The networks of capital, be they politics or organizations, work most effeciently when your lowedst status characteristic is assumed. And once these … - Tressie McMillan Cottom

When oppressed people become complicit in their oppression, joining the dominant class in their ideas about what we are, it is symbolic violence. Like all concepts, symbolic violence has a context that is important for using it to mean what we intend to mean. It is not just that internalizing the values of the dominant class violently stigmatizes us. Symbolic violence only makes sense if we accept its priors: all preferences in imperial, industrialized societies are shaped by the economic system. There aren’t any “good” preferences. There are only preferences that are validated by others, differently, based on social contexts.

We were writing personal essays because as far as authoritative voices go, the self was the only subject men and white people would cede to us.

any system of oppression must allow exceptions to validate itself as meritorious. How else will those who are oppressed by the system internalize their own oppression