Oppression

Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment of, or exercise of power over, a group of individuals, often in the form of governmental authority. There are many scholars who have attempted to define oppression, usually by the types of harm suffered by those who are persecuted.

Authoritarian oppression

The word oppress comes from the Latin oppressus, past participle of opprimere,. Thus, when authoritarian governments use oppression to subjugate the people, they want their citizenry to feel that "pressing down", and to live in fear that if they displease the authorities they will, in a metaphorical sense, be "squeezed" and "suffocated". Such governments oppress the people using restriction, control, terror, hopelessness, and despair. The tyrant's tools of oppression include, for example, extremely harsh punishments for "unpatriotic" statements; developing a secret police force; prohibiting freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press; controlling the monetary system and economy; and imprisoning or killing activists or other leaders who might pose a threat to their power.

Socioeconomic, political, legal, cultural, and institutional oppression

Oppression also refers to the subjugation and marginalization of specific groups of people within a country or society, such as women, people of color, religious communities, citizens in poverty, LGBT people, youth and children, and more. This socioeconomic, cultural, political, legal, and social oppression can occur in every country, culture, and society, including advanced democracies.
There is no single, widely accepted definition of social oppression. Philosopher Elanor Taylor defines social oppression in this way:

Oppression is a form of injustice that occurs when one social group is subordinated while another is privileged, and oppression is maintained by a variety of different mechanisms including social norms, stereotypes and institutional rules. A key feature of oppression is that it is perpetrated by and affects social groups.... occurs when a particular social group is unjustly subordinated, and where that subordination is not necessarily deliberate but instead results from a complex network of social restrictions, ranging from laws and institutions to implicit biases and stereotypes. In such cases, there may be no deliberate attempt to subordinate the relevant group, but the group is nonetheless unjustly subordinated by this network of social constraints.

Philosopher Jean Harvey, suggests the term "civilized oppression", which she introduces as follows:

It is harder still to become aware of what I call 'civilized Oppression,' that involves neither physical violence nor the use of law. Yet these subtle forms are by far the most prevalent in Western industrialized societies. This work will focus on issues that are common to such subtle oppression in several different contexts ... Analyzing what is involved in civilized oppression includes analyzing the kinds of mechanisms used, the power relations at work, the systems controlling perceptions and information, the kinds of harms inflicted on the victims, and the reasons why this oppression is so hard to see even by contributing agents.

Social oppression

A common conception of social oppression is seen as when a single group in society unjustly takes advantage of, and exercises power over, another group using dominance and subordination. This then results in the socially supported mistreatment and exploitation of a group of individuals by those with relative power. In a social group setting, oppression may be based on many ideas, such as poverty, gender, class, race, caste, or other categories.
According to Iris Marion Young, due to its pluralistic character, it is difficult to construct a definition that applies to all forms of oppression. Therefore, she argues one should focus on the characteristics different forms of oppression might exhibit or have in common. In order to do so, she develops five characteristics or 'faces' of oppression. Each form of oppression possesses at least one of the following characteristics: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Missing from this conception of oppression is the involvement of an "active oppressor", meaning it can occur regardless of the identification of such individuals. Or, in her own words:

ppression is the inhibition of a group through a vast network of everyday practices, attitudes, assumptions, behaviors, and institutional rules. Oppression is structural or systemic. The systemic character of oppression implies that an oppressed group need not have a correlate oppressing group.

