Soul Sojourn

Systems of Oppression

• Jenn Pedersen

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This week on the podcast I welcome my second guest co-host and we talk about some systems of oppression that are a part of our lives.  We touch on patriarchy and then talk about a number of other systems that seek to exert power over people and lead to harm.

Thanks so much for taking the time to listen today. The life of our soul is a journey with many twists and turns. This journey has times of discovery, growth, disruption, examination, perplexity, and harmony. Soul Sojourn is a podcast that plans to explore this journey of the soul; considering the different segments of the journey, the different stops we make along the way, and the divergent paths that we can take as unique people with distinctive life experiences. Soul Sojourn hopes to provide room for diverse expressions of faith and welcomes questions and doubts about the journey of the soul. It recognizes that so often there is mystery in life and faith, questions that have no answers, and deep levels of uncertainty and precarity that are present in our lives. I look forward to what is to come, what future stops we’ll take along the journey together. I’ll see you at the next stop.

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Episode 7 - Systems of Oppression

Intro - The life of our soul is a journey with many twists and turns.  This journey has times of discovery, growth, disruption, examination, perplexity, and harmony.  Soul Sojourn is a podcast that plans to explore this journey of the soul;  considering the different segments of the journey, the different stops we make along the way, and the divergent paths that we can take as unique people with distinctive life experiences.  Soul Sojourn hopes to provide room for diverse expressions of faith and welcomes questions and doubts about the journey of the soul.  It recognizes that so often there is mystery in life and faith, questions that have no answers, and deep levels of uncertainty and precarity that are present in our lives.  

Welcome - Welcome to Soul Sojourn and I’m Jenn Pedersen. I’m so glad that you’ve joined us today for another episode of soul sojourn. Today we are diving in once again to define some terms, some philosophies and concepts that impact our world and have had a deep impact on our everyday lives and our soul journeys.  We are going to be exploring some ideas surrounding systems of oppression.  And I’m excited to welcome my second guest co-host, my daughter Isabella, who is going to help me explore this topic.  We’re keeping things in the family here on the podcast in these early episodes, but I’ve got some future guest co-hosts that I’m lining up who are not family members - so keep listening for those episodes.  I’m really excited about some other voices and perspectives that are going to be joining in. 

But today I am so excited to have Isabella here with me to explore some topics that are of great importance to both her and I.  Last week we talked about patriarchy and that is certainly one system of oppression - one we’ll touch on a bit more today.  But there’s so much more to explore.  So Isabella - welcome to Soul Sojourn.  I’m so glad you’re joining me here today and hopefully this will be the first of many times we’ll talk together on the podcast.  Bella & I have a very close and open mother daughter relationship.  A new friend of mine who recently met Bella and I remarked about what a special relationship we have.  We enjoy talking with each often about the deep things of life and about the many challenges that are present in our world.  I’m so thankful for you Bella - for the amazing young women you have become and for all the things you have taught me.  You have been a major part of my deconstruction journey as you have asked legitimate questions, questions which at their core were about challenging systems of oppression in the world around us as you became aware of them.  For me, having you as a daughter, and trying to raise you in a way that would equip you to have a full and flourishing life has been an instrumental part of my journey toward greater freedom in my own soul and certainly has been a key element in my journey toward calling myself a feminist.  

As we begin today I’d like you to share a bit of your own soul sojourn and what brings you to the podcast today - maybe a little background on why this topic of systems of oppression is so important to you.

