What is the Race, Gender, Class Lens?
Race, gender and class shape the experience of all people. This fact has been widely documented in research and, to some extent, is commonly understood. New studies interpret race, gender, class as interlocking categories of experience that affect all aspects of life; thus they simultaneously structure the experiences of all people in society. At any moment, race, class or gender may feel more salient or meaningful in a given persons life, but they are overlapping and cumulative on their effect on people's experiences.
Because of their simultaneity in people's lives we advocate using the approach of a "matrix of domination" to analyze race, class, and gender as different but interrelated axes of social structure. A matrix of domination posits multiple, interlocking levels of domination that stem from the societal configuration of race, class,and gender relations. This structural pattern affects individual consciousness, group interaction, and group access to institutional power and privileges (Collins 1990).
Race, Gender, Class analysis invites us to distinguish between "thinking comparatively" and "thinking relationally." People think comparatively when they learn about experiences other than their own and begin comparing and contrasting the experiences of different groups. This is a step beyond centering one's own thinking on a single group (typically one's own), but is nonetheless limited.
Relational thinking involves seeing the interrelationships among diverse group experiences. When you think relationally, you see the social structures that simultaneously generate unique group histories and link them together in society. This does not mean that one group's experiences is the same as another's, although finding commonalities is an important step toward more inclusive thinking. In thinking relationally, you untangle the workings of social systems that shape the experiences of different people and groups, and you move beyond just comparing(for example) gender oppression with race oppression, or the oppression of gays and lesbians with that of racial groups.
Overall, race, class and culture impacts one’s place in society. I have Four hundred years of history cannot be wiped away so easily. I realized that society has a long way to go and the importance of fighting all injustices. Martin Luther King captured it best by saying “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.
There is a specific meaning to race and how its role impacts society and shapes the social structures. Race is a concept that “symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (Omi & Winant 55). In other words, Omi and Winant get down to the crux of the issue and assert that race is just an illusion. Race is merely seen as an ideological construct that is often unstable and consisting of decentered social meanings. This form of social construction attempts to explain the physical attributes of an individual but it is constantly transformed by political struggles. The rules of classifying race and of identity are embedded into society’s perception. Therefore, race becomes a common function for comprehending, explaining, and acting in the
The two articles that had a profound impact to my understanding of race, class and gender in the United States was White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh and Imagine a Country by Holly Sklar. McIntosh explains the keys aspects of unearned advantage (a privilege that one group hold over another) as well as conferred dominance (the act of voluntarily giving another group power) and the relationship that these factors hold when determine power of a social group. Additionally, the purpose of McIntosh’s article was to demonstrate the privilege that certain individuals carry and how that translates to the social structures of our society. Furthermore, conferred dominance also contributes to the power of the dominant group
For instance, relating to the employment, there were two obvious hierarchical differences between the black and the white, and women and men. According to Kimberle (2015), in the late 1970, the employment opportunities for black people and women were still in the straitened circumstance, furthermore, even if there were chances for them, “... the black job were men’s job, and the women’s job were only for whites.” (Kimberle Cranshaw 2015). In other words, there was no opportunity for the black women. In this case, the unjust discriminatory treatment for black women simply resulted from their intersected identities as a “black” and “woman” both were marginalized in the society. In regard to this, however, the important point is that people did not analyze the cause of this situation through considering it from the both racial and sexual sides simultaneously. People ignored the experience of the others, and categorized the black women based on their sex as a “woman”. In other words, people, especially who were in the privileged position, just neglected the subtle “differences” of others, and they stretched the rules to their own advantages. Relating to these “differences”, Audre Lorde (1984: 115) explains that “ But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the
... Members of the dominant groups are taught not to see privilege. Being white in the United States opens doors to whether or not we approve of the way we have been granted dominance. McIntosh, pg. 78, p. 78. 5-6) Johnson compares social systems to Monopoly.
