Pg. 87
Oppression is part of the fabric of everything we do and experience — what we’re taught in school; what we see in the media and on billboards; the images of beauty we absorb from our culture. In school we learn about white men who supposedly discovered everything and invented everything. In a majority of churches, women in the Bible are presented in negative ways; we’re taught that men are supposed to have power over women. Men are always shown as the powerful ones. Heterosexual couples are always shown as the basis for a family; theirs is the only acceptable kind of love. Poor people are shown as stupid and lazy, often as Southern, so many people actually associate Southern accents with being dumb. All these images reflect institutionalized oppression…
the great weight of the system operates as if the oppressive images were true instead of lies and distortions. For example, if you are poor and you want to buy a used car, you soon find out you’ll have to pay more interest, make higher payments, than for a new car. So you end up having to buy a new car… Institutionalized oppression is when a prejudice is supported by all the systems of society with all the power to back up that prejudice, so that it becomes the canon — the accepted way.
