“You know what’s another funny fallacy that you wouldn’t think works so well when you say it out loud?
It’s “If that were true I would have heard about it before.”
You’re never going to hear the truth if you can’t hear new things, silly.
Maybe what people think is, like, trustworthy information is more like marketing.
Back to Dr. Thema Bryant, because we’re on our way home.
There’s lots I wanna read from here, off, not the childhood stuff, wow. I would say family stuff aside, but political violence shows up in our home lives.
Here’s “Resisting Oppression”
“While much of our reflection on Homecoming has centred on the psychological aspects of the journey, I want to acknowledge those of us who not only have experienced a lack of grounding within ourselves, but have also experienced cultural and political homelessness – a sense of being disconnected rejected and marginalized culturally and politically. Immigrants have spoken about this experience of not feeling fully home anywhere. People who have been discriminated against because of racism and sexism…”
and other things,
“…also search for this sense of community and belonging, while spending large portions of their days in spaces that are not welcoming. People that have been marginalized for multiple reasons have been silenced, even within political movements meant to empower members of their community. For example, disabled, trans and BIPOC women have written about discrimination within the women’s movement. Similarly, movements that focus on racial justice have often been silent about the discrimination facing women and sexual minorities in oppressed racial groups.”
This whole thing where intersectionality is interesting perspective but also can really work against ya.
“In this chapter, I invite you to reflect on your various identities and the ways marginalization and oppression have affected your journey home to yourself.
For some of you, homelessness has been more than a metaphor. Housing insecurity may have been or currently is a part of your lived daily reality. In fact physical homelessness is directly related to political homelessness as our political realities shape our access to care and resources.
In Western psychology many therapists argue that the only thing that matters is what you the individual thinks feels and does. According to these psychologists, you can’t change anything outside of yourself, so you have to focus on you. There are challenges and limitations to this approach because it ignores the reality that each of us has been raised and lives in a context in which there are multiple hierarchies of power. *Some people are targeted for harm, marginalized and institutionally and systematically left out and discarded.* When the therapist takes those things into consideration, the lives of the marginalized makes sense. It’s not surprising that you lost track of yourself, discounted yourself or doubted yourself. Your emotional and behavioral responses make sense when the therapist does not ignore the realities of your lived experience. Just as it would not make sense to work with a rape survivor and ignore the rape, it is also deeply problematic to work with someone who has been stigmatized and discriminated against and ignore these experiences.
I invite you to consider your experiences with oppression, discrimination and stigma. It is important to your homecoming journey that you address the wounds of oppression and internalized oppression. Internalized oppression is when you come to believe the lies you’ve been told about yourself. I invite you to reflect on the lies that you have been told directly or indirectly above the groups you belong to. There are stereotypes and lies about black people, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and Middle Easterners. Lies are perpetuated about people living with mental illness, neurodiversity and physical disabilities. There are widely accepted untruths about body size, income, education and country of origin…”
and so much more
“There are false ideas that are routinely and systematically circulated about people based on their gender, sexuality and religious affiliation…”
and so much more
“There are even stereotypes that are widely accepted about people based on their age…”
and so much more
“These messages carry weight. They translate into how people are treated, opportunities they are afforded or denied, *and even the health care they receive*. Consider the negative assumptions you make about the marginalized groups you are a part of. Oppression teaches you to despise, fear or be ashamed of your community. Oppression is thick, pervasive in society and we are bombarded with these messages from childhood.”
Boy, are we ever.
“Consider the billboards you drive past daily, the advertisements and the shows you watch and the magazines you read. Consider who is present and who is absent. For those who are present, what messages are being promoted? You have been given messages about who is beautiful and who is smart, who is likely criminal and who is likely a trusted leader.”
and who is a narcissist, etc.
“Stereotypes and stigma are not random, they grant and protect power. These lies influence how others see us and respond to us and they can also affect how we see ourselves and other members of our community.
In social psychology there’s a construct called the Halo effect, which is when a positive association about someone in one area, leads to positive associations about that person in other areas.”
can also work in reverse
“We can think about the implications for children from racial groups, whose beauty is often denied for children who are less well groomed for a number of reasons.”
Residential school and their grooming practices and how those get passed down are a whole other thing. Anyway, not about me, but, then again, I mean, in isolation who else should it be about other than Yaku?
“If teachers believe a child is attractive and well groomed they are more likely to assume the child is also smarter, kinder and friendlier and a better student than peers who are deemed plain unattractive or disheveled.”
They will also be more likely to get bathroom breaks when they ask, which has long term implications as well. But, we’re not talking about forced to waste retention.
“The reality is that oppression is present in our world and can have an impact on everything from parental care your mother received to your present day physical mental and financial well being. If you are a member of a marginalized group..”
or several
“…you might have come to feel less valuable.”
I’m sometimes not sure if I’m really a part of a marginalized “group”. The problem is I have no group. I’m a little bit of everything and I’m a little bit (according to our institution structures,) nothing. I check no boxes. When I stay honest about the story and I don’t fall under pressure to admit that it’s something smaller fit into a box, I fit into none. I guess I’ll have to do more to try and illustrate what that’s like, because people do not seem to understand.
“If you are a member of a marginalized group you might have come to feel less valuable or you might feel the stress of knowing that others have deemed you less valuable. Your dreams might have been —- deluded or deferred due in part to discrimination and your self image and self esteem might have been negatively affected by it. You might have been given the message that you have to try twice as hard to compete against those who are privileged. You might have been made to feel hopeless or powerless to counter the forces working against you. I want to tell you that the beliefs you have internalized about your self worth did not originate in your head.”
Nor did the beliefs that you hold about the worth of others.
So, that’s Dr. Thema Bryant on Homecoming. I really strongly suggest this read. It’s been hard for me to participate in anything that feels good with everything that’s going on and been going on for a long time. I hope the war is over soon, and I hope we win.”
Solve for x 
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