“Internalized oppression is, in many ways, even more dangerous than an oppression at the hand of the tyrant or this external force because it is grounded in a belief. It’s one thing to be treated as less than. It’s another thing to believe it, and then kind of replicate that belief in yourself — replicate that belief in the world around you. If I don’t know who I am, if I don’t know what I’m afraid of, if I don’t know my desire is what I want, if I’m not really well acquainted with what’s happening in me, and how it relates to the systems of oppression and exploitation, I am going to mimic and mirror all of those systems in the world around me.”
Listen to best-selling author Cole Arthur Riley talk about the importance of resisting the external forces that can lead to self-hatred.
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