Unraveling Assumptions

A Primer for Understanding Oppression and Privilege

Karen L. Suyemoto, Roxanne A. Donovan, Grace S. Kim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780429602009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

Unraveling Assumptions: A Primer for Understanding Oppression and Privilege offers fundamental understandings of concepts and frameworks related to diversity and social justice. Aimed at university and community audiences, it offers an introductory exploration of power, privilege, and oppression as foundations of systems of inequality and examines complexities within meanings and lived experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, and social class.

After considering why it is so difficult to engage these issues, the authors explore meanings and impacts of power, privilege, and oppression as a primary lens of analysis. Subsequent chapters offer definitions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability and social class, identifying erroneous assumptions and challenging the tendency to oversimplify and decontextualize. Meanings, identities, and effects of oppression and privilege are central foci within each chapter. The book ends with a chapter examining ways that individuals may take action as allies and advocates to resist oppression. Throughout the book, Unraveling Assumptions makes connections among individual, interpersonal, and systemic levels of inequality, while focusing on relational and psychological implications for lived experience—including the reader's lived experience.

By integrating social science research with concrete examples and personal reflection, this concise, introductory level text invites the reader to consider the costs of systemic hierarchies for all people and envision possible alternatives to participating in oppressive hierarchy.

Unraveling Assumptions is a book for students and community to learn about privilege and oppression. The authors' companion book Teaching Diversity Relationally offers process-oriented guidance for educators teaching this material to successfully negotiate the inherent psychological and relational challenges.

1 Preparing for Learning about Oppression and Privilege

DOI: 10.4324/9780429059599-2

Dear Reader,

Welcome! Whatever your reason for reading our book—whether for a class you’re taking or personal interest—we’re excited you’re here. Embarking on any new journey of learning can be challenging. How challenging partly depends on the path you’re taking and your preparation. According to our students, learning about diversity¹ is not an easy path and students often feel apprehensive about this material. We understand. As psychologists, we get how it can be uncomfortable, even upsetting, to engage learning that asks you to take a critical look at how you think about yourself, others, and the world. These realities are why this first chapter focuses on preparing you for what’s to come. Specifically, we address what makes talking about diversity hard, the difficult reactions you might have to the topics explored in this book, and the psychological principles that can help you interpret and best respond to these reactions.

Our intention in writing this book is to open possibilities. We are inviting you to consider the possibility that you may have assumptions that you haven’t yet critically examined. Most people do. We seek to explore these assumptions: where they come from and why they matter. Because such explorations can bring up difficult emotions, we also invite you to pay attention to your own reactions to learning, and to consider these reactions in light of the social dynamics surrounding ideas about diversity.

At the same time, learning about diversity isn’t only about challenge. There are many rewards and opportunities for growth. The remainder of this letter is about those possibilities, about what might open for you internally and interpersonally through your learning (and afterward). We hope sharing these possibilities and the potential of diversity education brings you motivation and excitement for the learning ahead.

One possibility of learning to challenge assumptions can be expanded insight and agency (the feeling and ability to take action). We often hear things like “This is how things have always been and will always be” and “There’s nothing I can do to make a difference” from students new to the study of diversity. What you read in this book may challenge these beliefs (if you have them) by bringing understanding about the origins and perpetuation of bias, clarity as to why different groups may perceive the world differently, and, most importantly, hope around your ability to acknowledge and embrace differences while also challenging unwanted bias. This hope is especially important in our present moment when issues like racism, sexism, and heterosexism seem intractable. In this divisive environment, it’s easy to forget that you have agency to effect positive change. Even if your actions seem small, the ripples they create can extend beyond your imagining.

1 By diversity, we mean issues such as race, ethnicity, social class, sexuality, disability, and intersectionality among these that affect individual experiences, as well as access to resources and opportunities, because of the ways that these issues are related to social hierarchies of power, privilege, and oppression.

Another possibility relates to developing deeper and more authentic interpersonal connections. Humans are a social species. Like food, water, and shelter, interpersonal connection is necessary to our health and well-being. Connecting across difference, though, isn’t easy. We tend to favor those who are like us and disfavor those who aren’t. This ingroup bias means that it’s easier to see, hear, or value those who share our race, class, or nationality, for instance, and easier to misrecognize, devalue, or discriminate against those who don’t (i.e., outgroup members). At its foundation, diversity education opens the possibility of widening our circles to include those previously viewed as outgroup members. We believe this perception shift provides great opportunities for personal growth and for societal healing. Our students agree. At the end of our classes, many report a sense of connection with those who are similar to and different from them, without having to erase or ignore important differences. They also describe a deeper sense of purpose for and commitment to advancing well-being for all.

