Oppressed people carrying internalized oppressors will only imagine they have power

Evidence

It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as Subjects of the transformation. If they are drawn into the process as ambiguous beings, partly themselves and partly the oppressors housed within them—and if they come to power still embodying that ambiguity imposed on them by the situation of oppression—it is my contention that they will merely imagine they have reached power. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 413

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Top-tier density: the ‘oppressor housed within’ means role change alone is insufficient — structural transformation must happen internally first, or power is merely imagined. Resists one-sentence summary.
• XREF: Pairs with the reader’s standing interest in how small acts of decorum toward corpses matter and how attitudes outrun structural change. Also connects to Frantz Fanon’s internalized oppression theses. — connects to: Oppression chains the oppressor as much as the oppressed. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1370