Bella shares - 

  • Introduce myself with my pronouns
  • Discuss brief background about my personal life
    • Grew up conservative Chrisitan
    • Went through a deconstruction process where I became a progressive Christian and now identify as agnostic
    • Discovered I was bisexual, and now my wife and I will be celebrating two years of marriage in June
    • Completely changed my beliefs and perspectives
    • Friends had a huge influence on my growth
    • Despite great change, my core value of wanting to love and help people has never changed
  • Discuss social work background
    • Choose social work because I wanted to love and help people
    • At time I choose social work, had began to have more progressive perspectives and felt strongly connected to values of social work
    • In the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics, there are six values and corresponding ethical principles
    • One value is social justice, with the corresponding ethical principle being “Social workers challenge social injustice.”
    • Full description of value: “Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. Social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice. These activities seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people.”
    • College education
      • Took one class called “Diversity and Difference” that was all about systems of oppression
      • This class was the most influential class I ever took
      • Social justice was woven throughout all other social work classes
    • What I discuss today will be culmination of the information I’ve gained throughout my social work education, and I will also try to provide some references to information from reputable sources

Jenn - Thanks so much for sharing about your soul sojourn and more about the amazing person that you are - I’m not at all biased.  Let’s jump into our topic for the day and talk about systems of oppression.  Can you define those for us.

  • Define “systems of oppression”
    • There are several different definitions of systems of oppression.
    • For today’s conversation, definition of “systemic oppression” by National Equity Project
    • “Systemic oppression is systematic and has historical antecedents; it is the intentional disadvantaging of groups of people based on their identity while advantaging members of the dominant group (gender, race, class, sexual orientation, language, etc.).”
    • Systems of oppression affect people of many different identities
    • In America, some of the people most affected by systems of oppression include people of color, women, trans and nonbinary people, gay and queer people, disabled people, fat and plus size people, religious minorities, which in America are those who are not Christian, and low-income or impoverished people. 
  • Discuss the systematic component
    • What does it mean that people are systematically oppressed?
    • Ultimately this means aspects of our society are designed to provide advantages to some people, and create obstacles and disadvantages for others
    • Examples of systemic oppression
    • We see it in regards to income and wealth
      • According to research by the pew research center, in 2022, women earn 82% of what women earn
      • This is very similar to the gender pay gap in 2002, at 80%
      • In 2019, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that median white family had $184,000 in wealth, compare to $38,000 for the median hispanic family and only $23,000 for the median black family
    • We see it in our laws
      • We’re only about 4 month into 2023, and already over 400 bills have been introduced in the country that would cause harm to the LGTBQIA+ community, with a large majority of these bills specifically attacking transgender youth
      • Disabled people can lose healthcare benefits if they make over $2,460, while according to the U.S. Census Bureau found the median rent including utilities cost was approximately half that amount, at $1,163 in 2021. 
    • We see it in the stories that people share
    • We see it in mundane, everyday examples
  • Myth of “meritocracy”
    • A study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that even when comparing high quality resumes, resumes with White sounding names had 30 percent more callbacks than Black sounding names
  • Implicit bias
    • The American Psychological Association says that “Implicit bias, also known as implicit prejudice or implicit attitude, is a negative attitude, of which one is not consciously aware, against a specific social group.”
  • Discuss intersectionality
    • Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberele Crenshaw in 1989
    • Crenshaw has described it as a lens to see how marginalized identities intersect and affect individuals
    • The term has become so prevalent in modern conversations, that now Merriam Webster dictionary includes the term and defines it as “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups”
  • All systems of oppression are interconnected

Systems of oppression are all around us and do harm to so many people.  Our first step is to become aware of those systems and consider our own implicit bias and then start doing our own work to untangle the ways in which we view people as the other and then do our own work to try to change our perspective and ultimately work to change the systems we are a part of.  That’s honestly a big part of this podcast - uncovering negative patterns of belief that impact our lives in detrimental ways.  

A big thanks to my daughter Isabella for joining me today to co-host the podcast.  Your beautiful heart and sharp mind are such a gift to our family and to the world and I so appreciate your willingness to come on and share today about this area of passion in your life.  

And thank you listeners for joining us today.  I hope that you were encouraged to think about some things in a different way and expand your own perspective just a bit. I hope you’ll come back again next week on Soul Sojourn as we continue to explore the journey of soul. I look forward to what is to come, what stops we’ll take along the journey together.  I’ll see you at the next stop.