Oppressed Groups Research Articles

Antisemitism: Social work’s silence is deafening

ABSTRACT Social work’s core values demand that it challenges social injustice and oppression. Antisemitism is one of the oldest oppressions and one that continues to flourish. However, it remains ignored by the profession both in education and practice. In the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, the most deadly massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, which included the abduction of 250 hostages, the murder of more than 1200 civilians, and the rape and mutilation of numerous Israeli women, social work has remained silent. Jewish social workers are outraged and disappointed in this silence as it permits ancient antisemitic stereotypes and myths to flourish. To redeem itself, the profession must recognize antisemitism, its many forms, and its impact. As history shows, antisemitism is not limited, it is a virus that spreads to other groups viewed as threats to the status quo. Ignoring it permits it to flourish. The silence of the profession is deafening to all.

The Moral Obligation to Resist Complacency about One’s Own Oppression

ABSTRACT While philosophers have highlighted important reasons to resist one’s own oppression, they tend to overlook the phenomenon of complacency about one’s own oppression. This article addresses this gap by arguing that some oppressed agents are obligated to resist complacency about their own oppression because failing to do so would significantly harm themselves and others. Complacent members of oppressed groups fail to resist meaningfully, are self-satisfied, and are epistemically culpable. I contend that focusing on the obligation to combat complacency is useful for at least two reasons. First, complacency about one’s own oppression is a distinctive phenomenon that warrants separate philosophical attention. Second, focusing on the obligation to resist complacency helps analyze an undertheorized group of oppressed agents by challenging the binary understanding of power prevalent in the literature on the duty to resist, thereby sharpening philosophical accounts of resistance and filling a gap in a prominent well-being-based theory of resistance.

Decolonizing Disability Studies: Identities, Epistemologies and Global South Perspectives

This research paper explores the concept of decolonizing disability studies as a critical and transformative approach that challenges the Eurocentric presumptions that currently dominate the field. Disability studies as traditionally constituted often perpetuates a colonial epistemology by universalizing Western conceptions of disability and neglecting other cultural, historical, and geopolitical contexts. This study explores the connections between colonialism, disability, and systemic inequalities in order to advance an inclusive, pluralistic paradigm that gives voice to oppressed groups and indigenous knowledge systems. The study looks at how colonial legacies have shaped global perceptions of disability, especially in the Global South, where ableist beliefs are deeply embedded in policy, healthcare, and education. The imposition of Western biological ideas of disability, which often overlook indigenous and local interpretations with deep social and spiritual roots, is contested. By emphasizing decolonial theory, the study emphasizes the significance of opposing these hegemonic frameworks and advancing a more nuanced understanding of disability as a lived experience influenced by intersecting identities such as race, class, gender, and geography. This study employs an interdisciplinary technique, drawing on concepts from critical disability studies, postcolonial philosophy, and indigenous scholarship. It employs case studies from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to illustrate the diversity of disability experiences and the resilience of regional narratives that resist colonial and ableist conceptions. Through five case studies, the paper demonstrates how community-led initiatives and indigenous knowledge can direct more egalitarian and context-sensitive approaches in disability research, policy, and activism. The study also argues for a shift in thinking from one that sees disability as a weakness to one that respects and acknowledges the agency, creativity, and achievements of individuals with disabilities in their unique cultural settings. The study also makes the case for a change in perspective from one that views disability as a deficit to one that values and honours the agency, inventiveness, and accomplishments of people with disabilities within their cultural contexts. By appreciating different epistemologies and collaborating on knowledge production with academics and activists from the Global South, it advocates for the decentring of Western academia.

Reverse hate speech, pragmatics, and the authority problem

Applying speech act theory to the phenomenon of hate speech, some philosophers seek to explain how even ordinary people can obtain the capacity, power, or authority to oppress, subordinate, or marginalise the targets of their verbal attacks. Such explanations are answers to what is called the authority problem. However, hitherto these philosophers have focused exclusively on standard examples of racist speech in which members of historically oppressor groups verbally attack members of oppressed groups. In this paper, I address the (or an) authority problem in relation to examples of reverse hate speech, where members of historically oppressed groups verbally attack members of oppressor groups. I critically examine two conventional answers to the authority problem: the first is that even ordinary people can successfully perform prototypical hate speech acts by virtue of being participants in norm-governed social practices of racism; the second is that such people can do so by virtue of the silence of bystanders granting them licensed authority. I argue these conventional answers have lesser explanatory heft as applied to examples of reverse hate speech. I then introduce and defend a third answer to the authority problem, which I believe can adequately account for examples of both standard and reverse hate speech, namely the possession of informal social authority.

