SOC350 Cultural DiversityPaige MasseyA person has just start.docx

SOC350 Cultural Diversity
Paige Massey
A person has just started a world travel experience, and here
they land in Japan where they will be spending a night with a
welcoming host family. Everything is fantastic the guest speaks
a small bit of Japanese and is able to communicate with them.
The guest is invited to a family dinner in their house. As the
meal begins the entire family is enjoying the food so much that
it is increasing the guest’s biggest pet peeve, slurping the food.
Little does the guest know that their pet peeve is a sign of
appreciation in the country of Japan. The guest is not
participating in the slurping as they were taught that slurping
was an activity that was looked down upon by Americans. This
is an example of a social faux pas in the country of Japan.
Personally a social faux pas that really turns me off is hacking
and spitting in public areas. It just creates the heebe jeebes
because I was taught social ettique. Can words breach the idea
of social ettique, or is it just considered social faux pas?
A social faux pas can be confused with microaggressions.
Microaggressions are defined as acts of mostly non physical
aggression -- they are common place verbal, behavioral, or
environmental indignities that can be intentional or
unintentional and communicate derogatory slights. Racial
microaggressions suggests that people of color endure physical
and physiological distress (Robinson-Wood et al., 2018). These
microaggressions occur across many different identities such as
skin color, body size, mental ability, age, and social class.
When a person fits into multiple identities that overlap such as
being gay and black, can experience more microaggressions
versus a person who is white and gay. There are a lot of words
that describe microaggressions, but what actually is an example
of microaggressions?
If you have ever walked through Target wearing khakis and a

red shirt and automatically being asked to help a customer, you
have experienced a microaggression. You were assumed to be in
a service role just because of the clothes you were wearing.
According to Byrd, some examples of microaggressions include
being stared at in the dining hall, asking an Asian person “you
must be good at math, can you help me with this problem?”, or
when someone merely crosses a street to avoid a person of color
(Byrd, 2018). People are not necessarily conscious of these
actions. It can be a taught attribute; like crossing the road to
avoid a person of color, the person’s parent could have been
thinking they are protecting the child from a potentially scary
situation like a mugging. The child then learned that they
should avoid any colored person on the street. The unconscious
nature of humans can lead to some hurtful actions.
Microaggressions can cause a toll on a person’s mind. It can
take a lot of thinking to try and make sense of the interpersonal
interactions. This characteristic is known as attributional
ambiguity. The expenditure of cognitive effort associated with
attributional ambiguity may promote defense thinking and limit
a person from fully engaging in their social environment (Lilly
et al., 2018). Microaggressions are considered a chronic stressor
which can be more psychologically harmful than more overt
forms of racism. Upon a survey of 6540 transgender and gender
nonconforming individuals in multiple areas of the whole
United states, it was found that discrimination was pervasive.
Black respondents had a worse time than the white transgenders
(Robinson-Wood et al., 2018).
What methods can help the people that are targeted by
discrimination? According to Robinson-Wood, some people
have found many methods that work. Valuing relationships is
important, and it is important to explain and neutralize these
microaggressive acts. Educating people by bringing attention to
the offensiveness of the microaggression, there could be a
change in the microaggression. Some of the participants in the
study wanted to know about the social environment before
entering it so they could mentally prepare themselves -- known

as armored resistance. The best method to dealing with
microaggressions is optimal resistance. It empowered
participants with clarity about the systemic nature of
microaggressions, supported goal attainment, and provided a
sense of entitlement while nurturing flexibility and complexity
in thinking and behavior (Robinson-Wood et al., 2018).
I personally used to be on the receiving end of the stick for
microaggressions. I used to be morbidly obese. There were
many times where my large breasts became the social point of
the conversation. It did bother me to be considered fat, and the
reality was true. I managed to use the optimal resistance method
and change my lifestyle into more healthy ways. This is not the
case with all overweight people, and the psychological effects
cause a deeper depression. I like to call attention when I hear
microaggressions in the gym that are targeted towards a larger
person working out. I believe people should be supportive
versus trying to destroy self confidence. Social faux pas may
create a slightly unpleasant environment but it passes.
Microaggressions can have a lasting effect on a person. Be
conscious of what you are going to say before saying it.
Citations
Byrd, C. M. (2018). Microaggressions self-defense: A role-
playing workshop for responding to microaggressions. Social
Sciences, 7(6)
doi:http://dx.doi.org.nuls.idm.oclc.org/10.3390/socsci7060096
Lilly, Flavius R. W., Owens, Jenny, Bailey, TaShara C.,
Ramirez, Amy, Brown, Whitney, & Clawson, Clancy. (2018).
The Influence of Racial Microaggressions and Social Rank on
Risk for Depression among Minority Graduate and Professional
Students. College Student Journal,52(1), 86-104.
Robinson-Wood, T., Balogun-Mwangi, O., Weber, A., Zeko-
Underwood, E., Rawle, S., Popat-Jain, A., . . . Cook, E. (n.d.). “

What Is It Going to Be Like? ”: A Phenomenological
Investigation of Racial, Gendered, and Sexual Microaggressions
Among Highly Educated Individuals. Qualitative Psychology,
Qualitative Psychology, 2018.
Students will apply course ideas to a short biography of
diversity. As in discussion, students are also responsible for
reading and responding to a minimum of 2 classmate’s blogs.
You’ll complete your blog no later than midnight Thursday
week 4, then read and post at least two responses no later than
midnight Saturday week. POINTS AVAILABLE - 20 pts. for
Answer; 2.5 points for each Response (2 responses
required). WRITE A MINIMUM OF 3 PAGES. APA FORMAT
(REFERENCE PAGE DOES NOT COUNT)
Note: If you are uncomfortable about writing about yourself,
you may write about another person, or you may create a
fictional character.
Please write an autobiographical sketch about how you have
experienced citizenship and immigration status, race, class,
gender, ethnicity, and sexuality in your life. You may choose to
write about only two of these categories, but the intersection of
several will illuminate the complex fabric of society and your
position within it. You might think about when you first became
aware of the categories, what your parents said and how they
acted, what you learned in school, whether your friends were
like you in these aspects, when you felt ashamed or proud about
your identity, if you were ever hurt or hurt others, and how the
society in which you make your life affected your experiences
of these categories. Were there points in your life when you
were inspired to re-evaluate your beliefs about this?
Think about intersectionality, structural oppression, and social
construction. Use examples from your own experiences to help

make these concepts vivid and clear. Please apply our course
materials to enrich your analysis of your own experiences. Cite
heavily from course materials.
· Week 4 Course Notes
While Intersectional Theory tells us that we cannot see different
categories of identity as mutually exclusive, we can explore
instances in which particular aspects of identity have come to
the forefront. Understanding diversity means exploring how
diversity practices (or practices that reject diversity) have been
implemented in everyday life. Using the terms, concepts, and
theories from this course we can examine how matters of
diversity have been made visible in universities.
Matters of Diversity Concerning Race and Ethnicity
"The College Scholarship Conundrum"
In recent times, there has been a public debate about the place
of diversity in institutions of higher education, and in
particular, whether universities or other organization should
make scholarships available exclusively for specific racial or
ethnic groups. While these groups continue to be
underrepresented in public and private universities around the
country, that has not stopped many people from arguing such
scholarships are either inherently unfair, or allow unqualified
students into college classes. Some suggest that such
scholarships should be discontinued and others still have
proposed more radical solutions. One such individual was
Colby Bohannan, who in 2011 a group called the "Former
Majority for Equality," an organization that offered a
scholarship to white men only.
To read an interview with Bohannan, click on the following
link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13462312

0
Other have argued Bohannan's efforts are based upon a
misguided sense of white male victimhood. Writer Mark
Kantrowitz points out that minority students are still less likely
to receive scholarships than their white counterparts, something
he explores at length in his research on the subject.
http://www.finaid.org/scholarships/20110902racescholarships.p
df
Matters of Diversity Concerning Gender and Sexuality
"Prioritizing Tran-Inclusivity"
College campuses have also had to consider matters of diversity
when it comes to gender and sexuality. Recently, LGTBQ
advocate organizations have argued for the need for greater
trans-inclusivity, including the need for considering trans
populations in student housing. Advocacy groups point out the
Title IX law (1972) prohibits discrimination on the basis of
gender for all schools that receive federal funding.
Articles which explore the matter more in-depth can be found
here:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-education/college-
dorms-a-new-front-in-u-s-battle-over-transgender-rights-
idUSKCN0YW15P
https://www.calstate.edu/gc/documents/NACUANOTES-
TransgenderIssuesonCampus.pdf
Matters of Diversity Concerning Class
"Student Loans as a Life Sentence"
As college tuition has risen dramatically over the past thirty
years (refer to the chart below) students, particularly working
class students, have found it more and more difficult to pay for
higher education without a loan.
Note that the chart is adjusted for the value of the 2016 dollar,
which makes the rise in costs all the more stunning. Given that
in particular four-year state universities have seen dramatic
increases, those who cannot pay out of pocket are faced with the
difficult choice of acquiring crushing debt or choosing not to go

