Why Mimicking the Oppressor Isn't Liberation

For a long time, a troubling pattern has become increasingly difficult to ignore within minority discourse: the desire among many oppressed groups specifically Black people and women—is sometimes less about dismantling oppressive systems and more about gaining access to the privileges and positions historically reserved for the dominant class.The goal can subtly shift from tearing down harmful hierarchies to gaining access to the privileges previously reserved for those at the top. But gaining permission to occupy the oppressor's position, or becoming just as toxic as the people who oppressed us, isn't progress. Liberation requires questioning the values, hierarchies, and behaviors that oppression produces not simply demanding access to them or reproducing them ourselves. Wanting the privileges previously reserved for the oppressor can become a trap. First, those privileges were often built on oppression itself. Second, desiring them without challenging the hierarchy preserves the system while simply changing who occupies the top. Representation within an oppressive system is not the same as dismantling it. Thinkers such as bell hooks have criticized forms of feminism that equate liberation with individual advancement within existing corporate and patriarchal structures. Similarly, critiques of Black capitalism, including those associated with Huey P. Newton and Earl Ofari Hutchinson's The Myth of Black Capitalism, question whether creating a Black economic elite necessarily constitutes Black liberation. A Black individual becoming a billionaire isn't automatically economic liberation if the economic system still relies on exploitation. A Black woman becoming a corporate executive isn't automatically liberation if she exercises the same harmful forms of power over workers as her predecessors. If our goal is simply to change who occupies the top position while leaving the hierarchy intact, we haven't ended oppression we've simply changed its personnel.

"When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor." — Paulo Freire

This tendency to validate our choices through the actions of dominant groups cuts across both racial and gender lines. It isn't that Black people and women experience identical forms of oppression, but rather that a similar political and psychological mistake can occur across different liberation movements: the belief that if the dominant group is allowed to behave a certain way, equality means demanding permission to behave the same way is crazy. Audre Lorde's The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House speaks directly to this danger : “liberation cannot simply reproduce the structures and values of the dominant system”. Similarly, bell hooks, in Feminism Is for Everybody, argues that feminism should challenge patriarchal exploitation rather than simply seek access to the privileges it produces. The Combahee River Collective Statement extends this critique by emphasizing that liberation must confront interconnected systems of oppression rather than reproduce one hierarchy while fighting another. We see this rhetorical reflex when women address toxic male behavior under the banner of equality: “Men do it too, so why can't we?” Whether it is adopting ruthless corporate detachment, engaging in emotional manipulation, sex liberation or excusing irresponsible behavior, demanding the right to adopt harmful traits is not feminism it is patriarchal assimilation. Why should equality mean, equal capacity for harm? GTFO ! Why should male toxicity be the baseline for female empowerment? Why would women want to inherit, reproduce, and normalize the very traits that made patriarchy damaging in the first place?

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." — Steve Biko

This reliance on the dominant culture as a baseline recently re-surfaced in the debate surrounding wearing bonnets in public. Originally designed primarily for nighttime hair protection, the bonnet has increasingly become visible as everyday public wear across the U.S. and Europe. The issue reached a boiling point when institutions like Tuskegee University introduced updated dress codes prohibiting bonnets, durags, and bedroom slippers in classrooms and cafeterias. The decision sparked nationwide debate, including among HBCU students who questioned whether universities should be focusing on dress codes over larger student needs such as financial aid or campus housing. This is where one of the primary defenses put forward by some advocates reveals a deeper flaw in our reasoning: “White people wear pajamas to class, so why can't we?” As Tayler Adigun noted in EBONY regarding the debate, Black people have been conditioned to alter their behavior according to what is deemed acceptable by white culture, even when white people themselves don't consistently follow those standards. But demanding the right to engage in low-effort or disrespectful behavior simply because white people do it isn't necessarily empowerment. It can still leave the dominant culture as the reference point. Why should white behavior be our benchmark for self-respect or cultural standards ? Personally, I view wearing sleepwear in public as inappropriate. But I also have to question where that judgment comes from. If we decide that wearing a bonnet in public is completely acceptable, “White people do it too” still remains a remarkably weak defense. That response accepts white behavior as the standard against which our own dignity should be justified. If a white person wears pajamas to the supermarket, why must we feel compelled to embrace it? When did liberation become confused with imitation? When did liberation become confused with acquiring the right to reproduce every behavior of the dominant group?

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." — Audre Lorde

At the same time, I have to challenge myself here. Could my own critique of the bonnet accidentally reproduce the very respectability politics I aim to question? Who taught us that a Black woman wearing a bonnet outside is inherently “unprofessional” ? Could my discomfort come partly from legitimate personal standards about clothing, and partly from standards historically imposed on Black people? Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham's Righteous Discontent offers an important way of understanding this tension. Her concept of the “politics of respectability” shows how Black communities historically used standards of morality, behavior, and appearance as a strategy of racial uplift and resistance to racist stereotypes. These standards were not simply about imitating white society; they were also a way of asserting dignity and challenging racist images of Black people. At the same time, those standards could create forms of internal regulation and pressure within Black communities. That makes my own question more complicated. If respectability has sometimes been a tool of resistance, where does legitimate self-respect end and internalized policing begin? Who gets to decide what counts as dignity, professionalism, or appropriate behavior? Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks gives us another way to think about this. Fanon examines how colonial racism can shape the psychological relationship between the colonized person and the dominant culture. His work helps us understand what happens when the dominant group's standards become so deeply embedded that we begin to see and evaluate ourselves through its gaze. What happens when the people we are trying to become free from remain the people whose behavior we use to define ourselves?

Even so, using white behavior as our yardstick remains a trap.

If our ultimate metric for freedom is acquiring the right to reproduce every behavior of the dominant group, we are still allowing whiteness to establish the reference point. White behavior should not be the measuring stick at all. Our standards should not be determined by either imitation or opposition. We should be able to ask independently: Is this behavior dignified? Is it responsible? Does it reflect the kind of community we want to build? Does it promote excellence, freedom, and self-respect? If equality means simply gaining the right to do what the dominant group does, have we really liberated ourselves or merely reproduced the same system?

Until next Sunday,

Kristina