4 Chapter 4: Institutional Structures, Mechanisms of Oppression, & Macroresistance

Think of a time when you first understood that a policy or process was unfair and/or unmanageable for you or someone you care about.

• What do you think were the reasons the policy or process was created or maintained if it wasn’t working for everyone?
• What did you think/feel/say/do at the time?
• Is there anything you would have wanted to do differently if given another opportunity?

Definitions and Examples

     Institutions/Institutional Systems: This text will alternate between the terms institution and system to describe the major cultural entities that create and contribute to the overall life outcomes of individuals from various intersectional identities. Below are nine central institutions in any given society as defined/described by Miller and Garran (2011). Read the definitions and click on the links provided to examine some of the disparities/disproportional outcomes in each area in recent years.

     Institutions/Systems: 

•  Residential System: Programs, policies, and processes that create access and/or barriers to neighborhoods and housing.
  • Examples: Opportunity Starts at Home, 2022; National Association of Realtors Apology, 2020

• Educational System: Programs, policies, and processes that create access or barriers to public and private, elementary school, secondary school and/or higher education
  • Examples: Children at Risk Report (Texas),  2023

• Employment/Economics Systems: Programs, policies, and processes that create access or barriers to interviews, hiring, promotion, pay, wealth accumulation, & upward mobility.
  • Examples: National Fund for Workforce Solutions, 2022

• Healthcare/Environmental Systems: Programs, policies, and processes that create access or barriers to clean air, insulation from natural disasters, and/or preventative and restorative medical intervention.
  • Examples: American Progress, 2020.

• Mental Health System: Programs, policies, and processes that create access and/or barriers to qualified, representative, culturally aware, specialized, therapy, case management, and crisis intervention.
  • Examples: Psychiatry.org, 2022

• Carceral System: Programs, policies, and processes that create access and/or barriers to fair sentencing in terms of type, length, and intensity of legal punishment.
  • Example: Prison Policy, 2022

• Politics: Programs, policies, and processes that create access and/or barriers to governmental representation.
  • Examples: Pew Research, 2022

• Media:  Programs, policies, and processes that create access and/or barriers to fair representation in journalism, art, and societal communication.
  • Examples: Geena Davis Institute, 2022; GLAAD Report, 2023

Critical Theories

Critical Race Theory:  intellectual and social movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of color. Critical race theorists hold that racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans. Critical race theorists are generally dedicated to applying their understanding of the institutional or structural nature of racism to the concrete (if distant) goal of eliminating all race-based and other unjust hierarchies. (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2022)

Social Work Researcher Ashley Daftary (2020) describes 8 tenets of critical race theory as summarized below. Examples included are from this text’s author, not Daftary:

• Racism is an embedded facet of society (specifically in the law and legal systems).
  • Example: Disproportionate sentences for crack and powder cocaine result in more and longer sentences for Black individuals than their white counterparts despite legislation passed to try and remedy the laws that make such unfair sentencing possible. Justice Action Network, 2022)
• Race is a social construction (rather than a biological reality).
  • Example: The “one drop rule” was a metric used in the American south to determine how much African American blood was required for someone to be deemed a person of color (PBS, 2014)
• Intersectionality is an important lens to capture the full range of experiences that Black individuals inhabit. for example, some African American individuals are also women, older adults, disabled, queer, religious minorities, undocumented immigrants, and/or socioeconomically distressed.
  • Example:  a trans black woman whose highest education is 10th grade has different health outcomes than a biracial CIS black man with advanced degrees from Harvard and Yale.
• Interest Convergence or Material Determinism is the tendency for the dominant groups to participate in antiracist ways when and insofar that doing so has social/financial benefits for the dominant group.
  • Example: In 2020 amidst racial reckonings and reawakenings many companies developed merchandise with BLM-related messaging. This created profit opportunities and potentially positive advertising for these companies at a moment when many desired to show alignment with the so-called BIPOC communities.
• Objection to Ahistoricism which tells the narrative of history from the vantage point of dominant groups
  • Example: Some textbooks describe slavery as indentured servitude and emphasize positive relationships between slaveholders and enslaved people rather than accurately portraying the atrocities of slavery.
•  Counterstorytelling is the act of making space for black and brown people to narrate their own experiences and to have that narration centered. This is in contrast to supremacist centering of whiteness and supremacist centering of facts and figures over voice and experience.
  • Example:  A community health center has a panel about mental health and priortitizes inviting Black and Latino psychologists and social workers rather than exclusively white practitioners. This results in showcasing different approaches, aesthetics, terminology, tone, and case studies than would have otherwise been highlighted.
• Critique of Classical Liberalism: This critique suggests that traditional legal scholarship has believed in color-blind approaches rather than making race a central component of legal decision-making.

Related critical theories include LatCrit, AsianCrit,  QueerCrit, FemCrit & QuanCrit studying the embedded systemic policies and processes related to latinx identities, AAPI identities, queer identities, women, and research respectively. Baylor readers find critical research here. Others see your instructor’s LMS for more articles.=

Elements/Mechanisms of Oppression

Suzanne Pharr first described a collection of oppressive elements in her 1989 book Homophobia: a weapon of Sexism. Elizabeth Hutchison (2015) later adapted the elements and renamed them “Mechanisms of Oppression”. The sixteen adapted definitions are below.

Take a moment and try to think of an example of each mechanism of oppression in your life or in recent news/popular culture.  Which do you feel most comfortable explaining to someone else? Which, if any, are still a bit confusing? The author of this text has created four categories of macroresistance that self-advocates and aspiring allies can use to intervene in systems where mechanisms of oppression are being used to create and/or continue inequity.

Macroresistance Strategies

     Looking at the chart above, how many of these resistance strategies have you tried? Which of them seem the most natural to you? Which could be a “comfortably uncomfortable” opportunity for you to try in the future?

References

Daftary, A. M. H. (2018). Critical race theory: An effective framework for social work research. Journal of Ethnic &

Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 29(9), 439-454. https://doi.org/10.1080/15313204.2018.1534223

Fisher, K. (2021). An experiential model for cultivating cultural humility and embodying antiracist action in and outside the social work classroom. Advances in

Social Work 21(2/3), 690-707. https://doi.org/10.18060/24184

Pharr, S. (1988). Homophobia: A weapon of sexism. Chardon Press.