to college at all, making even public institutions more
inaccessible.
The following article offers more detail on the matter:
http://blackyouthproject.com/student-loan-debt-is-becoming-a-
life-sentence-in-the-us/
Sociology is a Martial Art!: Affirmative Action in the Courts
and Beyond
"Fisher V. University of Texas"
In 2015, a case before the Supreme Court brought affirmative
action once again into the spotlight. Abagail Fisher, a student
who'd applied and been rejected to the University of Texas at
Austin sued the university, alleging that being white
disadvantaged her. She claimed that she'd been rejected
specifically because UT-Austin considered race as a factor in
admissions, and that less qualified minority students had been
admitted at her expense. The Court upheld the UT's right to
consider race in their admissions process, and Ms. Fisher lost
the case definitively.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the 4-3
decision in the case, stating, "A university is in large part
defined by those intangible ‘qualities which are incapable of
objective measurement but which make for greatness." He
continued, "Considerable deference is owed to a university in
defining those intangible characteristics, like student body
diversity, that are central to its identity and educational
mission," and went on to add, “it remains an enduring challenge
to our nation’s education system to reconcile the pursuit of
diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and
dignity.”
You can read further on the case here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/politics/supreme-court-
affirmative-action-university-of-texas.html
And read the Court's opinion in its entirety here:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-981_4g15.pdf
In the complete opinion, you can find the dissenting view of the
Court offered by Judges Thomas and Alito. Judge Thomas

writes that the decision, "[was] irreconcilable with strict
scrutiny, rest[ed] on pernicious assumptions about race, and
depart[ed] from many of our precedents."
The question of the fairness and value of affirmative action,
both in institutions of higher education and other types of
organizations, remains an important one. Social Sciences
continue to produce considerable evidence that hiring,
promotion, and admissions processes in different organizations
privilege individuals on the basis of race, gender, and so forth.
One such study can be found here:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-
nature/behavior/emily-lakisha-10-years-are-employers-still-
biased-applicants-names.htm
9/28/2017 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought in the
Matrix of Domination
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/252.html 1/11
Documents menu
http://www.runet.edu/~lridener/courses/BLKFEM.HTML
Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of
Domination
From Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought:
Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 221–
238
Black feminist thought demonstrates Black women's emerging
power as agents of
knowledge. By portraying African-American women as self-
defined, selt-reliant individuals

confronting race, gender, and class oppression, Afrocentric
feminist thought speaks to the
importance that oppression, Afrocentric feminist thought speaks
to the importance that
knowledge plays in empowering oppressed people. One
distinguishing feature of Black
feminist thought is its insistence that both the changed
consciousness of individuals and the
social transformation of political and economic institutions
constitute essential ingredients
for social change. New knowledge is important for both
dimensions ot change.
Knowledge is a vitally important part of the social relations of
domination and resistance.
By objectifying African-American women and recasting our
experiences to serve the
interests of elite white men, much of the Eurocentric
masculinist worldview fosters Black
women's subordination. But placing Black women's experiences
at the center of analysis
offers fresh insights on the prevailing concepts, paradigms, and
epistemologies of this
worldview and on its feminist and Afrocentric critiques.
Viewing the world through a
both/and conceptual lens of the simultaneity of race, class, and
gender oppression and of the
need for a humanist vision of community creates new
possibilities for an empowering
Afrocentric feminist knowledge. Many Black feminist
intellectuals have long thought about
the world in this way because this is the way we experience the
world.
Afrocentric feminist thought offers two significant
contributions toward turthering our

understanding of the important connections among knowledge,
consciousness, and the
politics of empowerment. First, Black feminist thought fosters a
fundamental paradigmatic
shift in how we think about oppression. By embracing a
paradigm of race, class, and gender
as interlocking systems of oppression, Black feminist thought
reconceptualizes the social
relations of dommation and resistance. Second, Black feminist
thought addresses ongoing
epistemological debates in feminist theory and in the sociology
of knowledge concerning
ways of assessing "truth." Offering subordinate groups new
knowledge about their own
experiences can be empowering. But revealing new ways of
knowing that allow subordinate
groups to define their own reality has far greater implications.
Reconceptualizing Race, Class, and Gender as Interlocking
Systems of
Oppression
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/index-cf.html
"What I really feel is radical is trying to make coalitions with
people who are different from
you," maintains Barbara Smith. "I feel it is radical to be dealing
with race and sex and class
and sexual identity all at one time. I think that is really radical
because it has never been

done before." Black feminist thought fosters a fundamental
paradigmatic shift that rejects
additive approaches to oppression. Instead of starting with
gender and then adding in other
variables such as age, sexual orientation, race, social class, and
religion, Black feminist
thought sees these distinctive systems of oppression as bemg
part of one overarching
structure of domination. Viewing relations of domination for
Black women for any given
sociohistorical context as being structured via a system of
interlocking race, class, and
gender oppression expands the focus of analysis from merely
describing the similarities and
differences distinguishing these systems of oppression and
focuses greater attention on how
they interconnect. Assummg that each system needs the others
in order to function creates a
distinct theoretical stance that stimulates the rethinking of basic
social science concepts.
Afrocentric feminist notions of family reflect this
reconceptualization process. Black
women's experiences as bloodmothers, othermothers, and
community othermothers reveal
that the mythical norm of a heterosexual, married couple,
nuclear family with a nonworking
spouse and a husband earning a "family wage" is far from being
natural, universal and
preferred but instead is deeply embedded in specific race and
class formations. Placmg
African-American women in the center of analysis not only
reveals much-needed
information about Black women's experiences but also questions
Eurocentric masculinist
perspectives on family

Black women's experiences and the Afrocentric feminist thought
rearticulating them also
challenge prevailing definitions of community. Black women's
actions in the struggle or
group survival suggest a vision of community that stands in
opposition to that extant in the
dominant culture. The definition of community implicit in the
market model sees
community as arbitrary and fragile, structured fundamentally by
competition and
domination. In contrast, Afrocentric models of community
stress connections, caring, and
personal accountability. As cultural workers African-American
women have rejected the
generalized ideology of domination advanced by the dominant
group in order to conserve
Afrocentric conceptualizations of community. Denied access to
the podium, Black women
have been unable to spend time theorizing about alternative
conceptualizations of
community. Instead, through daily actions African-American
women have created
alternative communities that empower.
This vision of community sustained by African-American
women in conjunction with
African-American men addresses the larger issue of
reconceptualizing power. The type of
Black women's power discussed here does resemble feminist
theories of power which
emphasize energy and community. However, in contrast to this
body of literature whose
celebration of women's power is often accompanied by a lack of
attention to the importance
of power as domination, Black women's experiences as mothers,

community othermothers,
educators, church leaders, labor union center-women, and
community leaders seem to
suggest that power as energy can be fostered by creative acts of
resistance.
The spheres of influence created and sustained by African-
American women are not meant
solely to provide a respite from oppressive situations or a
retreat from their effects. Rather,
these Black female spheres of influence constitute potential
sanctuaries where individual
Black women and men are nurtured in order to confront
oppressive social institutions.
Power from this perspective is a creative power used for the
good of the community,
whether that community is conceptualized as one's family,
church community, or the next
generation of the community's children. By making the
community stronger, Atrican-
American women become empowered, and that same community
can serve as a source of
support when Black women encounter race, gender, and class
oppression. . . .
Approaches that assume that race, gender, and class are
interconnected have immediate
practical applications. For example, African-American women
continue to be inadequately

protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The
primary purpose of the statute is
to eradicate all aspects of discrimination. But judicial treatment
of Black women's
employment discrimination claims has encouraged Black women
to identify race or sex as
the so-called primary discrimination. "To resolve the inequities
that confront Black women,"
counsels Scarborough, the courts must first correctly
conceptualize them as 'Black women,'
a distinct class protected by Title VII." Such a shift, from
protected categories to protected
classes of people whose Title VII claims might be based on
more than two discriminations,
would work to alter the entire basis of current
antidiscrimination efforts.
Reconceptualizing phenomena such as the rapid growth of
female-headed households in
African-American communities would also benefit from a race-,
class-, and gender-inclusive
analysis. Case studies of Black women heading households must
be attentive to racially
segmented local labor markets and community patterns, to
changes in local political
economies specific to a given city or region, and to established
racial and gender ideology
for a given location. This approach would go far to deconstruct
Eurocentric, masculinist
analyses that implicitly rely on controlling images of the
matriarch or the welfare mother as
guiding conceptual premises. . . . Black feminist thought that
rearticulates experiences such
as these fosters an enhanced theoretical understanding of how
race, gender, and class
oppression are part of a single, historically created system.

