Appropriated racial oppression: Implications for mental health in Whites and Blacks

Racism has been examined in its many forms. Scholarship regarding how individuals personally experience, cope with, and manage racial oppression is still developing. The term “appropriated racial oppression” reframes the construct “internalized racism” as a process whereby members of a group appropriate a dominant group's ideology, adapt their behavior, and perceive a subordinate status as deserved, natural, and inevitable. The expression of appropriated racial oppression is based on a variety of complicated and interacting processes, such as incentivized societal norms, critical consciousness, and racial socialization. We conceptualize appropriated racial oppression as a mediated process that yields both direct and indirect health outcomes for both non-dominant and dominant groups. The latter is critical because little research examines how racism affects dominant groups and their health. In this commentary, we examine two examples where appropriating racial oppression may confer both negative and adaptive outcomes. Although we highlight examples rooted in White and Black racial experiences, we briefly consider implications for intersectional and multiple marginalized identities as well. Future research recommendations for psychology, public health and interdisciplinary research are discussed.