Quotes About Oppression

They forget that their fundamental objective is to fight alongside the people for the recovery of the people's stolen humanity, not to "win the people over" to their side. Such a phrase does not belong in the vocabulary of revolutionary leaders, but in that of the oppressor. The revolutionary's role is to liberate, and be liberated, with the people—not to win them over.

Because the oppressor exists within their oppressed comrades, when they attack those comrades they are indirectly attacking the oppressor as well.

Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated.

Mas, infelizmente, o que se sente, dia a dia [...] é o homem simples esmagado, diminuído e acomodado, convertido em espectador, dirigido pelo poder dos mitos que forças sociais poderosas criam para ele. Mitos que, voltando-se contra ele, o destroem e aniquilam. É o homem tragicamente assustado, temendo a convivência autêntica e até duvidando de sua possibilidade.

Welfare programmes as instruments of manipulation ultimately serve the end of conquest. They act as an anaesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems. They splinter the oppressed into groups of individuals hoping to get a few more benefits for themselves.

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them'; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.

In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform.

Daí a crítica permanentemente presente em mim à malvadez neoliberal, ao cinismo de sua ideologia fatalista e a sua recusa inflexível ao sonho e à utopia.

When men [sic] avoid encounter they become inflexible and treat others as mere objects; instead of nurturing life they kill life; instead of searching for life, they flee from it. And these are oppressor characteristics.

The revolution loves and creates life; and in order to create life it may be obliged to prevent some men from circumscribing life. In addition to the life-death cycle basic to nature, there is almost an unnatural living death: life which is denied its fullness.

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders. The latter course, by preserving a state of alienation, hinders the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in a total reality. And without this critical intervention, it is always difficult to achieve the unity of the oppressed as a class.

The restraints imposed by the former oppressed on their oppressors, so that the latter cannot resume their former position, do not constitute oppression . An act is oppressive only when it prevents men from from being more fully human... Behaviour which prevents the restoration of the oppressive regime cannot be compared with the acts by which few men deny the majority their right to be human.

E que, quase sempre, num primeiro momento deste descobrimento, os oprimidos, em vez de buscar a libertação na luta e por ela, tendem a ser opressores também, ou subopressores. A estrutura do seu pensar se encontra condicionada pela contradição vivida na situação concreta, existencial, em que se "formam".

The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression.30 As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.

In order to present for the consideration of the oppressed and subjugated a world of deceit designed to increase their alienation and passivity, the oppressors develop a series of methods precluding any presentation of the world as a problem and showing it rather as a fixed entity, as something given--something to which people, as mere spectators must adapt.

Cito um exemplo de um estudioso de meu marido, que inadvertida e ingenuamente, asseverou que empoderamento é "Conceito central teórico e prático de Freire, presente pela primeira vez em Medo e ousadia, escrito em parceria com Ira Shor (1986)1.

The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them.

Aos esfarrapados do mundo e aos que neles se descobrem e, assim descobrindo-se, com eles sofrem, mas, sobretudo, com eles lutam.

No que diz respeito às relações autoridade-liberdade, [...], corremos também o risco de, negando à liberdade o direito de afirmar-se, exacerbar a autoridade ou, atrofiando esta, hipertrofiar aquela. Em outras palavras, corremos o risco de cair seduzidos ou pela tirania da liberdade ou pela tirania da autoridade, trabalhando, em qualquer das hipóteses, contra a nossa incipiente democracia.

Men and women rarely admit their fear of freedom openly, however, tending rather to camouflage it—sometimes unconsciously—by presenting themselves as defenders of freedom.

One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual's choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber's consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.

If the humanization of the oppressed signifies subversion, so also does their freedom; hence the necessity for constant control. And the more the oppressors control the oppressed, the more they change them into apparently inanimate "things." This tendency of the oppressor consciousness to "in-animate" everything and everyone it encounters, in its eagerness to possess, unquestionably corresponds with a tendency to sadism.

In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors, to imitate them, to follow them. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in the middle-class oppressed, who yearn to be equal to the "eminent" men and women of the upper class.

As long as the oppressed remain unaware of the causes of their condition, they fatalistically "accept" their exploitation. Further, they are apt to react in a passive and alienated manner when confronted with the necessity to struggle for their freedom and self-affirmation. Little by little, however, they tend to try out forms of rebellious action. In working towards liberation, one must neither lose sight of this passivity nor overlook the moment of awakening.