Blog #3 - The Four I's of Oppression with Luna Malbroux

     The Four I's of Oppression consists of ideological, interpersonal, institutional, and internalized.

    In this video, Luna Malbroux discusses how, even when we were in the womb, ideas about gender and race shaped how we show up in the world. 

    When Malboux begins to discuss ideological oppression, she asks us to remember all the things we have heard when we were children that make a "real girl" and what makes "a real boy." It's always been shown in shows, the toy aisle, and quotes in school from adults. Toy sections for boys have toolboxes and science kits, while the girls section has pretend makeup kits. These differences can lead to the idea of a group being more deserving or smart than the other group, in this case, men being smarter than women. It is normalized. Something I noticed is that the gender norms of color are in those aisles. The girl's aisle is pink and purple, while the boys' section is blue and gray. When I went to Walmart recently, I noticed that the "girls section," where Barbie and makeup sets are stocked, was not as brightly pink as I remember as a child. There were unisexual colors now, there was blue, greens, reds, yellows, not only pink and its shades. 

    Malboux moves on to discuss interpersonal oppression. One of the main topics of this is exclusion, how we can be treated differently due to some aspect of who we are. There is not a clear reason given by others as to why they are excluding you. Microaggressions are also a large part of interpersonal oppression. Malboux backs this up by saying that someone who says microaggressions to someone of a particular group, that that person has an ideology of who that person is.

    She moves onto institutional oppression, which is demonstrated in how institutions reinforce their ideology, and gives the example of how neighborhoods are comprised to exclude people and how school systems are funded more than others. 

    Internalized oppression is the last of the four. Through this form of oppression, messages may not be explicitly stated, such messages as microaggressions and dialogue. Internalized messages fill the ideology that we have been taught. Dominant narratives tell us that there are standards and norms and teach people that they are less than others because of who they are. 

    My take on The Four I's of Oppression with Luna Malbroux is oppression is all around us. A lot of what Malbroux talked about definitely has to do with implicit bias, as she talked about in the video, the way we were raised. Ideals have been pushed onto us since birth, no matter what they were. Most of our learning is done through our parents, who may have a certain set of beliefs that differ greatly from those around us.