Alienated people may deny their own oppressive reality as self-defense

Evidence

A group in a New York ghetto was presented a coded situation showing a big pile of garbage on a street corner—the very same street where the group was meeting. One of the participants said at once, “I see a street in Africa or Latin America.” “And why not in New York?” asked the teacher. “Because we are the United States and that can’t happen here.” Beyond a doubt this man and some of his comrades who agreed with him were retreating from a reality so offensive to them that even to acknowledge that reality was threatening. For an alienated person, conditioned by a culture of achievement and personal success, to recognize his situation as objectively unfavorable seems to hinder his own possibilities of success. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 499

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for the redesign essay: a concrete case study of a ‘coded situation’ failing to be decoded because the participants’ own self-protective myths overrode the concrete reality in front of them.
• XREF: connects to: Pseudo-existential self-struggle is staged inwardness that masks authoritarian conformity. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 158; Alienation deepens precisely when people happily identify with imposed existence; Susceptibility to propaganda for terror is itself a product of prior oppression — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 381 (+3 more)