The Matrix of Domination
Additive models of oppression are firmly rooted in the either/or
dichotomous thinking of
Eurocentric, masculinist thought. One must be either Black or
white in such thought
systems--persons of ambiguous racial and ethnic identity
constantly battle with questions
such as "what are your, anyway?" This emphasis on
quantification and categorization occurs
in conjunction with the belief that either/or categories must be
ranked. The search for
certainty of this sort requires that one side of a dichotomy be
privileged while its other is
denigrated. Privilege becomes defined in relation to its other.
Replacing additive models of oppression with interlocking ones
creates possibilities for new
paradigms. The significance of seeing race, class, and gender as
interlocking systems of
oppression is that such an approach fosters a paradigmatic shift
of thinking inclusively about
other oppressions, such as age, sexual orientation, religion, and
ethnicity. Race, class, and
gender represent the three systems of oppression that most
heavily affect African-American
women. But these systems and the economic, political, and
ideological conditions that
support them may not be the most fundamental oppressions, and
they certainly affect many
more groups than Black women. Other people of color, Jews,
the poor white women, and
gays and lesbians have all had similar ideological justifications
offered for their
subordination. All categories of humans labeled Others have

been equated to one another, to
animals, and to nature.
Placing African-American women and other excluded groups in
the center of analysis opens
up possibilities for a both/and conceptual stance, one in which
all groups possess varying
amounts of penalty and privilege in one historically created
system. In this system, for
example, white women are penalized by their gender but
privileged by their race. Depending
on the context, an individual may be an oppressor, a member of
an oppressed group, or
simultaneously oppressor and oppressed.
Adhering to a both/and conceptual stance does not mean that
race, class, and gender
oppression are interchangeable. For example, whereas race,
class, and gender oppression
operate on the social structural level of institutions, gender
oppression seems better able to
annex the basic power of the erotic and intrude in personal
relationships via family
dynamics and within individual consciousness. This may be
because racial oppression has
fostered historically concrete communities among African-
Americans and other
racial/ethnic groups. These communities have stimulated

cultures of resistance. While these
communities segregate Blacks from whites, they simultaneously
provide counter-
institutional buffers that subordinate groups such as African-
Americans use to resist the
ideas and institutions of dominant groups. Social class may be
similarly structured.
Traditionally conceptualized as a relationship of individual
employees to their employers,
social class might be better viewed as a relationship of
communities to capitalist political
economies. Moreover, significant overlap exists between racial
and social class oppression
when viewing them through the collective lens of family and
community. Existing
community structures provide a primary line of resistance
against racial and class
oppression. But because gender cross-cuts these structures, it
finds fewer comparable
institutional bases to foster resistance.
Embracing a both/and conceptual stance moves us from
additive, separate systems
approaches to oppression and toward what I now see as the
more fundamental issue of the
social relations of domination. Race, class, and gender
constitute axes of oppression that
characterize Black women's experiences within a more
generalized matrix of domination.
Other groups may encounter different dimensions of the matrix,
such as sexual orientation,
religion, and age, but the overarching relationship is one of
domination and the types of
activism it generates.
Bell Hooks labels this matrix a "politic of domination" and

describes how it operates along
interlocking axes of race, class, and gender oppression. This
politic of domination
refers to the ideological ground that they share, which is a
belief in domination,
and a belief in the notions of superior and inferior, which are
components of all
of those systems. For me it's like a house, they share the
foundation, but the
foundation is the ideological beliefs around which notions of
domination are
constructed.
Johnella Butler claims that new methodologies growing from
this new paradigm would be
"non-hierarchical" and would "refuse primacy to either race,
class, gender, or ethnicity,
demanding instead a recognition of their matrix-like
interaction." Race, class, and gender
may not be the most fundamental or important systems of
oppression, but they have most
profoundly affected African-American women. One significant
dimension of Black feminist
thought is its potential to reveal insights about the social
relations of domination organized
along other axes such as religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
and age. Investigating Black
women's particular experiences thus promises to reveal much
about the more universal
process of domination.
Multiple Levels of Domination
In addition to being structured along axes such as race, gender,
and social class, the matrix

of domination is structured on several levels. People experience
and resist oppression on
three levels: the level of personal biography; the group or
community level of the cultural
context created by race, class, and gender; and the systemic
level of social institutions.
Black feminist thought emphasizes all three levels as sites of
domination and as potential
sites of resistance.
Each individual has a unique personal biography made up of
concrete experiences, values,
motivations, and emotions. No two individuals occupy the same
social space; thus no two
biographies are identical. Human ties can be freeing and
empowering, as is the case with
Black women's heterosexual love relationships or in the power
of motherhood in African-
American families and communities. Human ties can also be
confining and oppressive.
Situations of domestic violence and abuse or cases in which
controlling images foster Black
women's internalized oppression represent domination on the
personal level. The same
situation can look quite different depending on the
consciousness one brings to interpret it.
This level of individual consciousness is a fundamental area

where new knowledge can
generate change. Traditional accounts assume that power as
domination operates from the
top down by forcing and controlling unwilling victims to bend
to the will of more powerful
superiors. But these accounts fail to account for questions
concerning why, for example,
women stay with abusive men even with ample opportunity to
leave or why slaves did not
kill their owners more often. The willingness of the victim to
collude in her or his own
victimization becomes lost. They also fail to account for
sustained resistance by victims,
even when chances for victory appear remote. By emphasizing
the power of self-definition
and the necessity of a free mind, Black feminist thought speaks
to the importance African-
American women thinkers place on consciousness as a sphere of
freedom. Black women
intellectuals realize that domination operates not only by
structuring power from the top
down but by simultaneously annexing the power as energy of
those on the bottom for its
own ends. In their efforts to rearticulate the standpoint of
African-American women as a
group, Black feminist thinkers offer individual African-
American women the conceptual
tools to resist oppression.
The cultural context formed by those experiences and ideas that
are shared with other
members of a group or community which give meaning to
individual biographies constitutes
a second level at which domination is experienced and resisted.
Each individual biography
is rooted in several overlapping cultural contexts--for example,

groups defined by race,
social class, age, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. The
cultural component
contributes, among other things, the concepts used in thinking
and acting, group validation
of an individual's interpretation of concepts, the "thought
models" used in the acquisition of
knowledge, and standards used to evaluate individual thought
and behavior. The most
cohesive cultural contexts are those with identifiable histories,
geographic locations, and
social institutions. For Black women African-American
communities have provided the
location for an Afrocentric group perspective to endure.
Subjugated knowledges, such as a Black women's culture of
resistance, develop in cultural
contexts controlled by oppressed groups. Dominant groups aim
to replace subjugated
knowledge with their own specialized thought because they
realize that gaining control over
this dimension of subordinate groups' lives simplifies control.
While efforts to influence this
dimension of an oppressed group's experiences can be partially
successful, this level is more
difficult to control than dominant groups would have us believe.
For example, adhering to
externally derived standards of beauty leads many African-
American women to dislike their
skin color or hair texture. Similarly, internalizing Eurocentric
gender ideology leads some
Black men to abuse Black women. These are cases of the
successful infusion of the
dominant group's specialized thought into the everyday cultural
context of African-
Americans. But the long-standing existence of a Black women's

culture of resistance as
expressed through Black women's relationships with one
another, the Black women's blues
tradition, and the voices of contemporary African-American
women writers all attest to the
difficulty of eliminating the cultural context as a fundamental
site of resistance.
Domination is also experienced and resisted on the third level
of social institutions
controlled by the dominant group: namely, schools, churches,
the media, and other formal
organizations. These institutions expose individuals to the
specialized thought representing
the dominant group's standpoint and interests. While such
institutions offer the promise of
both literacy and other skills that can be used for individual
empowerment and social
transformation, they simultaneously require docility and
passivity. Such institutions would
have us believe that the theorizing of elites constitutes the
whole of theory. The existence of
African-American women thinkers such as Maria Stewart,
Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale
Hurston, and Fannie Lou Hamer who, though excluded from
and/or marginalized within
such institutions, continued to produce theory effectively
opposes this hegemonic view.

Moreover, the more recent resurgence of Black feminist thought
within these institutions,
the case of the outpouring of contemporary Black feminist
thought in history and literature,
directly challenges the Eurocentric masculinist thought
pervading these institutions.
Resisting the Matrix of Domination
Domination operates by seducing, pressuring, or forcing
African-American women and
members of subordinated groups to replace individual and
cultural ways of knowing with
the dominant group's specialized thought. As a result, suggests
Audre Lorde, "the true focus
of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive
situations which we seek to escape,
but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within
each of us." Or as Toni Cade
Bambara succinctly states, "revolution begins with the self, in
the self."
Lorde and Bambara's suppositions raise an important issue for
Black feminist intellectuals
and for all scholars and activists working for social change.
Although most individuals have
little difficulty identifying their own victimization within some
major system of oppression--
whether it be by race, social class, religion, physical ability,
sexual orientation, ethnicity, age
or gender--they typically fail to see how their thoughts and
actions uphold someone else's
subordination. Thus white feminists routinely point with
confidence to their oppression as
women but resist seeing how much their white skin privileges
them. African-Americans

who possess eloquent analyses of racism often persist in
viewing poor white women as
symbols of white power. The radical left fares little better. "If
only people of color and
women could see their true class interests," they argue, "class
solidarity would eliminate
racism and sexism." In essence, each group identifies the
oppression with which it feels
most comfortable as being fundamental and classifies all others
as being of lesser
importance. Oppression is filled with such contradictions
because these approaches fail to
recognize that a matrix of domination contains few pure victims
or oppressors. Each
individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege
from the multiple systems of
oppression which frame everyone's lives.
A broader focus stresses the interlocking nature of oppressions
that are structured on
multiple levels, from the individual to the social structural, and
which are part of a larger
matrix of domination. Adhering to this inclusive model provides
the conceptual space
needed for each individual to see that she or he is both a
member of multiple dominant
groups and a member of multiple subordinate groups. Shifting
the analysis to investigating
how the matrix of domination is structured along certain axes--
race, gender, and class being
the axes of investigation for AfricanAmerican women--reveals
that different systems of
oppression may rely in varying degrees on systemic versus
interpersonal mechanisms of
domination.

