The United States Federal Constitution provided in its Preamble the basis for individual freedom: "We the people of the United States, in order to ... secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America". Within the very next Article of the Constitution slavery is discounted from being a full political powerbase through the three-fifths clause, which directly encouraged slave-holding states to eliminate slavery in exchange for greater political power.
With such strong evidence that the ultimate intended goal of individual freedom for all of the citizens of each of the United States it can be mystifying how people assert the opposite position. The willingness of an oppressed people to maintain strong collective emotional ties to their oppressors and to ignore opportunities of individual freedom is a very real result of internalized oppression. It is the power that marched six million jews to their own passive slavery and deaths in the first half of the twentieth century. It is the power that stripped Deaf people of the freedom to use signed languages in their own educational settings during the same time. It is the power that converted the children of former slaves to become political slaves of their former masters. It's power is very real.
Internalized Oppression begins with one group oppressing another. Economic status and power are always the basic motivations for oppression - the oppressors gain personal status and wealth at the expense of the oppressed. All instances of slavery around the world, past and present, are examples of these basic motivations. The oppression of Jews in the first half of the twentieth century provided a means of political power to the Nationalist Socialist party of Germany. The oppression of Deaf people in Europe was solidified in 1880 when at a conference in Milan educators who themselves were not Deaf proclaimed signed languages to be detrimental to the education of Deaf children and subsequently reversed nearly all of the advances that Deaf people had achieved prior to that time by taking over the administration and teaching positions - the power and money - related to Deaf education.
Children and grandchildren of slaves were threatened and intimidated in their individual freedom by their former slave masters and ultimately coerced into accepting the exchange of political and financial power for relative peace. Through an additional one-hundred years of oppression after the Civil War, descendants of slaves were systematically oppressed so that multiple generations accepted their condition as second-class citizens.
