Plus, the abstractions are clearly identified in a large body of literature.
If you want to find oppression, look at what is considered normal, everyday, ordinary, common sense. Racial, gender, heterosexist oppression exists wherever someone insists that this or that thing is the norm, the way it must be, etc.
If I go to a party and point out a man to my friend, if I say, "That man over there" for a white man versus "That black man over there" when talking about a black man, that's where oppression operates. The response is, "Well, I'm not a racist. I didn't mean it like that."
Of course. But it nonetheless remains the case that, because we live such segregated lives, we wouldn't know how and are never taught to do anything differently that to leave whiteness as the default. The list of all these tiny little things are what constitute oppression: it's why Marilyn Frye called it the bird cage of oppression. No one single bar in the cage is enough to prevent one from flying free. It is the criss crossing of all those little bars that continually sends the message: you are different, thought less important, possibly considered suspect, not good enough, not smart enough, etc. etc. Oppression is the force that turns those bars into an interlocking pattern that constrains - oppresses.
another example of this is a couple of guys I work with. They are two very different looking guys who get regularly mistaken for each other. Precisely because they are black. One is light skinned. the other is dark skinned. One is from the south. The other is from Brooklyn. They each have distinctive accents.
It's like mistaking George Clooney for Brad Pitt. To them, they don't understand it. How can you mistake me for him? They shake their head and mutter. Another day, another dollar. They just chuckle at how white people can't tell one from the other.
As Carrol says, it won't be fixed by anti-racism lessons. But it doesn't hurt to learn what life is like for other people and consider ways to make the daily lives of other people you live next door to or work with just a little bit easier.
shag