Empowerment involves rejecting the dimensions of knowledge,
whether personal, cultural,
or institutional, that perpetuate objectification and
dehumanization. African-American
women and other individuals in subordinate groups become
empowered when we
understand and use those dimensions of our individual, group,
and disciplinary ways of
knowing that foster our humanity as fully human subjects. This
is the case when Black
women value our self-definitions, participate in a Black
women's activist tradition, invoke
an Afrocentric feminist epistemology as central to our
worldview, and view the skills gained
in schools as part of a focused education for Black community
development. C. Wright
Mills identifies this holistic epistemology as the "sociological
imagination" and identifies its
task and its promise as a way of knowing that enables
individuals to grasp the relations
between history and biography within society. Using one's
standpoint to engage the
sociological imagination can empower the individual. "My
fullest concentration of energy is
available to me," Audre Lorde maintains, "only when I integrate
all the parts of who I am,
openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to
flow back and forth freely

through all my different selves, without the restriction of
externally imposed definition."
Black Women as Agents of Knowledge
Living life as an African-American woman is a necessary
prerequisite for producing Black
feminist thought because within Black women's communities
thought is validated and
produced with reference to a particular set of historical,
material, and epistemological
conditions. African-American women who adhere to the idea
that claims about Black
women must be substantiated by Black women's sense of our
own experiences and who
anchor our knowledge claims in an Afrocentric feminist
epistemology have produced a rich
tradition of Black feminist thought.
Traditionally such women were blues singers, poets,
autobiographers, storytellers, and
orators validated by everyday Black women as experts on a
Black women's standpoint. Only
a few unusual African-American feminist scholars have been
able to defy Eurocentric
masculinist epistemologies and explicitly embrace an
Afrocentric feminist epistemology.
Consider Alice Walker's description of Zora Neal Hurston:
In my mind, Zora Neale Hurston, Billie Holiday, and Bessie
Smith form a sort
of unholy trinity. Zora belongs in the tradition of black women
singers, rather
than among "the literati." . . . Like Billie and Jessie she
followed her own road,
believed in her own gods pursued her own dreams, and refused

to separate
herself from "common" people.
Zora Neal Hurston is an exception for prior to 1950, few
African-American women earned
advanced degrees and most of those who did complied with
Eurocentric masculinist
epistemologies. Although these women worked on behalf of
Black women, they did so
within the confines of pervasive race and gender oppression.
Black women scholars were in
a position to see the exclusion of African-American women
from scholarly discourse, and
the thematic content of their work often reflected their interest
in examining a Black
women's standpoint. However, their tenuous status in academic
institutions led them to
adhere to Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies so that their
work would be accepted as
scholarly. As a result, while they produced Black feminist
thought, those African-American
women most likely to gain academic credentials were often least
likely to produce Black
feminist thought that used an Afrocentric feminist
epistemology.
An ongoing tension exists for Black women as agents of
knowledge, a tension rooted in the
sometimes conflicting demands of Afrocentricity and feminism.
Those Black women who
are feminists are critical of how Black culture and many of its
traditions oppress women.
For example, the strong pronatal beliefs in African-American
communities that foster early
motherhood among adolescent girls, the lack of self-
actualization that can accompany the

double-day of paid employment and work in the home, and the
emotional and physical
abuse that many Black women experience from their fathers,
lovers, and husbands all reflect
practices opposed by African-American women who are
feminists. But these same women
may have a parallel desire as members of an oppressed racial
group to affirm the value of
that same culture and traditions. Thus strong Black mothers
appear in Black women's
literature, Black women's economic contributions to families is
lauded, and a curious silence
exists concerning domestic abuse.
As more African-American women earn advanced degrees, the
range of Black feminist
scholarship is expanding. Increasing numbers of African-
American women scholars are
explicitly choosing to ground their work in Black women's
experiences, and, by doing so,
they implicitly adhere to an Afrocentric feminist epistemology.
Rather than being restrained
by their both/and status of marginality, these women make
creative use of their outsider-
within status and produce innovative Afrocentric feminist
thought. The difficulties these
women face lie less in demonstrating that they have mastered
white male epistemologies
than in resisting the hegemonic nature of these patterns of

thought in order to see, value, and
use existing alternative Afrocentric feminist ways of knowing.
In establishing the legitimacy of their knowledge claims, Black
women scholars who want
to develop Afrocentric feminist thought may encounter the often
conflicting standards of
three key groups. First, Black feminist thought must be
validated by ordinary Atrican-
American women who, in the words of Hannah Nelson, grow to
womanhood "in a world
where the saner you are, the madder you are made to appear."
To be credible in the eyes of
this group, scholars must be personal advocates for their
material, be accountable for the
consequences of their work, have lived or experienced their
material in some fashion, and be
willing to engage in dialogues about their findings with
ordinary, everyday people. Second,
Black feminist thought also must be accepted by the community
of Black women scholars.
These scholars place varying amounts of importance on
rearticulating a Black women's
standpoint using an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Third,
Afrocentric feminist thought
within academia must be prepared to confront Eurocentric
masculinist political and
epistemological requirements.
The dilemma facing Black women scholars engaged in creating
Black feminist thought is
that a knowledge claim that meets the criteria of adequacy for
one group and thus is judged
to be an acceptable knowledge claim may not be translatable
into the terms of a different
group. Using the example of Black English, June Jordan

illustrates the difficulty of moving
among epistemologies:
You cannot "translate" instances of Standard English
preoccupied with
abstraction or with nothing/nobody evidently alive into Black
English. That
would warp the language into uses antithetical to the guiding
perspective of its
community of users. Rather you must first change those
Standard English
sentences, themselves, into ideas consistent with the person-
centered
assumptions of Black English.
Although both worldviews share a common vocabulary, the
ideas themselves defy direct
translation.
For Black women who are agents of knowledge, the marginality
that accompanies outsider-
within status can be the source of both frustration and
creativity. In an attempt to minimize
the differences between the cultural context of African-
American communities and the
expectations of social institutions, some women dichotomize
their behavior and become two
different people. Over time, the strain of doing this can be
enormous. Others reject their
cultural context and work against their own best interests by
enforcing the dominant group's
specialized thought. Still others manage to inhabit both contexts
but do so critically, using
their outsider-within perspectives as a source of insights and
ideas. But while outsiders
within can make substantial personal cost. "Eventually it comes

to you," observes Lorraine
Hansberry, "the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at
all, is inevitably that which
must also make you lonely."
Once Black feminist scholars face the notion that, on certain
dimensions of a Black women's
standpoint, it may be fruitless to try and translate ideas from an
Afrocentric feminist
epistemology into a Eurocentric masculinist framework, then
other choices emerge. Rather
than trying to uncover universal knowledge claims that can
withstand the translation from
one epistemology to another (initially, at least), Black women
intellectuals might find efforts
to rearticulate a Black women's standpoint especially fruitful.
Rearticulating a Black
women's standpoint refashions the concrete and reveals the
more universal human
dimensions of Black women's everyday lives. "I date all my
work," notes Nikki Giovanni,
"because I think poetry, or any writing, is but a reflection of the
moment. The universal
comes from the particular." Bell Hooks maintains, "my goal as a
feminist thinker and
theorist is to take that abstraction and articulate it in a language
that renders it accessible--
not less complex or rigorous--but simply more accessible." The

complexity exists;
interpreting it remains the unfulfilled challenge for Black
women intellectuals.
Situated Knowledge, Subjugated Knowledge, and Partial
Perspectives
"My life seems to be an increasing revelation of the intimate
trace of universal struggle,"
claims June Jordan:
You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next
you open your eyes to what
you call your people and that leads you into land reform into
Black English into Angola
leads you back to your own bed where you lie by yourself;
wondering it you deserve to be
peaceful, or trusted or desired or left to the freedom of your
own unfaltering heart. And the
scale shrinks to the use of a skull: your own interior cage.
Lorraine Hansberry expresses a similar idea: "I believe that one
of the most sound ideas in
dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you
must pay very great attention to
the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from the truthful
identity of what is." Jordan and
Hansberry's insights that universal struggle and truth may wear
a particularistic, intimate
face suggest a new epistemological stance concerning how we
negotiate competing
knowledge claims and identify "truth."
The context in which African-American women's ideas are
nurtured or suppressed matters.
Understanding the content and epistemology of Black women's

ideas as specialized
knowledge requires attending to the context from which those
ideas emerge. While
produced by individuals, Black feminist thought as situated
knowledge is embedded in the
communities in which African-American women find ourselves.
A Black women's standpoint and those of other oppressed
groups is not only embedded in a
context but exists in a situation characterized by domination.
Because Black women's ideas
have been suppressed, this suppression has stimulated African-
American women to create
knowledge that empowers people to resist domination. Thus
Afrocentric feminist thought
represents a subjugated knowledge. A Black women's standpoint
may provide a preferred
stance from which to view the matrix of domination because, in
principle, Black feminist
thought as specialized thought is less likely than the specialized
knowledge produced by
dominant groups to deny the connection between ideas and the
vested interests of their
creators. However, Black feminist thought as subjugated
knowledge is not exempt from
critical analysis, because subjugation is not grounds for an
epistemology.
Despite African-American women's potential power to reveal
new insights about the matrix
of domination, a Black women's standpoint is only one angle of
vision. Thus Black feminist
thought represents a partial perspective. The overarching matrix
of domination houses
multiple groups, each with varying experiences with penalty and
privilege that produce

corresponding partial perspectives, situated knowledges, and,
for clearly identifiable
subordinate groups, subjugated knowledges. No one group has a
clear angle of vision. No
one group possesses the theory or methodology that allows it to
discover the absolute "truth"
or, worse yet, proclaim its theories and methodologies as the
universal norm evaluating
other groups' experiences. Given that groups are unequal in
power in making themselves
heard, dominant groups have a vested interest in suppressing the
knowledge produced by
subordinate groups. Given the existence of multiple and
competing knowledge claims to
"truth" produced by groups with partial perspectives, what
epistemological approach offers
the most promise?
Dialogue and Empathy
Western social and political thought contains two alternative
approaches to ascertaining
"truth." The first, reflected in positivist science, has long
claimed that absolute truths exist
and that the task of scholarship is to develop objective,
unbiased tools of science to measure
these truths. . . . Relativism, the second approach, has been
forwarded as the antithesis of

