Deprived groups often admire the out-group that oppresses them

Evidence

The implications of this conceptualization for intergroup relations in stratified societies and institutions are both evident and direct. Whenever social stratification is based upon an unequal division of scarce resources—such as power, prestige, or wealth—and hence there is a real conflict of interests between social groups, the social situation should be characterized by pervasive ethnocentrism and out-group antagonism between the overand underprivileged groups (Oberschall, 1973, p. 33). However, decades of research into ethnic-group relations suggest that ethnocentrism among stratified groups is, or at least it has been, very much a one-way street. Milner (1975, 1981) and Giles and Powesland (1975) summarize a great deal of evidence that minority or subordinate group members—such as the American Blacks, the French Canadians, the New Zealand Maoris, or the South African Bantus—have frequently tended to derogate the in-group and display positive attitudes toward the dominant out-group. In other words, deprived groups are not always ethnocentric in the simple meaning of the term; they may, in fact, be positively oriented toward the depriving out-group. Data of this kind are not consistent with a simple application of RCT. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2691

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how oppressed groups’ esteem for their oppressors operates — from colonization-era studies to modern identity politics.
• XREF: Connects to internalized inferiority literature, and echoes themes in Naqvi’s Home Boy and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart about colonial self-derogation. — connects to: Envy inherently acknowledges the envied group’s good qualities as a source of distress. — Susan T. Fiske et al., A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype…, 277
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that victimized groups may orient positively toward their victimizers is dense enough to merit sustained reflection on the psychology of domination.