Subordinate groups can actively contribute to their own oppression by endorsing hierarchy-justifying ideologies.

Evidence

Traditional theories of prejudice argue that group-based hierarchies are a product of oppression by members of the dominant social group. Through both individual acts of discrimination and institutional discrimination, dominant groups can subjugate others and maintain their status differential. Other theories such as social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) and system justification theory (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) take a different stance and propose that members of groups at the low ends of the status hierarchy are also active contributors to their own oppression. By supporting policies that favor dominant groups and adopting ideologies that justify the hierarchy, subordinates contribute to the formation and maintenance of these hierarchies. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 852

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages the same mechanism question at the heart of the reader’s Allport reassessment thread on Islamophobia — whether prejudice is purely top-down oppression or partly self-generated by subordinates. — connects to: Oppressed groups internalize dominant categories and police their own members to gain acceptance — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 717; Subjugated group consciousness both exposes oppression and enables a new world — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1375
• ADDENDUM: Complicates the frame of the sacrifice article’s stabilizing-function argument: here hierarchy stability derives partly from subordinates’ own endorsement, not only elite imposition.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 852