and inevitable outcome of rejecting a positivist science. From a
relativist perspective all
groups produce specialized thought and each group's thought is
equally valid. No group can
claim to have a better interpretation of the "truth" than another.
In a sense, relativism
represents the opposite of scientific ideologies of objectivity.
As epistemological stances,
both positivist science and relativism minimize the importance
of specific location in
influencing a group's knowledge claims, the power inequities
among groups that produce
subjugated knowledges, and the strengths and limitations of
partial perspective.
The existence of Black feminist thought suggests another
alternative to the ostensibly
objective norms of science and to relativism's claims that
groups with competing knowledge
claims are equal. . . . This approach to Afrocentric feminist
thought allows African-
American women to bring a Black women's standpoint to larger
epistemological dialogues
concerning the nature of the matrix of domination. Eventually
such dialogues may get us to
a point at which, claims Elsa Barkley Brown, "all people can
learn to center in another
experience, validate it, and judge it by its own standards
without need of comparison or
need to adopt that framework as their own." In such dialogues,
"one has no need to
'decenter' anyone in order to center someone else; one has only
to constantly, appropriately,
'pivot the center.' "
Those ideas that are validated as true by African-American

women, African-American men,
Latina lesbians, Asian-American women, Puerto Rican men, and
other groups with
distinctive standpoints, with each group using the
epistemological approaches growing from
its unique standpoint, thus become the most "objective" truths.
Each group speaks from its
own standpoint and shares its own partial, situated knowledge.
But because each group
perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished.
Each group becomes better
able to consider other groups' standpoints without relinquishing
the uniqueness of its own
standpoint or suppressing other groups' partial perspectives.
"What is always needed in the
appreciation of art, or life," maintains Alice Walker, "is the
larger perspective. Connections
made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the
straining to encompass in one's
glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying
theme through immense
diversity." Partiality and not universality is the condition of
being heard; individuals and
groups forwarding knowledge claims without owning their
position are deemed less credible
than those who do.
Dialogue is critical to the success of this epistemological
approach, the type of dialogue
long extant in the Afrocentric call-and-response tradition
whereby power dynamics are fluid,
everyone has a voice, but everyone must listen and respond to
other voices in order to be
allowed to remain in the community. Sharing a common cause
fosters dialogue and
encourages groups to transcend their differences. . . .

African-American women have been victimized by race, gender,
and class oppression. But
portraying Black women solely as passive, unfortunate
recipients of racial and sexual abuse
stifles notions that Black women can actively work to change
our circumstances and bring
about changes in our lives. Similarly, presenting African-
American women solely as heroic
figures who easily engage in resisting oppression on all fronts
minimizes the very real costs
of oppression and can foster the perception that Black women
need no help because we can
"take it."
Black feminist thought's emphasis on the ongoing interplay
between Black women's
oppression and Black women's activism presents the matrix of
domination as responsive to
human agency. Such thought views the world as a dynamic
place where the goal is not
merely to survive or to fit in or to cope; rather, it becomes a
place where we feel ownership
and accountability. The existence of Afrocentric feminist
thought suggests that there is
always choice, and power to act, no matter how bleak the
situation may appear to be.
Viewing the world as one in the making raises the issue of

individual responsibility for
bringing about change. It also shows that while individual
empowerment is key, only
collective action can effectively generate lasting social
transformation of political and
economic institutions.
· The Stigma of Charity at the Intersection of Race, Class and
Gender
Beyond microaggressions in one-on-one interaction, being
connected to a stigmatized identity on the basis of race,
ethnicity, class, gender and so forth can jeopardize one's
standing in their local community, even when that connection
comes from circumstances beyond our control. One
partciularly interesting study was conducted by Sociologist
Aliece Fothergill (2003).
Fothergill examined the experiences of individuals affected by
the Grand Forks flood in North Dakota in 1997. These
individuals were predominantly middle class, white and women.
When the flood hit, it destroyed the community and many of its
members were forced to rely upon government aid as their
personal wealth dwindled. The women reported feeling
stigmatized, even though the disaster was an act of nature.
Fothergill's research tells us how the political and economic
context of the nation, and the social construction of the poor
and charity recipients impacted these women's experiences.
Fothergill says:
"According to Georg Simmel (1965), the poor are not united by
the interaction of its members but by the collective attitude that
society as a whole adopts toward them. The collective attitude,
research has shown, is overwhelmingly negative, particularly if
the poor receive any public assistance. Politicians and social
pundits often maintain that welfare recipients are lazy and
unwilling to work and that women on welfare are promiscuous
and have more children in order to receive more benefits."

'Welfare recipient' is seen as as a spoiled identity,
largely because of its racial and gendered connotations, and
being associated with it can put people in the crosshairs for
rejection, microagressions, and so forth. As Fothergill claims:
"As a result of these stereotypes and rhetoric, individuals who
receive public assistance experience shame, embarrassment,and
humiliation (Wyers 1977; Rank 1994). Overall, the stigma of
welfare prevents many individuals who need help the most from
receiving it (Loewenberg 1981) and ultimately serves to punish
poor people for being poor (Sidel 1986). Most social scientists
posit that the majority of individuals receiving some form of
public assistance do so not because of a flaw in their character
or behavior."
·
Sociology is a Martial Art!: The Fiction of the Welfare Queen
An article from Slate magazine helps shed light on how the
stigma associated with welfare became part of American
culture. The article begins:
"In October 1976, Reagan—who had lost that year’s GOP
nomination to Gerald Ford—devoted one of his regular radio
commentaries to updating the story of the “welfare queen, as
she’s now called.” (While I haven’t found any examples of him
saying “welfare queen” on the stump in 1976, he did use the
term in this radio address.) According to Reagan, it had now
been revealed that this woman (he still didn’t identify her by
name) had operated in 14 states using 127 names, claimed to be
the mother of 14 children, was using 50 addresses “in Chicago
alone,” and had posed as an open heart surgeon. She also had
“three new cars, a full-length mink coat, and her take is
estimated at a million dollars.”"
The audio from that speech can be found here:
https://soundcloud.com/slate-articles/ronald-reagan-radio-
commentary
The Slate article continues:"Ronald Reagan regularly dusted off
the welfare queen’s lurid misadventures, arguing that rampant
fraud demanded decisive government action. In pushing for

welfare reform as president in 1981, he told members of
Congress that “in addition to collecting welfare under 123
different names, she also had 55 Social Security cards,” and that
“there’s much more of [this type of fraud] than anyone
realizes.”
The story in Slate details the crimes of a woman (of mixed race)
named Linda Taylor, who was a criminal accused of many
fraud-based crimes, as well as violent criminal acts. Though
she was mixed race, Reagan often related this story in a way
that implied she was black, and much of the subsequent anti-
welfare discourse characterizes welfare as being mostly about
the state of black Americans.
Does the rhetoric of the welfare queen impact peoples'
perception or race, class and gender? The answer seems to be
yes, at least according to Social Psychologist Franklin Gilliam,
who developed an experiment to test this question. Gilliam
developed a several iterations of a false news story, which he
and his colleagues filmed, in which the story of a woman on
welfare (named Rhonda) was shown. Following the story was a
survey on attitudes towards welfare. In different iterations of
the false news story, the welfare recipient was shown as a white
or black woman, or not shown at all as a control. All other
elements including the woman's style of clothing were kept
identical, as you can see in the pictures below:
"I am sitting by the Window in th is Atrocious Nursery."
THE YELLON TALL-PAPER.
By Cltarlotte Perkins Stetson.

T is very seldom
that mere ordi-
nary P""ople like
J ohn and myself
secure ancestral
hall s for the
summer.
A colonial man-
sion, a hereditary
estate, I would
say a haunted
house, and reach the height of romantic
felicity- but that would be asking too
much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is
something queer about it.
Else, why shou ld it be let so cheaply?
And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one
expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He
has no patience with faith, an intense
horror of superstition, and he scoffs
openly at any talk of things not to be felt
and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and perltaps - (I
would not say it to a living soul, of
course, but this is dead paper and a
great relief to my mind - ) per/zaps that

is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick! .
And what can one do?
THE YELLOW WALL-PARER.
If a physician of high standing, and
one's own husband, assures friends and
relatives that there is really nothing the
matter with one but temporary nervous
depression - a slight hysterical tendency
- what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and
also of high standing, and he says the
same thing. •
So I take phosphates or phosphites-
whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys,
and air, and exercise, and am absolutely
forbidden to "work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial
work, with excitement and change, would
do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while 111 spite of
them; but it does exhaust me a good
deal-having to be so sly about it, or

else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that in my condi-
tion if I had less opposition and more
. society and stimulus - but John says the
very worst thing I can do is to think
about my condition, and I confess it
always makes me feel bad.
So I will let it alone and talk about
the house.
The most beautiful place! It is quite
alone, standing well back from the road,
quite three miles from the village. It
makes me think of English places that
you read about, for there are hedges and
walls and gates that lock, and lots of
separate little houses for the gardeners
and people.
There is a delicious garden! I never
saw such a garden -large and shady,
full of box-bordered paths, and lined with
long grape-covered arbors with seats under
them.
There were greenhouses, too, but they
are all broken now.
There was some legal trouble, I be-
lieve, something abou t the heirs and co-
heirs; anyhow, the place has been empty
for years .