A third possibility is expanding your engagement in valued action, which is action that aligns with your values and the person you want to be. We assume that you and the rest of our readers value fairness, that you are good people who don’t want to be biased or hurt others. Bias, though, is tricky because you can hold biases and not know it, which is called implicit bias. Research in social psychology shows that implicit bias is quite common and affects our beliefs about social groups. Moreover, we may act from these hidden biases, causing unintentional harm to others. However, if we develop greater awareness, we can be more effective at enacting our intentions for equity. The learning offered throughout this book is an opportunity to make these biases visible. As a result, you may discover avenues for greater alignment between your own values and your actions.

As you start this journey of possibilities, you may want to know what lies at the end. We have no answers because diversity learning has no endpoint, no location that you arrive at where you now know all, understand all. The learning is in the journey. It’s in the understanding, the connection, the clarity you discover along the way. It is even in the struggle to understand and the process of questioning both old and new understandings. Unfortunately, we know that every reader won’t want to engage in this learning. How you approach the material matters. You may have to face questions for yourself such as, “do I persevere when obstacles or doubts arise, do I stop, do I turn back?” This chapter is about tipping the scales toward perseverance, because there is beauty in the struggle even when that beauty is hard to see.

In peace and solidarity,

Karen, Roxanne, and Grace

Why Is Talking (and Learning) about Diversity So Hard?

If you’ve ever tried to talk about diversity topics like racism or sexism or classism with someone who didn’t share your viewpoint, you already know how uncomfortable and contentious these conversations can be. More likely than not, one or both of you felt frustrated or unheard, distressed or angry. Maybe little was resolved at the end other than agreeing to disagree. You might have wondered why the other person didn’t share your perspective or why you couldn’t find common ground. How we see ourselves and the world is influenced by intersecting and oftentimes hidden factors that can support or hinder our ability to engage diversity issues. We introduce several of these factors in this section and explore them in more detail throughout the book, because knowing what might be impacting your perspective and reactions, and the reactions of others with whom you are interacting, can go a long way toward helping you choose how you’d like to show up to these conversations and engage the learning in this book.

Early Lessons That Some Topics Are Taboo

Talking about diversity in ways that emphasize distinctions among groups is so uncomfortable you were probably taught to avoid it. You’re not alone. In the United States, most of us learn early on from family, teachers, and/or others not to talk openly about our experiences with race and racism, or other kinds of diversity and “isms.” Even when we do talk about these things, it’s rarely with those we don’t know well or with those who don’t share our background. Think for a minute about your own experience, and your friends and family. How often do you talk with others about race or ethnicity? How often do you talk about gender or sexuality? Social class or disabilities? To whom do you talk about these things? Are there kinds of people with whom you are more or less likely to talk about each of these issues? We go into socialization in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3, but our point here is that engaging “taboo” topics can feel dangerous and uncomfortable because you are not used to it, and you’re challenging notions of what is and isn’t okay to talk about.

Limited Educational Preparation

Adding to the challenge of conversing about diversity is the U.S. K-12 education system which typically does not prepare students to grapple with the complications of social difference. You might have been taught about race and gender and maybe even sexuality, social class, and ability but were likely not taught as much or as in depth about these topics as you might have been, or as others were. Even when history that directly relates to social differences is addressed in K-12 education, these events are rarely connected to present day challenges. This means, for example, you probably learned about slavery without also learning about the many post-slavery policies and practices that continue to negatively affect financial security in Black communities (e.g., red-lining, job discrimination, mortgage discrimination, community displacement, gerrymandering). The oversimplification and decontextualization around social differences leave many of us under- or mis-educated about the topics covered in this book. And without the shared understanding and clear meanings as a starting point, it is no wonder that talking to each other constructively about differences is fraught with discomfort and difficulties.

Cultural Belief in Meritocracy

Learning about power, privilege, and oppression can also be difficult because it challenges widely accepted and unquestioned cultural beliefs in meritocracy and a just world. Meritocracy is the belief that success results solely or primarily from an individual’s personal skills and hard work. Meritocracy is a compelling narrative because it creates the soothing impression that you are the sole architect of your future, that where you end up in life is mostly under your control. If you believe in meritocracy and the idea of a just world, you tend to believe that people get what they deserve. So, if people are successful and have a lot of “goodies,” it is because they deserve that success. And if people don’t have success and related goodies, it is because they haven’t earned them and don’t deserve them. “Goodies” here includes many positive things such as money and resources, respect, positive assumptions and judgments from others, feelings of belonging and safety, representation in media or institutions (e.g., seeing people who are like you on TV shows or in movies, as teachers in your schools or officials in your government). It also includes the experiences related to earning the goodies, such as access to a good education or good jobs.

