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The metaphorical place an oppressed person goes when they have become silent or compliant to their own oppression. More often, the sunken place is used to describe a disadvantaged person who is ignorant or unwilling to see that they have been conditioned into acquiescence. However, the sunken place can apply to anyone who chooses to stay silent in the face of discrimination or injustice, usually of their own.
First popularized by Jordan Peele's "Get Out," the main character, Chris, a black man, falls into a cognitive void after his white girlfriend's mother, Missy sends him there with covert hypnosis. When Missy instructs him to "sink into the floor" Chris becomes paralyzed, and plunges into a dark void, watching the world get smaller in the distance. The audience is made aware that Chris is not literally falling, but in a tranced state of mind. Throughout the film, Chris is sent to the sunken place as a way for his girlfriend's white family to take advantage of him without his protest, as they had done with many black people before him.
In the words of Peele it is: “the system that silences the voice of women, minorities, and of other people … the sunken place is the President who calls athletes sons of bitches for expressing their beliefs on the field... Every day there is proof that we are in the sunken place." In a statement made on twitter, Peele explained, "the Sunken Place means we're marginalized. No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us."
Janice: Why did Trump get votes from women if he had such a long history of being sexist?
Darryl: They're all in the sunken place. Thats why.
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When one is in a perpetual place of slumber, regarding systematic and idiosyncratic injustice and oppression in regards to race, i.e. the antithesis of being woke. Especially when a person of color can't or refuses to see it.
Tod: Morgan Freeman told Don Lemon that black folks should pull themselves up from their bootstraps, even when they ain't got no boots.
Marcus: You know Morgan has been in the sunken place.
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Basically, you are in the sunken place if you are not aware of your rights, or not aware of your value, or you are but society doesn’t let you live that way.
That girl doesn't think that people in her school are prejudiced. Little does she know, their subconscious resistance to her success is a constant drain on her energy, resulting in her looking like she got hit by a bus. She is in the sunken place.
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When you are surrounding by energy draining white people who marvel in the depletion of your energy.
Every since Tom started hanging around Oscar, he's been in a sunken place.
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The sunken place is when a person of color or a woman is in a (read: non-cisgendered, white men) state of cognitive dissonance and unconsciousness in regards to all forms of systematic oppression, particularly systemic racism. From: Jordan Peele's 'Get Out'. Particularly key to the Sunken Place is its self-induced helpless due to ignoring racism, sexism, and discrimination as a person of color.
Ben Carson is in the sunken place.
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When your significant other has you whipped
Guy1: yo, you coming out tonight?
Guy2: nah bro, I'm kicking it with my girl
Guy1: she still got you in the Sunken Place huh?
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