Structural or systemic refers to "the rules that constitute and regulate the major sectors of life such as family relations, property ownership and exchange, political powers and responsibilities, and so on". This conception of oppression is therefore in contrast with other common notions of oppression, where an identifiable oppressing group is assumed. To illustrate its broadly-encompassing nature, she gives as example a specific social group being denied access to education that may hinder their lives in later life. Economic oppression is the divide between two classes of society. These were once determined by factors such slavery, property rights, disenfranchisement, and forced displacement of livelihood. Each divide yielded various treatments and attitudes towards each group.
According to Marilyn Frye, one of the most common characteristics of social oppression is the "double-bind", a situation where the oppressed are exposed to limited options, all of which incurring social penalty. An example of said situation exists for young women in the 21st century regarding sexual activity. Both sexual inactivity and sexual activity might incur a penalty. If a woman is sexually inactive, her parents might worry that she is abnormal, and men will complain that she is "frigid" and "uptight", while in the latter situation she may be condemned for being a whore. This scenario reveals how oppression may not necessarily be caused by individual oppressors, following Young's conclusions.
Social oppression derives from power dynamics and imbalances related to the social location of a group or individual. Social location, as defined by Lynn Weber, is "an individual's or a group's social 'place' in the race, class, gender and sexuality hierarchies, as well as in other critical social hierarchies such as age, ethnicity, and nation". An individual's social location often determines how they will be perceived and treated by others in society. Three elements shape whether a group or individual can exercise power: the power to design or manipulate the rules and regulations, the capacity to win competitions through the exercise of political or economic force, and the ability to write and document social and political history.
Jim Sidanius suggests that there are four predominant social hierarchies, race, class, gender and sexuality, that contribute to social oppression. Audre Lorde, on the other hand, believes that there cannot be any hierarchy of oppression due to her experiences as both a Black and lesbian woman. In "There is no Hierarchy of Oppressions," she suggests that all oppressed groups share the same issue. She writes that "any attack against black people is a lesbian and gay issue", promoting the idea that due to intersectionality within a given group, all of its members and their respective groups are under threat, viewing the concept of oppression as originating from a root source which seeks to alienate all groups not in power.
One aspect of social oppression's effectiveness is the stigmatization of "resistance": Resistance to oppression has been linked to a moral obligation, an act deemed necessary for the preservation of self and society. Resistance is sometimes labeled as "lawlessness, belligerence, envy, or laziness".

Privilege

Lynn Weber, among some other political theorists, argues that oppression persists because most individuals fail to recognize it; that is, discrimination is often not visible to those who are not in the midst of it. "Privilege" refers to a sociopolitical immunity one group has over others derived from particular societal benefits. Many of the groups who have privilege over gender, race, or sexuality, for example, can be unaware of the power their privilege holds. These inequalities further perpetuate themselves because those who are oppressed rarely have access to resources that would allow them to escape their maltreatment. This can lead to internalized oppression, where subordinate groups essentially give up the fight to get access to equality, and accept their fate as a non-dominant group.
Scholar L. Ayu Saraswati highlights the potency of privilege hidden within groups generally considered oppressed. Such can occur within women, as second-wave feminism disproportionately focused on white women and their respective issues rather than women as a whole. This led to Black women and the higher level of economic challenges they were faced with being unaddressed, and often uplifted women only in a racially privileged position. According to Saraswati, by not fighting the presuppositions of racism, these actors in the women's movement failed to address their oppression at its root, simultaneously fighting for the issues of white women and accepting the societal structures which held Black women down. Even when Black feminists bring up issues of both gender and class, they often fail to account for heterosexual privilege amidst Black women, still supporting homophobic assumptions about sexuality and leaving many members of the movement behind.

Racial oppression

Race or racial oppression is defined as "burdening a specific race with unjust or cruel restraints or impositions. Racial oppression may be social, systematic, institutionalized, or internalized. Social forms of racial oppression include exploitation and mistreatment that is socially supported." In his 1972 work, Racial Oppression in America, sociologist Bob Blauner proposes five primary forms of racial oppression in United States history: genocide and geographical displacement, slavery, second-class citizenship, non-citizen labor, and diffuse racial discrimination. Blauner states that even after civil rights legislation abolished legally-sanctioned segregation, racial oppression remained a reality in the United States and "racial groups and racial oppression are central features of the American social dynamic".
Roma are the most oppressed ethnic group in Europe.