Black Rage, White Gaze: How Can Black Lives, Historically Reified, Have ‘Room to Breathe’ in Contemporary Psychoanalysis?

AbstractThe 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests were a stark reminder of the reality of problematic ‘race’ relations. This paper, originally conceived in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder with his final words ‘I can't breathe!’, examines the psychoanalysis of anti‐black racism as a contemporary problem to address. This raises important epistemological questions about the forms of knowledge that get produced given the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and coloniality. Frantz Fanon unpacked the impact of racial violence and the white gaze as one of alienation, nonbeing and Black Rage in White Skin, Black Masks. This paper makes use of Fanon's 1952 thesis and clinical vignettes from analysts of colour in relation to ‘race’ as well as secondary literature on psychoanalysis and postcoloniality inviting the reader to appreciate Black Rage as a legitimate and constructive affect. I submit two ‘anchors’ for psychoanalysis to consider in theory and in practice for the birth of a physical and psychic ‘room to breathe’, a place for the black individual to exist with more psychological sovereignty: (1) an extension of Melanie Klein's depressive position and (2) an extension of the concept of mourning, as crucial intrapsychic processes for black lives to matter. The argument advanced is that, due to the extraordinary historical, social and political circumstance placed on black people as a racially oppressed group, the trauma of racism is one of alienation to a zone of nonbeing, a ‘space’ which, incidentally, offers radical hope in the form of Black Rage. Psychoanalysis is adequately positioned to acknowledge Black Rage as a powerful affect and civic tool, and this may be thought about through intrapsychic processes originating in classical psychoanalytic theory as well as Kleinian object relations, principally the concepts of mourning and depressive awareness, which considered together liberate aspects of therapeutic work.

ON LITERATURE AND ECOFEMINISM

Sarah Orne Jewett is an American writer of the Nineteenth Century and is associated with American Realism. One of her most known works is the short story “A white heron”, published in 1886, which is about the relation of a girl and a hunter who are in search of a white heron. Given this context, I intend, in this essay, to analyze the literary narrative through the lens of ecofeminism. This theoretical perspective tries to interwoven the oppression of women, and other oppressed groups such as children, poor people, black people, and traditional people, and the exploitation of nature. To do so, this work undertakes an analytical path considering the resizing of the fictional figure towards its relation to nature represented in the diegesis. The theoretical framework is found, mainly, in Jytte Nhanege (2011), Chen Ling (2014), and Laila Fariha Zein and Adib Rifqi Setiawan (2017). Therefore, I realize that the relation erected between character and nature points out power relations and construction of hierarchies symbolizing oppression of women and destruction of nature by men.

"When you live in a colony… every act counts": Exploring engagement in and perceptions of diverse anti-colonial resistance strategies in Puerto Rico.

While social psychology has contributed much to our understanding of collective action, other forms of resistance are understudied. However, in contexts of long-standing oppression-such as ongoing colonialism-and past repression of liberation struggles, other resistance strategies are important considering the constraints on overt, collective action in such contexts. This paper reports findings from an interview study in Puerto Rico (N = 22) exploring anti-colonial resistance. We analysed participants' own resistance, future preferred strategies, and descriptive norms of other ingroup members' resistance. Through thematic analysis, we identified six distinct forms of anti-colonial resistance. Notably, none of the participants reported participating in collective action. Instead, participants engaged in different forms of symbolic everyday resistance to preserve a positive, distinct cultural identity, and raise critical consciousness of the group's oppression. Additionally, more tangible resistance strategies included staying on the land and building independent economies. Overall, this study illustrates the importance of considering a more comprehensive set of resistance strategies in contexts of long-standing colonial oppression to recognize oppressed groups' agency and provide a better understanding of how people undermine destructive power.

