Hello everyone...as I have been pondering the words of Derald, Michael and Anthony, I thought that I might add to this conversation if I shared my thoughts on the concept of "unintentional oppression."  Unintentional racism is one form of this type of oppression, in my view. I think we need to look into ways to talk about the commonalities of social injustice in society. I hope the following is helpful in this conversation. Although this concept might currently be slightly misnamed, the following are some of my thoughts on the matter.

 

Unintentional oppression exists in regard to many arenas in everywhere there is a dominant culture. In oppression, there are two key forms of players, the oppressors and the oppressed. For the purposes of this book, we will use the terms targets and agents of oppression. Targets are members of social identity groups that are disenfranchised, exploited, marginalized, victimized, and made powerless in a variety of ways by oppressors and the oppressors’ systems and institutions (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 1997; Young, 1990). Targets are subject to exploitation and containment, maintained in situations that keep their choices and movement restricted and limited. They are often seen as replaceable and expendable and lumped into narrowly defined roles of their prescribed groups where they exist virtually devoid of individual identities.  Agents, on the other hand, are affiliates of dominant social groups privileged from birth and/or attainment, who deliberately or unwittingly exploit and gain unfair advantage over members of target groups (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 1997).

 

Targets and agents take a number of forms in society. Each target is generally matched with a specific agent. This, of course, does not mean that any given individual can be only one version of a target. As we have mentioned before, we all have multiple identities, wherein we can be more than one form of a target, more than one form of an agent, as well as both a target and an agent. The following chart, adapted from the work of Adams, Bell, & Griffin (1997, p. 20), illuminates the various roles we can play in society.

 

	Agents	Targets
Race and Ethnicity	Whites	People of Color
Gender	Boys & Men	Girls & Women
Sexual Orientation	Heterosexuals	Gay men, Lesbians, & Bisexuals
Sex	Males & Females	Intersex individuals
Religion	Christians	Jews, Muslims, and Other Religious Minorities
Physical/ Psychological/ Developmental Disability	Able persons	Disabled persons
Class	Middle Class	Poor & Working Class
Age	Middle Age/Adult	Young & Elderly

 

With Respect,

        Hugh Crethar

 

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Hugh C. Crethar, Ph.D.

University Professor

Governors State University

Division of Psychology & Counseling

College of Education

University Park, IL 60466-0975

 

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