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Advocacy Practice for Social Justice 28 {

on the topic are provided at the end of this chapter to extend your thinking concerning this important topic of advocacy for social justice. Before delving into what is anti-oppressive practice, we need to understand the concept “oppression.” Young and Allen (1990) state, “Oppression happens to social groups,” and the existence of social groups is “fluid and often shifting, but nonetheless real” (p. 9). One aspect of Young and Allen’s identification of oppression is that it occurs through systemic and structural phenomena— aspects of society that are not necessarily intentional. This perspective imme diately challenges the social justice advocate to look beyond individuals who are “the oppressors” and those who are “the oppressed” to examine systemic barriers preventing social justice from being realized. Young and Allen pro vide extended discussions of what they call the five faces of oppression, which provide concrete ways to search for oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Each face of oppression can overlap others, in some ways, but each is distinctive enough to be named and described separately: Exploitation: Exploitation refers to using people to make profits. Even if the workers are paid, the amount of payment is low in relation to the income for the exploiters. Capitalism is the mechanism by which exploitation occurs. Marginalization: Marginalization occurs when groups are excluded— that is, kept out of meaningful social participation and relegated to lower social standing. Although racial groups are often targeted for marginalization, other groups, such as the elderly, those with mental illness, women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people, are often oppressed using marginalization. Powerlessness: Powerlessness refers to the inability to give orders or make choices, even while being ordered and having choices made for them by others. Extreme powerlessness results in a culture of silence, meaning that those who are oppressed do not speak of their oppression or, at the most insidious levels of powerlessness, do not even know they are oppressed. Indoctrination is used as a method of keeping the oppressed silent: They come to believe that they are inferior and that they deserve their place at the bottom of society. Cultural imperialism: Cultural imperialism is the process of taking the culture that the powerful have and making it the norm. In this way, members of the dominant culture ignore or look down on nonconformists. People who follow the dominant cultural expectations consider themselves superior to nonconformists. Conformists try to make nonconformists feel “different” and inferior to anyone following the norms.