Under a true meritocracy, the answer to the question “who gets to have the goodies?” would be “the people who deserve the goodies.” In some cases, this might be all people (as in human rights), in other cases, this might be the people who work hard or are talented or use their skills who will get to have the goodies. Either way, the goodies are being distributed fairly, on the basis of shared entitlement and earned merit: this is what we are taught to believe, that we live in a meritocracy. However, behind the self-determinism of meritocracy is an unspoken assumption that everyone has equal opportunities to have the goodies, that we all start on a level playing field. Learning about power, privilege, and oppression challenges this assumption by calling our attention to observations of U.S. society and research in many disciplines that show the U.S. context is not a level playing field: not everyone has the same opportunities to earn the goodies, no matter how hard they try. Confronting this reality can be disorienting and raise questions about your own deservingness. However, rejecting a simple and absolute idea of meritocracy doesn’t mean that you haven’t worked hard, or that you are not deserving of your success, only that actually achieving success is not just about what you (or others) do to earn it. In sum, holding too strongly to the idea of meritocracy can undermine our ability to appreciate the limits of individual effort and the complicated ways social differences like race and gender, sexuality, class, and ability can impact life outcomes. But because the notion of meritocracy is so widespread, you may find learning about power, privilege, and oppression in this book to be challenging.

Invisible Influence of Social Hierarchies

Some students find it difficult to engage learning about power, privilege, and oppression because they feel or believe the social differences that are talked about such as race, gender, or disability, are not what is most important to them. Given all of the ways two people might differ—hair color, athletic ability, hand preference, political affiliation, and height—you might wonder why we focus this book on the social differences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social class, and ability. Why do these differences matter so much? While we provide a detailed answer in Chapter 2, the short answer for now is that race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social class, and ability all have considerable meaning and organizing power in society. Unlike other human differences like hair color and political affiliation, these categories and related statuses have outsized influence on our access to “the goodies,” as well as our self-views and worldviews. However, the emphasis within the U.S. on individual experience sometimes makes it harder for some students to see how these categories are important, particularly if they have not seemed important to your life. It might be helpful to think about it this way: would your life—your access to education, your access to healthcare, your access to financial, food, housing security, your relationships—change fundamentally if [insert difference here] were to change? If the answer is an emphatic “yes,” you’ve probably inserted a status that has particular social meaning, and not only individual meaning.

Alternatively, you may be very tuned in to the impact of these hierarchies and the effects on your life. But you might still experience engaging this material as tricky, difficult, or emotional. You may find it challenging to engage this material because you feel it so intensely. Or you may find it challenging to learn new things about areas that you thought you knew about, or that are really important to you. Even when students are aware of the influence of social hierarchies, they often have internalized erroneous assumptions about themselves and others.

In our experience, students know that other students might have different views and experiences. Students who haven’t experienced these issues as personally relevant, or who have little knowledge about them are often aware that other students in a class find these issues very salient, feel very passionately about them, or have more knowledge. And vice versa. Sometimes, students coming from different backgrounds can also have prior negative experiences of trying to talk across these differences. Apprehension about engaging these social differences with your peers can also make it harder to engage the material in this book, both as you read and in related discussions. In sum how hard it is to talk about diversity can depend on how the topic relates to your status locations and the status locations of those you are talking to.

Unraveling Assumptions through Increasing Understanding and Awareness

Taken together, our early learning, cultural and educational influences, and status locations are like blinders on a horse, working together to constrict or expand what we can see. Not being aware of these blinders can make us confident that what we perceive, our worldview, is accurate. But this is an assumption that is often challenged by others or by later experience, as we confront the things we didn’t know we didn’t know. The good news is that none of us is stuck with the blinders we currently have. We can work to acknowledge that there are things we can’t perceive (known unknowns) and seek out learning and experiences that widen our perception.

When people have or seek the opportunity to learn more about the world, interact with those who are different, and reflect on their own experiences, they often begin to question ideas of categorization and the established hierarchies within social systems of inequality. As they question, they seek out more information and experiences, and turn a more focused attention to questioning where these ideas come from and whether these ideas make sense to them personally. Sometimes, this means that they also make changes in the ways they see themselves and others. When people learn about diversity in more depth, they can develop more conscious or deliberate ideas about themselves in relation to hierarchies and groups. They may move from acceptance of assumptions to im...