Geopolitics of Inter-subaltern Colonialism and Gender: Challenging Methodological Dualism through the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Journey from Kurdistan to Iran

By challenging postcolonial theory's “methodological dualism,” this article explores non-Western intersocietal encounters and interactions that facilitated the vanguard role of the Kurdish region of Iran (Rojhelat) in the country's “woman, life, freedom” revolutionary movement. The neglect of inter-subaltern interactions within the framework of methodological dualism has rendered it incapable of explaining the agential entanglement of “inter-subaltern colonialism” and gender in the non-Western nation-building process and its subsequent impact on the affected groups. Addressing this limitation, the author argues that Rojhelat's vanguard position arises from the strategic deployment of patriarchal gender norms in Iran's nation-building process characterized by “inter-subaltern colonialism” before and after the 1979 revolution. Anti-patriarchal tendencies within the left faction of the Kurdish national movement in Rojhelat emerged in response to this context, rendering it receptive to the slogan “woman, life, freedom,” which originally emerged through the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey and Syria. Furthermore, the centrality of gender in the Islamic Republic of Iran's exceptionalist geopolitical discourses has made the slogan a powerful tool for expressing opposition to the state and mobilizing multiple oppressed groups.

In between jockeying and resisting proximities to whiteness: the challenges and promises of cross-racial solidarity

ABSTRACT This paper examines how white supremacy structures relations between colonized groups within contemporary spaces because the structures and allocations of power are inherently constructed as a process of jockeying for power based on proximity and mimicry of whiteness. This results in battles amongst oppressed groups for increased power to secure a space for the self by impressing the white power structure. These battles are waged on the internal front as ingroup dynamics based on shadeism and nationality, and externally between groups such as the evidence of anti-Black racism in South Asian communities and the antipathy towards South Asians in Black communities. Following a historical analysis of the relations between Black and South Asian communities, the authors, examine the nuances, complexities, and impacts of cross-racial violence in schooling within and across Black and South Asian communities in Toronto, Canada. This paper frames communal networks as a possibility for cross-racial solidarities.

Neurodivergent Spatialities: A Geographical Reading of Recent Empirical Work in Neurodiversity Studies

Neurodivergent people often feel they don’t belong. This is not just an emotional response to neurotypical norms, but a matter of “misfit” embodiment in particular places (Garland-Thomson, 2011). Recent empirical research adopting a neurodiversity critique is beginning to examine neurodivergent spatialities in increasingly substantive ways. Often space is a static container for the discourses and practices that shape neurodivergent people’s lives. Unmarked whiteness often accompanies this approach to space. However, space becomes a much more active presence when examining the experiences of racialized neurodivergent people. Strategies of spatial containment have long been central to regulating racialized and other oppressed groups. However, “container-space” on its own is inadequate for understanding the different risks and outcomes that different neurodivergent individuals face, especially when exhibiting neurodivergent comportment and emotions. Other work builds on these critical insights by seeking to affirm neurodivergent ways of relating to the world. Here, often borrowing from ideas of queer and crip time, scholars show how space can shape how people are continually becoming as embodied subjects over time. This scholarship invites us to ask how specifically neurodivergent forms of agency might emerge from the mutual relationship between embodiment, time and space. Deeper engagement with material space through intersectional thinking and more robust attention to space when exploring alternative temporalities are needed not only to understand how neurodivergent people can be misfits, but also how they may thrive.

The Black Lives Matter Movement, Jewish Allies, and the Long Legacy of Black Anti-Zionism

Abstract: From the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, massive numbers of Jews, committed to resuming the Black-Jewish coalition of the civil rights era, became its avid allies. They failed to recognize that this alliance, which foundered and was sundered by the late 1970s, had increasingly been replaced by Blacks' identification with "their Brown Palestinian siblings," which rendered the conflict with Israel in stark racial terms. After the Six Day War, Black militants promoted a narrative that replaced Jews as a fellow oppressed group with Jews as iniquitous Zionists, who had established an illegitimate settler-colonial state that ethnically cleansed and victimized indigenous people of color—a narrative upon which their successors in the BLM movement drew heavily. With the rise of the BLM movement, the Black-Palestinian alliance was solidified—their wide divide on issues of race, gender, and homosexuality overridden by their shared anti-Zionism. In 2016, when the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a constituent partner of the BLM umbrella organization, issued a policy platform identifying Israel as "an apartheid state," committing "genocide against the Palestinian people," leading Jewish organizations appeared confounded and dismissed these views as a minority position. Spokespersons of secular and religious Jewish associations condemned what they labeled BLM's "anti-Israel rhetoric," which they insisted was "totally unrelated" to the movement's "social justice work." They appeared to be unaware that far from mere "rhetoric," the denigration and delegitimization of the Jewish state had long been at or near the core of the anti-racist ideology propounded by the Black militants revered by BLM leaders and activists. Thus, in 2020, organizations allegedly "representing over half of Jewish people in America" published a statement that endorsed the BLM movement "unequivocally," while several of the signatories released additional statements condemning those Jews who had rejected the movement once it posted the policy platform. The Jewish community fractured over the issue of Black antisemitism, but unlike in earlier periods, far more Jews, identifying as "progressives," continued to support a movement whose leaders and activists espoused or tolerated antisemitism, albeit lightly cloaked in anti-Zionist garb.

Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you: Reappropriation, identity change, and collective action

AbstractReappropriation has been discussed as an identity management strategy as a means to reevaluate oneself in a context that will not allow for large‐scale social change. There are, however, numerous examples of reappropriation of stigmatizing labels as connected to political movements. This research examines whether reappropriation of stigmatizing labels can function as a precursor to collective action. In Study 1, we conducted semi‐structured interviews on the reappropriation of çapulcu identity with 20 Gezi Park protesters in Turkey. Interviews focused on how they recall the reappropriation of the word to have started, how they gave subsequent meaning, and how çapulcu identity predicted their protest participation and their broader politicization during and after the protests. In Study 2, we conducted a cross‐sectional survey on the reappropriation of fat identity by collecting data from fat liberation and body positivity activists in North America (n = 479). Reflexive thematic analysis (Study 1) and structural equation modeling (Study 2) showed that reappropriation of stigmatizing labels among activists is associated with a greater willingness to participate in collective action through increased agency, empowerment, and identity change. Findings provide important insights on identity management strategies and social change, and open new avenues to discuss reappropriation as a possible political strategy that might mobilize oppressed groups.

The feminization of freedom: An analysis of love, happiness and freedom from the perspective of childfree, never-married single women of color

This article addresses singleness as a state of being and not a transition for childfree, never-married single women of color. As the characterization of adult romantic relationships has evolved, the meaning of singleness has also gone through a transformation. My research applies the theoretical framework of feminist standpoint theory through an intersectional lens to explain how women of color experience love and relationships in a non-traditional way and how they create a singular corridor that allows them to exist on the boundaries of heteronormative marriage and romantic love. I examine the research question: How do childfree, never-married single women of color experience and feel about romantic love, singleness, sex, and attachments in society? My study utilized a qualitative research methodology with an inductive inquiry approach. I conducted forty semi-structured interviews with women between 36 and 61. I argue that these women have a unique positionality in society. They are women who have remained free from the heteronormative obligations to a husband or children, and they are also women who have not had the privileges of some of their white counterparts. Therefore, they have a group-based experience and knowledge rooted in group oppression.

The epistemic power of the police

This article uses movements against police brutality as a starting point to rethink our theorizations of police power, asking how the police maintain their dominance over oppressed groups, and what it takes to challenge it. I argue that an important, but undertheorized dimension of police power is epistemic power, the ability to control what is known and what remains unknown about policing practices. Epistemic power derives from (1) the police's control over the production and non-production of data about crime and policing; (2) the assumption that police officers are more credible than their targets; and (3) their privileged access to the media. Using France as a case study, I show how the police draw on epistemic power to produce ‘truth’ and manufacture ignorance about their practices, and I examine activist strategies to challenge and disrupt this power.

Dalit Feminism: Historical Context And Impact

Dalit feminism aims to dismantle the prevailing narratives that uphold their oppression by empowering Dalit women to express their agency and reclaim their stories. Notwithstanding casteist violence and persecution, Dalit women have always been important voices for their rights and dignity. Prominent individuals such as Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule, and Ramabai Ambedkar have played a pivotal role in the anticaste and anti-untouchability campaigns in India, championing the cause of women's empowerment and education rights. Organizations like the Dalit Mahila Samiti and the All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM) sought to address problems including domestic abuse, healthcare access, and sexual exploitation of Dalit women in the 20th century. Dalit feminism also criticizes mainstream feminism for failing to represent the experiences of women from lower castes and for being dominated by upper-class viewpoints. It aims to elevate Dalit women in the feminist conversation and promotes unity with other oppressed groups, such as LGBTQIA+ people and males of lower castes.

