Oppression is a Sickness & We All Have It

I've been thinking a lot about oppression lately. (Go figure.) And I've come to the conclusion that it's a virus that invades our subconscious and parks there, influencing our everyday mental state without our awareness. It doesn't matter what group you identify with. It's there. (See this tweet thread.) The deal is: we're not going to be rid of the system oppression as long as we permit ourselves to be privileged over other groups. We don't have to be consciously aware of this in order for it to sustain itself. That makes eradicating oppression complicated.

Imagine systemic oppression is a squeezy toy.

The more pressure you put into crushing it, the more it seeks out weaknesses in which to release that pressure rather than succomb to destruction. This is that "why can't [fill in the blank minority group] wait in line behind me and others like me?" feeling. If we allow that reasoning space in our heads, we're contributing to the problem. No one gets a pass. No one.[1] We have to approach this thing from all sides all at once. United. White people aren't exempt from this work as those poor, white Trump voters all those stupid articles were written about are about to find out. Anyone loses, we ALL lose.

To quote Benjamin Franklin: We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. 

----------------------------------------------
​[1] Yes, White Feminism, I'm looking at you.