ABSTRACT
The ideology of color-blind racism, the contemporary framework for understanding and defending white privilege, is part of a broader, overarching ideology I refer to as “oppression-blindness.” It is not only race-based privilege that we actively render invisible today, but many other systems of oppression and privilege as well, including class, gender, sexuality, nationality, ability, age, and religion. We have already examined most of these systems throughout this book, and read about many examples where these systems interact and intersect in shaping our lives. We have read important arguments by leading scholars compelling us to consider these social identities not as discrete, stand-alone properties, but as specific axes of power that imbue the social structures we shape and are shaped by day in and day out. In this chapter I will take these arguments further by examining the multifaceted ways in which the ideological justifications for each of these various systems of inequality work to reinforce one another. Each one is made stronger by its placement in the broader context of a hierarchically organized society with ever-evolving narratives that work to rationalize and justify inequality as natural and inevitable. Situating these specific systems of oppression and privilege within this broader narrative framework 246can help us to understand why each one remains so elusive and difficult to abolish despite the work of active social justice movements over the past three hundred years.
