What is internalized racism?
Everywhere in the world, where there is long term oppression, the oppressed will internalize the prejudices of the oppressor and begin to believe them and impress them in their own children and their fellow oppressed. The most obvious example is internalized sexism: everywhere in the world women are good in child rearing, in convivial gatherings and in women’s magazines at telling each other, that the woman’s “natural” place is in the home, wearing a veil, not taking power away from men, etc. No oppressed group would accept its own oppression for one minute, if such a distress pattern had not first been installed in it. Internalized racism is perhaps seen most strongly in American blacks. Such as in “playing the dozens,” a game in which young black men try to humiliate, tease and insult each other in the strongest possible way. When you are being attacked, the object is to stay “cool.” If you get upset, you lose. This cruel invalidation of each other has continued since slavery, where