That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid,
but I don't care - there is something
strange about the house - I can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight
evening, but he said what I felt was a
drauglzt, and shut the window.
I get unreasonably angry with John
sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be
so sensitive. I think it is due to this
nervous condition.
But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect
proper self-control; so I take pains to
control myself-before him, at least, a nd
that makes me very tired.
I don't like our room a bit. I wanted
one downstairs that opened on the piazza
and had roses all over the window, and
such pretty old-fashioned chintz hang-
ings! but John would not he ar of it.
He said there was only one window
and not room for two beds, and no near
room for him if he took another.
He is very carefu l and loving, and
hardly lets me stir without special direc-
tion.
I have a schedule prescription for each
hour in the day; he takes a ll care from
me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to
value it ·more.

He said we came here solely on my
account, that I was to have perfect rest
and all the air I could get. "Your ex -
erc ise depends on your strength, my
dear," said he," and your food somewhat
on your appetite; but air you can ab-
sorb all the time." So we took the nur-
sery at the top of the house.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor
nearly, with windows that look all ways,
and air and sunshine galore. It was
nursery first and then playroom and
gymnasium, I should judge; for the win-
dows are barred for little children, and
there are rings and things in the walls.
The paint and paper look as if a boys'
school had used it. It is stripped off-
the paper - in great patches all around
the head of my bed, about as far as I can
reach, and in a great place on the other
side of the room low down. I never saw
a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant
patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in
following, pronounced enough to con-
stantly irritate and provoke study, and
when you follow the lame uncertain
curves for a little distance they suddenly
commit suicide - plunge off at outrage -
ous angles, destroy themselves in un-

heard of contradictions.
THE YELLOW ·WAL~PAPER. 649
The color is repellant, almost revolt-
ing ; a smouldering unclean yellow,
strangely faded by the slow-turning sun-
light.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some
places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
No wonder the children hated it! I
should hate it myself if I had to live in
this room long.
There comes John, and I must put this
away, - he hates to have me write a
word.
• • • • * •
We have been here two·weeks, and I
haven't felt like writing before, since that
first day.
I am sitting by the window now, up in
this atrocious nursery, and there is noth-
ing to hinder my writing as much as I
please, save lack of strength.
John is away all day, and even some
nights when his cases are serious.

I am glad my case is not serious!
But these nervous troubles are dread-
fully depressing.
John does not know how much I really
suffer. He knows there is no reason to
suffer, and that satisfies him.
Of course it is only nervousness. It does
weigh o"n me so not to do my duty in
any way!
I meant to be such a help to John,
such a real rest and comfort, and here I
am a comparative burden already!
Nobody would believe what an effort it
is to do what little I am able, - to dress
and entertain, and order things.
It is fortunate Mary is so good with
the baby. Such a dear baby!
And yet I cannot be with him, it makes
me so nervous.
I suppose John never was nervous in
his life. He laughs at me so about this
wall-paper!
At first he meant to repaper the room,
but afterwards he said that I was letting
it get the better of me, and that nothing
was worse for a nervous patient than to
give way to such fancies.

He said that after the wall-paper was
changed it would be the heavy bedstead,
and then the barred windows, and then
that gate at the head of the stairs, and so
on.
"You know the place is doing you
good," he said, "and really, dear, I don't
care to renovate the house just for a
three months' rental."
"Then do let us go downstairs," I
said, "there are such pretty rooms there."
Then he took me in his arms and
called me a blessed little goose, and said
he would go down cellar, if I wished, and
have it whitewashed into the bargain.
But he is right enough about the beds
and windows and things.
It is an airy and comfortable room as
anyone need wish, and, of course, I would
not be so silly as to make him uncomfort-
able just for a whim.
I'm really getting quite fond of the
big room, all but that horrid paper.
Out of one window I can see the
garden, those mysterious deep-shaded
arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers,
and bushes and gnarly trees.

Out of another I get a lovely view of
the bay and a little private wharf be-
longing to the estate. There is a beauti-
ful shaded lane that runs down there
from the house. I always fancy I see
people walking in these numerous paths
and arbors, but John has cautioned me
not to give way to fancy in the least. He
says that with my imaginative power and
habit of story-making, a nervous weak-
ness like mine is sure to lead to all man-
ner of excited fancies, and that I ought
to use my will and good sense to check
the tendency. So I try.
I think sometimes that if I were only
well enough to write_ a little it would re-
lieve the press of ideas and rest me.
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
It is so discouraging not to have any
advice and companionship about my
work. When I get really well, John says
we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down
for a long visit; but he says he would as
soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to
let me have those stimulating people
about now.
I wish I could get well faster.
But I must not think about that. This
paper looks to me as if it knew what a
vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the.
pattern lolls like a broken neck and two
bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.
I get positively angry with the imperti-
j
650 THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
nence of it and the everlastingness. Up
and down and sideways they crawl, and
those absurd, unblinking eyes are every-
where. There is one place where two
breaths didn't match, and the eyes go all
up and down the line, one a little higher
than the other.
I never saw so much expression in an
inanimate thing before, and we all know
how much expression they have! I
used to lie awake as a child and get more
entertainment and terror out of blank
walls and plain furniture than most chil-
dren could find in a toy-store.
I remember what a kindly wink the
knobs of our big, old bureau used to
have, and there was one chair that always
seemed like a strong friend.
I used to feel that if any of the other

things looked too fierce I could always
hop into that chair and be safe.
The furniture in this room is no worse
than inharmonious, however, for we had
to bring it all from downstairs. I sup-
pose when this was used as a playroom
they had to take the nursery things out,
and no wonder! I never saw such
raV .lges as the children have made here.
The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn
off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a
brother - they must have had persever-
ance as well as hatred.
Then the floor is scratched and gou~ed
and splintered, the plaster itself is dug
out here and there, and this great heavy
bed which is all we found in the room,
looks as if it had been through the wars.
H But I don't mind it a bit - only the
paper.
There comes John's sister. Such a
dear girl as she is, and so careful of me !
I must not let her find me writing.
She is a perfect and enthusiastic house-
keeper, and hopes for no better profes-
sion. I verily believe she thinks it is the
writing which made me sick!
But I can write when she is out, and
see her a long way off from these windows .

There is one that commands the road,
a lovely shaded winding road, and one
that just looks off over the country. A
lovely country, too, full of great elms and
velvet meadows.
This wallpaper has a kind of su b-
pattern in a different shade, a particularly
irritating one, for you can only see It In
certain lights, and not clearly then.
But in the places where it isn't faded
and where the sun is just so - I can see a
strange, provoking, formless sort of figure,
that seems to skulk about behind that silly
and conspicuous front design.
There's sister on the stairs!
* * * * * *
Well, the Fourth of July is over! The
people are all gone and I am tired out.
John thought it might do me good to see
a little company, so we just had mother
and Nellie and the children down for a
week.
Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie
sees to everything now.
But it tired me all the same.
John says if I don't pick up faster he

shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
But I don't want to go there at all. I
had a friend who was in his hands once,
and she says he is just like John and my
brother, only more so !
Besides, it is such an undertaking to
go so far.
I don't feel as if it was worth while to
turn my hand over for anything, and I'm
getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the
time.
Of course I don't when John is here,
or anybody else, but when I am alone.
And I am alone a good deal just now.
John is kept in town very often by serious
cases, and Jennie is good and lets me
alone when I want her to.
So I walk a little in the garden or
down that lovely lane, sit on the porch
under the roses, and lie down up here a
good deal.
I'm getting really fond of the room in
spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because
of the wallpaper.
It dwells in my mind so !
I lie here on this great immovable bed

- it is nailed down, I believe - and fol-
low that pattern about by the hour. It it
as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I
start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in
the corner over there where it has nos
been touched, and I determine for the
thousandth time that I will follow that
pointless pattern to some sort of a con-
clusion.
THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER. 651
I know a little of the principle of
design, and I know this thing wa s not
arranged on any laws of radiation, or
alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or
anything else that I ever heard of.
It is repeated, of course, by the
breadths, but not otherwise.
Looked at in one way each breadth
stands alone, the bloated curves and
flourishes - a kind
of " debased Roma-
nesque" with deli-
rium tremens - go
waddling up and
down in isolated
columns of fatuity.
But, on the other
hand, they connect

diagonally, and the
sprawling outlines
run off in great
slanting waves of
optic horror, like a
lot of wallowing sea-
weeds in full chase.
The whole thing
goes horizontally,
too, at least it seems
so, and I exhaust
myself in trying to
distinguish the order
of its going in that
" direction.
They have used a
horizontal breadth
for a frieze, and that
adds wonderfully to
the confusion.
There is one end
of the room where
it is almost intact,
and there, when the
crosslights fade and the low sun shines
directly upon it, I can almost fancy radia-
tion after all, - the interminable gro-
tesque seem to form around a common
centre and rush off in headlong plunges
of equal distraction.
It makes me tired to follow it. I will

take a nap I guess.
* * * * * *
I don't know why I should write this.
I don't want to.
I don't feel able.
And I know John would think it
absurd. But I must say what I feel
and think in some way - it is such a-
relief !
But the effort is getting to be greater
than the relief.
Half the time now I am awfully lazy,.
and lie down ever so much.
o John says I mustn't lose my strength,.
a nd has me take cod liver oil and lots of
II Sh e didn't know I was in the Room. Il
tonics and things, to say nothing of ale-
and wine and rare meat.
Dear John! He loves me very dearlYr
and hates to have me sick. I tried to
have a real earnest reasonable talk with.
him the other day, and tell him how I
wish he would let me go and make a visit
to Cousin Henry and Julia.
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor"
able to stand it after I got there j and I
did not make out a very good case for

myself, for I was crying before I had fin-
ished.
·652 THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
It is getting to be a great effort for me
to think straight. Just this nervous weak-
ness I suppose.
And dear John gathered me up in his
arms, and just carried me upstairs and
laid me on the bed, and sat by me and
read to me till it tired my head.
He said I was his d arling and his COl).1-
fort and all he had, and that I must take
.care of myself for his sake, and keep
well.
He says no one but myself can help
me out of it, that I must use my will and
self-control and not let any silly fancies
run away with me.
There's one comfort, the baby is well
.and happy, and does not have to occupy
this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.
If we had not used it, that blessed
child would have! What a fortunate es-
cape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of
mine, an impressionable little thing, live
in such a room for worlds.

