Week 5: Gender, Race, and Class  

First Person Narratives
Identity = one's sense of self Role = socialization, norms of masculinity and femininity

DUE WEEK 6

In consumer culture, you can express yourself intelligibly only through your consumption, through your purchases; your identity is tied up in the products you buy; your very self is merely another "package" on display. Not excellence, but the appearance of excellence counts. Not honesty and diligence, but the show. (It’s always show time.) The goal of life is to become an image, a shadow self – to be seen a certain way, but never to see. But that goal is perverse: a life of passivity, consuming prepackaged images and being consumed by them. Only the image-makers profit; but more importantly, we lose sight of our active, whole-hearted,
authentic, best selves. 

I begin to understand myself and my life by understanding my culture or my race or my sex’s history and position. The struggle to finally become my best self is active, difficult, and potentially lonely, as Richard Rodriguez argues eloquently in Hunger of Memory. That struggle might well alienate me from my family, my community, my race, my sex, my culture itself; many authentic lives are scandalous. Seeking one’s truest and best self, immune to "consuming images," requires great courage, because from the perspective of consumer culture, it is a downright subversive quest. 

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Does race or class identity affect gender identity?

2. Does a child's identity include a sense of race or class (either conscious or unconscious)?

3. "What are the hierarchies in the world into which children are born and socialized? Is sexual privilege or domination affected by the race and class of the men and women in question?"

4. How is sexism related to other forms of oppression? Is it the foundation or cause of racism and classism  or is it more closely intertwined with them?

Internet Resources: 

Gender

The term "gender" is used to describe those characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed, in contrast to those that are biologically determined. People are born female or male, but learn to be girls and boys who grow into women and men. They are taught what the appropriate behavior and attitudes, roles and
activities are for them, and how they should relate to other people. These learned attributes are what make up gender identity and determine gender roles.

For a more extensive definition of gender, see: http://www.goldenessays.com/alphabetic/3/psychology/gender-definition.htm

Selected Women and Gender on the World Wide Web is a large list of sites maintained out of the University of Wisconsin library: http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/others.htm

A Men's Issues Page is maintained by David Throop: http://www.vix.com/pub/men/index.html

Gender and Society is part of a larger Internet Site maintained at Trinity College as part of a Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace: http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/gender.html

"I´ma tell ya like that’: African American Blueswomen and multiple jeopardy" by Delane E. Wright:
http://www.mty.itesm.mx/dcic/hiper-textos/02/delane.htm

Race

Work in the biological sciences has informed us that our practices of racial categorization don't map neatly onto any useful biological classification; but that doesn't settle much, if anything. For what should we make of our tendency to classify individuals according to race, apparently on the basis of physical appearance? And what are we to make of the social and economic consequences of such classifications? Is race real or is it not? 

There are serious limitations to the current use of race and ethnicity. For example, while race may have some biological basis, its significance is mainly derived from social arrangements. Thus, race should be viewed as a sociological phenomenon. Race and ethnicity are not risk factors -- they are markers used to better understand risk factors. For instance, homicide disproportionately impacts African American communities; however, when income status is considered, the impact of homicide in African American
communities is similar to that in white communities.

From Ethics Updates out of the University of California at San Diego is a major list of sites on Race, Multiculturalism; Racism:
http://ethics.acusd.edu/race.html

The Summit on Race Relations (7th Day Adventist Church) has a range of definitions of race, prejudice, etc.: http://nadadventist.org/RaceSummit/summitinfo/definition.html\

Essay on "Abolitionism and White Studies" from Race Traitor:
http://www.postfun.com/racetraitor/features/whitestudies.html

White Studies: http://www.euroamerican.org/links/wstudy.htm

Class

The concept of class has mostly been taboo in this country, due not only to its incompatibility with American values (belief in individual effort, equality of opportunity and hard work) but also the strength of capitalist ideology that refuses to place any blame on the economic system itself. Thus, class position has been brushed aside as a possible explanation for prejudice and discrimination in social policy. In fact, Robert Nisbet states rather confidently, "Today, as a sociological concept, class is dead" (Nisbet 1993: 91). What we must infer from this is that class in the Marxist sense, or the idea of class as an outcome of economic conditions, is a dead issue; race and sex are the all-encompassing issues that should really take precedence.     

This explanation makes it necessary to find an "individual" explanation for poverty, a lower class, and the need for more social programs that reform welfare policy. While there is no doubt that both structural and individual forms of racism and sexism exist and are extremely important in understanding stratification in American society, they focus more on specific segments of society rather than a broader category that encompasses both race and sex within it. Thus, it is proposed that racism and sexism are insufficient to completely explain the perpetuation of poverty as a whole in this nation as well as the aversion the upper and middle classes have toward "wasting" money on welfare and other social programs to aid those less fortunate. 

First person narratives:

Sojourner Truth, narrative of her life as told in 1850:
http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/truth/1850/1850.html

Jamaica Kincaid, interviewed 1999: http://www.salon.com/05/features/kincaid.html

A list of links for Amy Tan: http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/amytan/

Scott Russell Sanders: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/essays/sanders.htm