Oppressed groups self-police by competing to excel in assigned roles.

Evidence

Given the embedded nature of racial processes in the contemporary environment, it is unsurprising that subordinate groups may invoke difference to mystify, to deny knowledge of themselves to the dominant groups, to confuse and neutralize those who attempt to control or “help” them, or to reduce them to research objects. They may use difference to stress their own separateness, and to authorize their own representations. They may seek to legitimize their own definitions of cultural difference, including those against others from within their own collectivity. … This can lead at times, as we shall see later, to a strange convergence in the language of the racist right and of black or ethnic nationalists, as both infuse the racial or ethnic category with essentialist, and supposedly naturally inherited, characteristics. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 115 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A group can move from oppressed to oppressor by changing its racial assignment — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 31; Oppressed groups internalize dominant categories and police their own members to gain acceptance — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 717; Subordinates actively cooperate in their own oppression (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Oppressed groups reclaim power by rearticulating their own stigmatized signifiers. #complicates (0.75)
• Subordinate groups strategically deploy difference to resist dominant control and revalue themselves #complicates (0.73) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 115