I never thought of it before, but it is
lucky that John kept me here after all, I
.can stand it so much easier than a baby,
you see.
Of course I never mention it to them
.any more - I am too wise, - but I keep
watch of it all the same.
There are things in that paper that
nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim
shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very
num::!rous.
And it is like a woman stooping down
.and creeping about behind that pattern.
I don't like it a bit. I wonder - I be-
-gin to think - I wish John would take
,me away from here!
* * * * * *
It is so hard to talk with John about
my case, because he is so wise, and be-
.cause he loves me so.
But I tried it last night.
It was moonlight. The moon shines
in a ll around just as the sun does.
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so

slowly, and always comes in by one win-
,dow or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken
nim, so I kept still and watched the
moonlight on that undulating wallpaper
till I felt creepy.
The faint figure behind seemed to
shake the pattern, just as if she wanted
to get out.
I got up softly and went to feel and see
if the paper did move, and when I came
back John was awake.
"What is it, little girl?" he said.
"Don't go walking about like that-
you'll get cold."
I thought it was a good time to talk,
so I told him that I really was not gain-
ing here, and that I wished he would
take me away.
"Why, d arling!" said he, "our lease
will be up in three weeks, and I can't see
how to leave before.
" The repairs are not done at home, and
I cannot possibly leave town just now.
Of course if you were in any danger, I
could and would, but you really are bet-
·ter, dear, whether you can 6ee it or not.
I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You
are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is

better, I feel really much easier about you."
"I don't weigh a bit more," said I,
"nor as much; and my appetite may be
better in the evening when you are here,
but it is worse in the morning when you
are awav!"
" Ble~s her little heart!" s:1id he with
a big hug, "she sha ll be as sick as she
pleases! But now let's improve the shin-
ing hours by going to sleep, and talk
about it in the morning! "
"And you won't go away?" I asked
gloomily.
"Why, how can I, dear? It is only
three weeks more and then we will take
a nice little trip of a few days while
Jennie is getting the house re ady. Really
dear you are better! "
" Better in body perhaps - " I began,
and stopped short, for he sat up straig ht
and looked at me with such a stern, re-
proachful look that I could not say
another word.
"My darling," said he, " I beg of you,
for my sake and for our child's sake, as
well as for your own, th at you will never
for one instant let that idea enter your
mind! There is nothing so dangerous,
so fascinating, to a temperament like
yours. It is a false and foolish fancy.

Can you not trust me as a physician when
I tell you so? "
THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER. 653-
So of course I said no more on that
score, and we went to sleep before long.
He thought I was asleep first, but I
wasn't, and lay there for hours trying to
.decide wh ether that front pattern and the
back pattern really did move together or
separately.
* * * * * *
On a pattern like this, by daylight,
there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of
law, that is a ' constant irritant to a nor-
mal mind.
The color is hideous enough, and un-
reliable enough, and infuriating enough,
but the pattern is torturing.
You think you have mastered it, but
just as you get well underway in following,
it turns a back-somersault and there you
are. It slaps you in the face, knocks
you down, and tra mples upon you. It is
like a bad dream.
The outside pattern is a florid ara-
b esque, reminding one of a fungu s. If
you can imagine a to adstool in joints, an

interminable string of toadstools, budding
and sprouting in endless convolutions-
why, that is something like it.
That is, sometimes!
There is one marked peculiarity about
this paper, a thing nobody seems to
notice but myself, and that is that it
changes as the light changes.
When the sun shoots in through the
east window - I always watch for that
first long, straight ray - it changes so
quickly that I never can quite believe it.
That is why I watch it always.
By moonligh[ - the moon shines in all
night when there is a moon - I wouldn't
know it was the same paper.
At night in any kind of light, in twi-
light, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of
all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The
outside pattern I mean, and the woman
behind it is as plain as can be.
I didn't realize for a long time what
th e thing was that showed behind, that
dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure
it is a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I
fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so
still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me

quiet by the hour.
I lie down ever so much now. John says
it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.
Indeed he started the habit by making-
me lie down for an hour after each meal.
It is a very bad habit I am convinced,.
for you see I don't sle ep.
And that cultivates deceit, for I don't
tell them I'm awake - 0 no !
The fact is I am getting a little afraid
of John.
He seems very queer sometimes, and
even Jennie has an inexplicable look.
It strikes me occasionally, just as a
scientific hypothesis,- that perhaps it is·
the paper!
I have watched John when he did not
know I was looking, and come into the
room suddenly on the most innocent ex-
cuses, and I've caught him several times.
looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I
caught Jennie with her hand on it once _
She didn't know I was in the room,.
and when I asked her in a quiet, a very
quiet voice, with the most restrained man-
ner possible, what she was doing with the
paper - she turned around as if she had

been caught stealing, and looked quite
angry - asked me why I should frighten .
her so !
Then she said tha t the paper stained
everything it touched, that she had found
yellow smooc hes on all my clothes and
John's, and she wished we would be more'
careful!
Did not that sound innocent? But I
know she was studying th at pattern, and
I am determined that nobody shall find
it out but myself!
* * * * * *
Life is very much more excltmg now
than it used to be. You see I have some-
thing more to expec t, to look forward to,.
to watch . I rea lly do eat better, and am
more quiet than I was.
John is so pleased to see me improve!
He laughed a little the other d ay, and
said I seemed to be flourishing in spite
of my wall-paper.
I turned it off with a laugh. I had no
intention of telling him it was because of
the wall-paper - he would make fun of
me . He might even want to take me away.
I don't want to leave now until I have
found it out. There is a week more, and
I think that will be enough.

* * * * * *
I'm feeling eve r so much better! I
<1on't sleep much at night, for it is so in-
teresting to watch developments j but I
:sleep a good deal in the daytime.
In the daytime it is tiresome and per-
p lexing.
There are always new shoots on the
fungus, and new shades of yellow all over
jt. I cannot keep count of them, though
I have tried conscientiously.
It is the stra ngest yellow, that wall-
paper! It makes me think of all the
yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful
()nes like buttercups, but old foul, bad yel-
low things.
But there is something else about that
paper - the smell! I noticed it the mo-
ment we came into the room, but with so
much air and sun it was not bad. Now
we have had a week of fog and rain, and
whether the windows are open or not, the
:smell is here.
It creeps all over the house.
I find it hovering in the dining-room,

skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall,
lying in wait for me on the stairs.
It g ets into my hair.
. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my
bead suddenly and surprise it - there is
that smell !
Such a peculiar odor, too! I have
:spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find
what it smelled like.
It is not bad - at first, and very
gentle, hut quite the subtlest, most endur-
ing odor I ever met.
In this damp weather it is awful, I
wake up in the night and fihd it hanging
()ver me.
It used to disturb me at first. I
thought seriously of burning the house-
to reach the smell.
But now I am used to it. The only
thing I can think of that it is like is the
~olor of the paper! A yellow smell.
There is a very funny mark on this
wall, low down, near the mopboard. A
streak that runs round the room. It goes
behind every piece of furnitnre, except
the bed, a long, straight, even smoocll, as
if it had been rubbed over and over.

I 'wonder how it was done and who did
it, and what they did it for. Round and
round and round - round and round a nd
round - it makes me di zzy!
* * * ¥ * *
i
t
t
t
I really have discovered something at
last.
Through watching so much at night,
when it changes so, I have finally founu out.
The front pattern does move - and no
wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

Sometimes I think there are a great
many women behind, and sometime;, .:;~:!y
one, and she crawls around fast, and her
crawling shakes it all over.
Then in the very ' bright spots she
keeps still, and in the very shady spots
she just takes hold of the bars and shakes
them hard.
And she is all the time trying to climb
through. But nobody could climb through
that pattern - it strangles so; I think
that is why it has so many heads.
They get through, and then the pat-
tern strangles them off and turns them
upside down, and makes their eyes white!
If those heads were covered or taken
off it would not be half so bad.
* * * * * *
I think that woman gets out in the
daytime!
And I'll tell you why - privately -
I've seen her!
I can see her out of everyone of my
windows!
It is the same woman, I know, for she
s always creeping, and most women do

not creep by daylight.
I see her in that long shaded lane,
creeping up and down. I see her in
hose dark grape ' arbors, creeping all
around the garden.
I see her on that long road under the
rees, creeping along, and when a car-
riage comes she hides under the black-
berry vines.
I don't blame her a bit. It must be
very humiliating to be caught creeping by
daylight !
I always lock the door when I creep
by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I
know John would suspect something at
once.
And John is so queer now, that I don't
want to irritate him. I wish he would
ake another room! Besides, I don't
want anybody to get that woman out at
night but myself.
I often wonder if I c ould see her out
of all the windows at once.

