cultural, political, religious/belief, institutional oppression, and economic oppression.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers a benchmark from which to assess both individual and structural models of oppression. The concept, popularized in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist Manifesto of 1848, is often used to justify state persecution.

Social oppression

Social oppression is the socially supported mistreatment and exploitation of a group, category, or team of people or individuals.

Institutionalized oppression

"Institutional Oppression occurs when established laws, customs, and practices systemically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups. If oppressive consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs, or Practices, the institution is oppressive whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have oppressive intentions."

Resistance

Several movements have arisen that specifically aim to oppose, analyze and counter oppression in general; examples include Liberation Theology in the Christian world, and Re-evaluation Counselling in psychotherapy.

See also

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Further reading

• Guillaumin, Colette. 1995. Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology. London: Routledge.
• Hobgood, Mary Elizabeth. 2000. Dismantling Privilege: An Ethics of Accountability. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.
• Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. 1996. The Anatomy of Prejudices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Noël, Lise. 1994. Intolerance, A General Survey. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.bany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Smith, Morgan. 2008. Why I stick it to the man, and why you should too. New York: HarperCollins Publishers
• Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge.
• Feagin, Joe R. and Hernan Vera. 1995. White Racism: The Basics. New York: Routledge.
• Pincus, Fred L. 1999 and Howard J. Ehrlich, eds. 1999. Race and Ethnic Conflict: Contending Views on Prejudice, Discrimination, and Ethnoviolence. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.
• Beck, Aaron, M.D. 1999 Prisoners Of Hate. New York: HarperCollins Publishers
• Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr, "The Gulag Archipelago," Harper and Row, 1973
• Kiernan, Ben, "The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79," Yale University Press, 1996
• Cudd, Ann E. 2006. Analyzing Oppression. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Deutsch, Morton. 2006. A Framework for Thinking about Oppression and Its Change. "Social Justice Research", Vol. 19, No.1, March 2006, pp. 7–41.
• muvirimi learnmore.the oppressor behaviour .2013 university of Zimbabwe press.