International Step by Step Association

• Full and equal participation of all groups in a society
• Distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure
• Individuals are both self-determining and interdependent
• Social actors with sense of their own agency and sense of social responsibility toward others and society as a whole

• Democracy
• Participation
• Inclusion
• Affirmation of human agency and human capacities for working collaboratively to create change

• Pervasiveness
• Restricting
• Hierarchical
• Complex, multiple, cross-cutting relationships
• Internalized
• Manifested through “Isms”

attitudes behaviors

• Individual level - refers to actions or attitudes of individual that maintain oppression
• Institutional level - Focus is on institutions that maintain and perpetuate system of oppression

• Societal/Cultural level
cultural norms that perpetuate implicit and explicit values
cultural perspective of the dominant group that is imposed on institutions by individuals and on individuals by institutions
cultural guidelines: philosophies of life, definitions of the good, normal, health, deviance, etc – served for the justification of social oppression.
foundation of all the “isms”, as well as the internalized oppression/ domination.
hegemony - maintained through “regimes of truth” (Foucault)

• Conscious processes knowingly supporting the maintenance of social oppression through individual, institutional and cultural/societal attributes.
• Unconscious processes - unknowing or naive collusion with the maintenance of social oppression; occur when the target or agent comes to accept the dominant logic system and justifies oppression as normal part of the natural order.

• Attitudinal level individual and systemic values, beliefs, philosophies and stereotypes that feed the system of oppression
• Behavioral level - actions of individual and systems that support and maintain social oppression

• Targets - members of social identity group that are exploited, victimized, marginalized by the oppressor and the oppressor’s system of institutions
• Agents - members of dominant social groups privileged by birth or acquisition who knowingly, or unknowingly exploit and reap unfair advantage over members of target groups.

Relationships within and between the roles in the system of oppression
A) Internalized oppression – targets collude with their oppressors by accepting a definition of themselves that is hurtful and limiting.
• Questing the credentials or abilities of their own social group
• Favoring dominant group members and distancing
(often unconsciously) from their own target group

B) Conscious collaboration target group members knowingly, but not always voluntarily, go along with their own mistreatment to survive, or to maintain some status
C) Internalized domination
• Belief that privileges are part of natural order
• Power to impose their own values, beliefs and norms as natural order
• Power to “erase” target group members by failing to acknowledge their existence or importance

• Target – Target
• Agent – Agent

• SYMBOLIC “ISMS” – people reject old-style “Isms”, but still express prejudice indirectly
• AMBIVALENT “ISMS” – existence of emotional conflict between positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized target group
• MODERN “ISMS” – people are aware that isms are wrong, but they still see target groups as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources
• AVERSIVE “ISMS” – people believe in egalitarian principles, but have a personal aversion toward those target groups