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Race and gender essays
Race and gender essays
Race and gender essays
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Historical analysis has multiple approaches which often depend on correlating subfields of history. Understanding the subfield in which a historian is writing illuminates the subject and clarifies historical context. Although, the subfields of gender and race studies differ in how they emerged they share similar elements which can shape how historical recording can be negatively influenced. By analyzing how gender, whose origins are messy and indiscernible, is embedded and imposed contrasts with race as a perpetuated ideology, an understanding of how they are both used to help shape and reproduce systems of inequality can be achieved.
When exploring how history is retold, historian John Arnold presents a road map on how an understanding of gender and race studies can be used to identify which recorded documents create a truer sense of history. Arnold uses the historical example of a Sojourner Truth, a freed slave woman who lived in the mid 1800’s, to demonstrate how taking into account gender and race is imperative when deciphering which account is more reliable. The first account of a speech given by Sojourner Truth was captured by a newspaper editor the year it was given. This version is not verbatim but translated to capture the message as an educated audience would understand it. The second account was written in 1863 and was reworded to represent the dialect which Sojourner would have used. Arnold introduces the concept of mentalité and how it is used to try and capture the essence of the past. Arnold warns however, that to state that the second account of sojourner’s speech is more reliable because it resembles the vernacular of an uneducated black woman would be to “dissolve the individual Sojourner Truth into a melting p...
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...lyzing historical accounts, gender and racial classifications can detract from the real underlining issues. By having an educated grasp on gender and race studies and what historians face when sifting through historical accounts a fuller picture of the past can be reconstructed.
Bibliography
Arnold, John H. History: A Very Short Introduction, 10th Edition, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Brundage, Anthony. Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
Coven, Richard " the Greeks offense’, Washington Post national weekly edition, 25 to 31 January 1988.
Sewell, William H. “Logistics of History”, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2005.
Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” in Gender and the Politics of History. 91. No. 5 (Dec. 1986), 1053-1075
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
Deborah Gray White was one of the first persons to vigorously attempt to examine the abounding trials and tribulations that the slave women in the south were faced with. Mrs. White used her background skills acquired from participating in the Board of Governors Professor of History and Professor of Women 's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University to research the abundance of stories that she could gather insight from. It was during her studies that she pulled her title from the famous Ain’t I A Woman speech given by Sojourner Truth. In order to accurately report the discriminations that these women endured, White had to research whether the “stories” she was writing about were true or not.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. "Do Women Need The Renaissance?" Gender & History 20.3 (2008): 539-557. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958” The Journal of American History (March 1993): 1455-1482
Throughout history and in present day, there has been a large neglect of Black Women in both studies of gender and studies of race. Combating both sexism and racism simultaneously is what separates Black Women and our history and battles from both white women and black males-combined with what is discussed as a triple jeopardy- race, sex and socioeconomic status provides black women with a completely different and unique life experience when compared to, really, the rest of the world. Beverly Guy-Sheftall discusses the lack of black feminist in our history texts stating,“like most students who attended public schools and colleges during the 1950s and 1960s, I learned very little about the involvement of African American women in struggles for emancipation of blacks and women.” (Words of Fire, 23) I, too, can agree that throughout my education and without a Black Women’s Studies course at the University of Maryland I would have never been exposed to the many founding foremothers of black feminism. In this essay, I will discuss the activism, accomplishments and contributions of three of those founding foremothers-Maria Stewart, Anna Cooper, and Ida B. Wells.
Although the institutionalization of the fields of Black and Women’s Studies were still years away, the aforementioned black women, along with many others, were essential to the development of the epistemological and theoretical concepts that would later become the foundation. We can clearly see gaps in the literature in the area of Black Women’s Studies, as the writers discuss these women from the standpoint of either the Africana or Feminist Tradition. Some make mention of the intersection of racial and gendered oppression, but only in passing
Angelina Grimke and Sojourner Truth were both prominent American civil rights activists of the 19th century who focused on the abolition of slavery and women’s rights issues, respectively. While both of these women challenged the societal beliefs of the United States at the time regarding these civil rights issues, the rhetorical strategies used by each of these women to not only illustrate their respective arguments but also to raise social awareness of these issues was approached in very different fashions. Angelina Grimke promoted the use of white middle-class women’s positions in the household to try to influence the decision makers, or men, around them. On the other hand, Sojourner Truth, a former slave turned women’s rights activist,
The 19th century was a time of great social change in the United States as reflected by the abolitionist movement and the women’s suffrage movement. Two very influential women leaders were Angelina Grimke and Sojourner Truth. Grimke was born a Southern, upper class white woman. She moved to the North as a young woman, grew involved in abolitionism and women’s rights, and became known for her writing, particularly “Letters to Catherine Beecher”. Sojourner Truth was born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree; she escaped to freedom, changed her name, and became an active speaker on behalf of both the abolition and women’s rights movements. Truth’s most famous speech is “Ain’t I a Woman?”. While both Grimke and Truth use a personal, conversational tone to communicate their ideas, Grimke relies primarily on logical arguments and Truth makes a more emotional appeal through the use of literary strategies and speech.
In “Women in the Twentieth Century and Beyond”, Kimberly M. Radek discusses the struggling events that occurred throughout history in order for gender discrimination to be eliminated.
French, Katherine L., and Allyson M. Poska. Women and Gender in the Western past. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
In today’s world, gender roles still exist, and there is much controversy regarding the topic. I believe how gender roles are viewed is partly what determines how advanced a society of people has become. Even though today’s modern women have advanced somewhat from their roles prior to 1500, more advancement is needed fo...
Gender roles and racial discrimination has changed in many ways throughout history as within recent societal representation. In the the early 1900s, woman wore skirts that brushed the floor, belted jackets, fancy dresses etc. In the early 1990s, women wore short dresses, heeled shoes, turtlenecks etc. In fact, every succeeding generation has brought with it different expectations for how races,women and men are viewed within society. Although, we may be more open to expectations than were past generations, there are still expected norms of behavior for women and men in society. For example,“gender roles” means society expects
Bless argues, “a central tension in the role of the oral historian, between responsibility to the interviewee and responsivity to society and history” (Perks 424). Either view, she continue to make the point that “oral histories are rooted in principles of progressive and feminist politics, particularly in a respect for the truth of each informant’s life experience and a quest to preserve the memory of ordinary people’s lives” (Blee 424). The chapters also address the importance of the evidence interviewers collect and the empathy and ethic when address the topic of Klanswomen and feminism as the backdrop to explore their activism and views on their movement and its impact on groups they call
Women have always been essential to society. Fifty to seventy years ago, a woman was no more than a house wife, caregiver, and at their husbands beck and call. Women had no personal opinion, no voice, and no freedom. They were suppressed by the sociable beliefs of man. A woman’s respectable place was always behind the masculine frame of a man. In the past a woman’s inferiority was not voluntary but instilled by elder women, and/or force. Many, would like to know why? Why was a woman such a threat to a man? Was it just about man’s ability to control, and overpower a woman, or was there a serious threat? Well, everyone has there own opinion about the cause of the past oppression of woman, it is currently still a popular argument today.