Reframing Internalized Racial Oppression and Charting a way Forward

Experiences of racism, a form of oppression, have lasting negative psychological and physical effects on Black Americans. Identifying underlying mechanisms is necessary to minimize these deleterious outcomes and potentially mitigate health disparities. Internalized racial oppression, the ways in which a member of a target group is in relationship with the dominant group's ideology and the extent to which they accept their subordinate status as deserved, natural, and inevitable, has in particular been understudied and inconsistently defined. We argue that shifting language from internalized racial oppression to appropriated racial oppression more fully centers our understanding of the negative impact systemic oppression can have on individuals. This shift counters psychology's tendency to over-focus on individuals and or their internal processes without taking the broader context into consideration. While racial identity development models conceptualize appropriated racial oppression as a potential aspect of identity development, the field has yet to offer models of how to extract appropriated racial oppression from the development of identity. We put forth a framework for psychological liberation from the negative content related to racial oppression, in addition to offering implications for training programs, leaders in key positions in society, and researchers.