With this understanding it can be acknowledged that one can be an oppressor at one point in time but be oppressed at another. These roles are constantly changing based on a variety of factors. Integrative anti-racism allows a better understanding these social oppressions. The author argues that in order for oppression to be vitally explored, the factors that create oppression must be realized. Oppression gives material advantage to the oppressor. "All social relations have material
Race has been a controversial issue throughout history and even more so today. The idea of race has contributed to the justifications of racial inequality and has led to the prejudice and discrimination of certain racial groups. Race and racism were constructed to disadvantage people of color and to maintain white power in America. Today, race has been the center of many political changes and actions that have affected people of color. The idea of race has played a role in how people from different racial groups interact amongst each other. Interactions within one’s own racial group are more common than interactions among other racial groups, at least in my own experiences. Therefore, because I have been positioned to surround myself with people from my own racial group since a very young age, I have internalized that being around my own racial group is a normal and natural occurrence.
In society, race clearly affects one’s life chances. These are the chances of getting opportunities and gaining experience for progression. The social construction of race is based on privileges and availability of resources. Looking at society and the formation of race in a historical context, whites have always held some sort of delusional belief of a “white-skin privilege.” This advantage grants whites an advantage in society whether one desires it or not. This notion is often commonly referred to as reality.
Race, in the common understanding, draws upon differences not only of skin color and physical attributes but also of language, nationality, and religion. Race categories are often used as ethnic intensifiers, with the aim of justifying the exploitation of one group by another. Race is an idea that has become so fixed in American society that there is no room for open-mindedness when challenging the idea of racial categories. Over the years there has been a drastic change with the way the term "race" is used by scientists. Essentially, there is a major difference between the biological and sociological views of race.
The “matrix of domination” theory seeks to prove that someone is not limited to one type of oppression and that all oppressions for various reasons are not the same. For example, if one is a black, lesbian woman, she may be oppressed in several different factors throughout the day, but she is can be advantage if she went to an all black company and applied for a job there, but that doesn’t subtract from her other disadvantages. (Glasberg, pg.
...ground or where they are located in the world, it is ignorant to put these differences up as a way to distinguish one people from another, or to say that one race has greater hierarchal significance than another. These constructions provide insight into how people have come to see one another and can also help to see ways through which avoiding racism in modern society may one day be possible.
According to Beaueboeuf-Laufontant, racialization can be defined as the placement of groups in particular statues within the matrix of domination is justified through the generation and dissemination of controlling images. As a result of overaching ‘’matrix of domination”, a few statuses are considered normative and deserving of first class citizenship while most others are deemed constitutive of deviance and requiring subordination. As representations of subordinated groups, controlling images guide behavior toward and from these persons, constrain what is seen and believed about them, and when internalized, profoundly influence the self-perceptions of the marginalized. Like stereotypes, controlling images are generalized representations about
Reflecting directly on the cultural attitudes and sociocultural messages explained throughout this course, it is clear that race, gender, and sexuality are all socially constructed in one way or another. Contrary to popular belief, race is actually almost completely socially constructed, it is not biological. Further, a human’s DNA does not differentiate at all to create any specific race. However, society has categorized certain things, such as skin color, to determine the race of individuals. In simpler terms, there are not specific genes that parents pass on to their offspring that determine their race; society categorizes people into specific races when they are born based on their
The oppression that African American individuals endured for years, is still being practice with racial discrimination and prejudice. One strength of identifying as African American is the increase of belongingness that gave me the ability to share and live amongst individuals with the same physical appearance and in some cases, the same obstacles. However, this was not always the case. Growing into an adult gave me the advantage to travel and meet other African Americans that I believed shared some of the same historical and ethnic background. In this time period I was introduced to what is called within-group differences, which is the differences among the members of a group (Organista, 2010). Wanting to be around individuals that I believed to have a common core with was one of my flaws, but while traveling with individuals that I thought was like me I experienced that I had nothing in common with some of my travel friends. One of my friends stated that we had nothing in common with each other, because of our different social economic status, education and employment. At first I was offended, however, after taking psychology of ethnic groups in the United States there was a sense of understanding that not all individuals that look alike, are alike. This assumption that all groups function
In that setting, racial difference and racial hierarchy can be made to appear with seeming spontaneity as a stabilizing force. They can supply vivid natural means to lock an increasingly inhospitable and lonely social world in place and to secure one 's own position in turbulent environments (Gilroy, 430).