But, turn as fast as I can, I can only
see out of one at one time.
And though I always see her, she may
be able to creep faster than I can turn !
I have watched her sometimes away
off in the open country, creeping as fast
as a cloud shadow in a high wind.
* * * * * *
If only that top pattern could be got-
ten off from the under one! I mean to
try it, little by little.
I have found out another funny thing,
but I shan't tell it this time! It does
not do to trust people too much.
There are only two more days to get
this paper off, and I believe John is
beginning to notice . I don't like the
look in his eyes.
And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of
professional questions about me. She
had a very good report to give.
She said I slept a good deal in the
daytime.
John 'knows I don't sleep very well at
night, for all I'm so quiet!
He asked me all sorts of questions, too,

and pretended to be very loving and
kind.
As if I couldn't see through him!
Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleep-
ing under this paper for three months.
It only interests me, but I feel sure
John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.
* * * * * *
Hurrah! This is the last day, but it
is enough. John to stay in town over
night, and won't be out until this evening.
Jennie wanted to sleep with me - the
sly thing! but T told her I should un-
doubtedly rest better for a night all
alone. .
That was clever, for really I wasn't
alone a bit! As soon as it was moon-
light and that poor thing began to crawl
and shake the pattern, I got up and ran
to help her.
I pulled and she shook, I shook and
she pulled, and before morning we had .
peeled off yards of that paper.
A strip about as high as my head and
half around the room.
And then when the sun came and that
awful pattern began to laugh at me, I de-

cla red I would finish it to-dav !
We go away to-morrow, ~nd they are
moving all my furniture down again to
leave things as they were before.
Jennie looked at the wall in amaze-
ment, but I told her merrily that I did it
out of pure spite at the vicious thing.
She laughed and said she wouldn't
mind doing it herself, but I must not get
tired .
How she betrayed herself that time!
But I am here, and no person touches
this paper but me,- not alive!
She tried to get me out of the room-
it was too patent! But I said it was so
quiet and empty and clean now that I be-
lieved I would lie down again and sleep
all I could; and not to wake me even for
dinner - I would call when I woke.
So now she is gone, and the servants
are gone, and the things are gone, and
there is nothing left but that great bed-
stead nailed down, with the canvas mat-
tress we found on it.
We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and
take the boat home to-morrow. .

I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare
again.
How those children did tear about
here!
This bedstead is fairly gnawed!
But I must get to work.
I have locked the door and thrown the
key down into the front path.
. I don't want to go out, and I don't
want to have anybody come in, till ] ohn
comes.
I want to astonish him.
I've got a rope up here that even J en-
nie did not find. If that woman does
get out, and tries to get away, I can tie
her!
But I forgot I could not reach far with-
out anything to stand on !
This bed will not move!
I tried to lift and push it until I was
lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a
little piece at one corner - but it hurt
my teeth.
Then I peeled off all the paper I could
reach standing on the floor. It sticks
horribly and the pattern just enjoys it !

All those strangled heads and bulbous
eyes a nd waddling fungus growths just
shriek with derision i
I am getting angry enough to do som e-
thing desperate. To jump out of the
window would be admirable exercise, but
the bars are too strong even to try.
Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course
not. I know well enough that a step like
thJ.t is improper and might be miscon·
strued.
I don't like to look out of the windows
evell - there are so many of those creep-
ing women, and they creep so fast.
I wonder if they all come out of that
wall-p3.per as I did?
But I am securely fastened now by my
well-hidden rope - you don't get me out
in the road there !
I suppose I shall have to get back be-
hind the pattern when it comes night,
and that is hard!
It is so pleasant to be out in this great
room and creep around as I please!

I don't want to go outside. I won't,
even if Jennie asks me to.
For outside you have to creep on the
ground, and everything is green instead
of yellow.
But here I can creep smoothly on the
floor, and my shoulder just fits in that
long smooch around the wall, so I cannot
lose my way.
Why there's John at the door!
I t is no use, young man, you can't open it r
How he does call and pound!
N ow he's crying for an axe.
It would be a shame to break dOWI1l
that beautiful door!
" John dear! " said I in the gentlest
voice, "the key is down by the front:
steps, under a plaintain leaf! "
That silenced him for a few moments_
Then he said - very quietly indeed.
" Open the door, my darling! "
" I can't," said 1. "The key is down
by the front door under a plantain leaf! ..
And then I said it again, several times.
very gently and slowly, and said it so

often that he had to go and see, and he
got it of course, and came in. He stop-
ped short by the door.
"What is the matter?" he cried. "For
God's sake, what are you doing! "
I kept on creeping just the same, but I
looked at him over my shoulder.
" I've got out at last," said I, " in spite
of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most
of the paper, so you can't put me back! "
Now why should that man have fainted?
But he did, and right across my path by
the wall, so that I had to creep over him
every time!
Yellow Wall-Paper 647Yellow Wall-Paper 648Yellow Wall-
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CLASS AND RACE IN AMERICA:
Yes, There Are Classes in America – and Yes, Racism Still
Does Exist
1
CLASS AND RACE IN AMERICA:
Yes, There Are Classes in America – and Yes, Racism Still
Does Exist
Many Americans aren’t comfortable acknowledging that class
distinctions or
racism exist in our country. After all, wouldn’t it be nice to

believe – as our forefathers
wrote in the Constitution – that all men are created equal? That
if we just work hard
enough, we can “get ahead” and live the American Dream of
success? That if economic
or racial inequality and discrimination once existed, the playing
field is even now? Or,
maybe it’s just easier to believe it’s so. Otherwise, if we start
looking too hard at what’s
really happening in America today, we might see that everyone
isn’t treated so equally
after all – and if we don’t start out as equal and may never be
considered equal no
matter what we achieve, then exactly what does that mean to our
personal or national
beliefs and identities?
Even if we can convince ourselves that these issues have
nothing to do with us
personally – we aren’t prejudiced, or we’ve worked hard to get
where we are – they do
affect us. Class distinctions and institutionalized racism are a
fact of everyday life in
America and affect everyone in our society. Often our degree of
consciousness and

always our perspective depends upon with which socioeconomic
class or race we
identify, or are identified – along with our personal experiences
with classism or racism.
But, even if we choose not to notice, we cannot escape from the
fact that racial and class
identities – and more importantly, the embedded and systemic
societal privileges or
disadvantages that come from these socially-constructed roles –
affect how we define
ourselves, how others relate to us, and what opportunities we
are offered or denied in
almost every aspect of our lives (Bonnekessen Class Lecture, 14
June 2003 and Price
Class Lecture, 15 June 2003).
ON A PERSONAL LEVEL
As an Asian/European-American (not that such a classification
exists) from a
working-class background, I am guilty of having done little to
examine my own
personal economic status and ancestry and how these affect my
life – or to examine the

impact that class and race have on others. For most of my life, I
gave little more than
cursory thought to the culture and heritage of my first-
generation Japanese and Italian
parents, other than to write the occasional report on Japan and
Italy in grade school. For
2
their own reasons – which I regret never having discussed with
them and can now only
guess at – my parents raised my brother and I as typical
American kids in the late 1950s
and 1960s, and we never discussed what their lives were like
growing up. Although I
didn’t want to move from our home on Kansas City’s east side
in 1969, at the time I had
never heard of the term “white flight,” and years later, it was
something that seemed to
have little left to do with me. After high school, I didn’t
appreciate the significance of
being the first of my cousins on either side to go to college – a
feat achieved partly
because of a scholarship I earned, but also because of my
father’s many long years of

hard work as a mechanic. I took for granted that I’d go to
college, not understanding
until much later the value or privilege or opportunities that
came my way because of
that extra education.
In some ways, my personal story isn’t unique. Many people go
about their lives
giving little consideration to the role that class and race plays in
their lives, or perhaps
noticing it only occasionally in particular, unusual
circumstances. Yet, many others
have no choice but to be acutely aware of the effects of socially
constructed ideas of race
and social-economic class on their everyday lives. In the
unsettling transcripts of tapes
from meetings at Texaco to discuss a Federal discrimination suit
against the company in
1996, senior-level officials “freely deride black employees as
‘niggers’ and ‘black jelly
beans’” (New York Times 2001). In New York’s Harlem, the
competition is fierce among
the neighborhood’s working poor for fast-food restaurant jobs –
considered entry level

jobs for teenagers in the suburbs, in Harlem they have become
“real” jobs which adults
take to support families (Newman 2001: 317). There are
millions of Americans who get
up knowing that each day will be a struggle to just to survive,
let alone improve their
social or economic position in life.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF CLASS AND RACE
Many people have been made to feel outsiders as a result of the
roles society has
assigned to them based on socially-constructed differences.
Often these roles turn into
stereotypes in which preconceived attitudes and half-truths are
projected onto others.
Beyond the insidious personal loss of their own traditions and
self-respect, stereotypes
keep people from being seen as human, which makes it easier to
develop a system of
exploitation against them and harder to open an “agenda of
multicultural democracy”
3

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