Similarities Across Difference: Consequences of Intersectional Sexual Stereotypes for Black and Latinx Women and Men in the United States

Complexity in the structure of power relations is a fruitful site of analysis that an intersectional framework brings to bear in articulating radical Black feminisms. The psychological literature utilizing an intersectional approach to study stereotyping has illuminated the importance of moving beyond a single-identity or single-axis lens. For instance, there is burgeoning literature showing that there are unique social categorizations and perceptions that vary by combinations of multiple group memberships (e.g., race and gender together). Further, an intersectional approach also draws attention to similarities and connections across different groups with unique relationships to systems of power and oppression. Focusing on these areas of similarities across difference provides insight into contexts that reinforce social inequality and are powerful avenues for building collective power through coalitions to address inequity. Therefore, the current investigation sought to address how Black and Latinx people in New York City discuss these sites of similarities and differences in power and privilege as they relate to their understanding of sexual stereotypes and their consequences in their everyday lives. We conducted 11 focus groups with 75 participants. Using thematic analysis, we identified four major themes highlighting shared and distinct stereotype-based experiences, including microaggressions and discrimination, double standards, interpersonal relationships, and emotional and behavioral responses. Beyond illuminating harmful consequences of sexual stereotypes, findings underscore the radical potential for achieving collective liberation by amplifying oppressed groups’ commonalities and differences simultaneously.

"Lacking Members of Play": Sexual/Textual Politics in J. M. Coetzee's Foe

Abstract: This essay considers the divide between two camps of critics responding to the use and potential abuse of a white woman narrator in J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) and finds within the novel a critique of contemporaneous feminist discourses. I identify a rhetoric of rape deployed by the novel's protagonist, Susan, against the mute ex-slave, Friday, and consider its effect on Susan's ability to mediate between oppressed and dominant groups, represented by Friday and the author—(De)Foe—respectively. Ultimately, I argue that Susan's curiously masculine sense of desire complicates the charge that Coetzee is simply appropriating the voice of a woman, finding instead that he utilises Susan's attempted penetration into Friday's silence to demonstrate the faults of a second-wave feminism that exploits various categories of otherness.

Towards an Abolitionist Concept of Beauty: The Aesthetics of Counter-Communities

Abstract: Many oppressed groups describe their forms of life in aesthetic categories. This article explores the implicit conception of beauty and the shared characteristics of counter-communal aesthetic practices. It reconstructs the hegemonic conception of beauty via a reading of Schiller and explores two exemplary discourses on the beauty of counter-communities: Peter Weiss' reflections on the aesthetics of resistance and Saidiya Hartman's description of Black fugitive aesthetics. What both examples share is that they locate beauty not in harmony, but in conflict and struggle. They lay the foundation for an aesthetic standpoint theory: counter-communities are economically, politically and culturally marginalized, but they are more beautiful than dominant forms of life.

Epistemic Oppression and Affective Exclusion

Epistemic oppression is the systematic exclusion of oppressed groups from knowledge-making practices. One of the goals of feminist epistemology is to understand the nature of the barriers preventing oppressed individuals from realising their epistemic agency and contributing to knowledge production. Feminist epistemologists have taken monumental strides in theorising the different forms of exclusions that constitute epistemic oppression (e.g., Fricker 2007; Dotson 2014; Bailey 2014). But more needs to be done by way of understanding what makes an oppressive epistemic landscape resilient and resistant to change. In this paper, I develop a pragmatist account of the affective mechanisms in place that protect the epistemic landscape from critical reflection and produce what I refer to as affective exclusion. I argue that, since the mechanism that protects the epistemic landscape from critical reflection is affective by nature, we cannot reason ourselves out of affective exclusion. Instead, I propose that, although they often prevent us from realising our epistemic agency, our co-occurring emotions and feelings, such as grief, anxiety, and other epistemic feelings, can be catalysts for reflection about the skewed nature of the epistemic landscape. I conclude with a discussion of the role that narrative fiction might play in helping us resist affective exclusion and ending epistemic oppression.

Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Kaptula la Marx as a site of cold war contestation and communitas making

This article analyzes Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Kiswahili play Kaptula la Marx, examining its explicit engagement with Cold War politics, ideologies, and aesthetics. Kezilahabi blends the satirical and revolutionary, making the play a site for Cold War contestations and community-building. It is a work of postcolonial disillusionment but also a call to arms. By focusing on the portrayal of the African dictator, particularly his ill-fitting clothes as symbols of power, Kezilahabi satirizes and undermines the dictator’s authority. The play’s rich Cold War references reveal Kezilahabi’s global visions, addressing African politics’ entanglement in the global Cold War and a growing North/South divide. Additionally, the play draws on radical theater traditions, featuring a revolutionary leader figure and interactive elements with the audience that inspire oppressed groups to unite for change.