"....But almost
always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of
striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or
"sub-oppressors." The very structure of their thought has been
conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by
which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to
be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. This phenomenon derives from
the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential
experience, adopt an attitude of "adhesion" to the oppressor. Under
these circumstances they cannot "consider" him sufficiently clearly
to objectivize him—to discover him "outside" themselves. This does
not necessarily mean that the oppressed are unaware that they are downtrodden.
But their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion
in the reality of oppression. At this level, their perception of themselves as
opposites of the oppressor does not yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome
the contradiction; the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to
identification with its opposite pole.
In this situation the oppressed do not see the
"new man" as the person to be born from the resolution of this
contradiction, as oppression gives way to liberation. For them, the new man or
woman themselves become oppressors. Their vision of the new man or woman is
individualistic; because of their identification with the oppressor, they have
no consciousness of themselves as persons or as members of an oppressed class.
It is not to become free that they want agrarian reform, but in order to
acquire land and thus become landowners—or, more precisely, bosses over other
workers. It is a rare peasant who, once "promoted" to overseer, does
not become more of a tyrant towards his former comrades than the owner himself.
This is because the context of the peasant's situation, that is, oppression,
remains unchanged."
- Pedgagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire
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