Although the times of oppression related to gender, class, and race seem to have gone by, the issues of discrimination still matter in our country even nowadays when people finally seem to understand that diversity should be celebrated. According to Andersen and Collins, attitudes toward gender, class, and race are the foundation of our society and it is impossible to understand its structure, nor organization without taking into account this triad (Andersen & Collins, 2). This paper focuses on three issues related to how the subject should be dealt with in the modern context: intersection, or overlapping of different ingredients in one identity, matrix of domination as an effective approach of studying gender, class, and race, and the role of privilege in the modern society. The main point that is stated in this paper, consists in that nowadays we should change our attitudes toward the issues of gender, class, and race not only by the way of enriching our knowledge about the problem, but primarily by applying critical lenses to all cases of explicit and implicit oppressions and structural organization of our society that allows for such cases in order to change the system.
The first point related to a more insightful analysis of multiple elements correlation within a personality is definitely intersectionality that allows to look into problems in a much broader and detailed context than it would be by the way of a mere comparison or contrasting some different ingredients. Andersen and Collins highlights the importance of intersectionality stating that “fundamentally, race, class, and gender are intersecting categories of experience that affect all aspects of human life; they simultaneously structure the experiences of all people in their society” (Andersen & Collins, 4). It is interesting that overlapping of various elements in a human identity is cumulative in nature that means that oppression in relation to someone whose personality combines several “abnormal” elements, may be oppressed much more than his or her “less deviant” counterparts. For instance, in case of Audre Lorde who defines herself as “a forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two () a member of an interracial couple” (Lorde, 15), many elements are present in her identity. In this context, it is not surprising that the woman discusses the issues of sexism, ageism, racism, heterosexism, classism, elitism and other forms of discrimination as an expert in all these fields.
As a matter of fact, everyone being somehow “different” from a white wealthy straight young man has been experienced this or that form of oppression in his or her life. However, not everyone is capable to discern all forms of oppression and discrimination, since they may be not only overt, by covert, or implicit. Nowadays, the latter form is very spread in our society due to its very structure and historical organization. For this reason, it is very important to transform our attitudes and approaches while addressing the issues of people’s diversity. Andersen and Collins insists that former methods of comparing and contrasting differences in people, or endlessly adding them to each other in attempt to embrace the whole range of ingredients of an identity, do not work anymore in the modern context, since most of people already understand the importance of diversity acceptance and celebration (Andersen & Collins, 7).
For this reason, the authors suggest a new form of analysis which they introduce as a matrix of domination. According to the authors, the latter “sees the social structure as having multiple, interlocking levels of domination that stem from the societal configuration of race, class, and gender relation” (Andersen & Collins, 4). In other words, the scholars insist on that race, class, and gender should be studied through the lenses of social power and domination that are historically embedded in the structure of this or that society. It is obvious that this structure determines the whole range of stereotypes existing even in the modern society, since the time does not merely pass, it accumulates everything that happened within the history actually shaping our minds and attitudes. Audre Lorde gives a brilliant example in this context talking about prose that was always a historical attribute of better-off people in contrast to poetry that due to its law-cost nature, was the prerogative of poor marginal population in the US (Lorde, 16). However and unfortunately, this attitude still remains in our society. Lorde illustrates it providing the example of one women’s magazine that decided not to publish poetry anymore, since it “was “a less rigorous” and “serious” art form” than prose. Another example given by Lorde in this context relates to unwillingness that White women sometimes express for teaching literary works created by Black women saying that they are not capable to teach them properly failing the appropriate life experience that is necessary to understand Black female authors’ intentions. Lorde derides such explanations stating that all these women, however, have “no trouble at all teaching and reviewing work that comes out of the vastly different experiences of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Aristophanes” (Lorde, 17).
It is obvious that in all these cases we actually deal with covert forms of class, gender, and race discrimination that, unfortunately, persists even nowadays. For this reason, the approach of applying a matrix of domination suggested by Andersen and Collins seems quite efficient under these conditions of a stable position that stereotypes still occupy in our minds and attitudes. In other words, it is evident that all these people (in a women’s magazine and White female teachers) are aware of class, gender, and race discrimination, and surely they would never support it while being asked directly. Meanwhile, the structure and historical organization of their society, namely the distribution of power, or matrix of domination, dictate them some stereotypical terms of behavior and thinking which they obey often involuntary and instinctively. It is evident that these phenomena should be criticized and rooted out of our modern society instead of a process of passive accumulation of some knowledge about the issues of gender, race, and class discrimination.
Meanwhile, the subject may be treated in quite a different perspective, namely if we talk about privilege and privileged people in society. According to Roxane Gay “privilege is a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor,,” and “at some point, you have to surrender to the kinds of privilege you hold because everyone has something someone else doesn’t” (Gay). The author also distinguishes different forms of privilege, namely racial, able-bodied, gender, heterosexual privileges and so on. However, before talking about privilege as another instrument of discrimination, it would be quite interesting to address the personality of the author herself and take into consideration her personal life experience. As a matter of fact, Roxane Gay says that she has been always a privileged person despite her race (she is a person of Color) and her gender. In this context, Gay talks about other people who have many privileges in spite of being of Color or female. In this context, she highlights the brilliant example of Barak Obama who is “arguably, the most powerful man in the world” (Gay). Gay reveals two very important points about these kinds of privileges in people who were historically oppressed in the society. First, such people know and remember what their ancestors and sometimes themselves must have survived in order to obtain such a privilege, and second, they definitely deserve these privileges as being equal members of the society. Gay’s article on privileges is actually very positive, since it evidences that our society has finally achieved or at least is very close to achieving the principles of equality and justice for all citizens regardless their race, class, or gender.
In conclusion, it should be noted that although our modern society has accepted the idea of diversity celebration, in some cases it is nothing but an idea, since historical organization of our society and societal structure based on neat power distribution and supremacy of White male identity, do not allow for making the right choice and instinctively make people behave in a discriminative manner. For this reason, the very attitude to the issue should be changed dramatically: we should finally accept that domination patterns still persist in our society, that intersection is a cumulative process that should be considered as a complex phenomenon, and that all people regardless their status deserve being privileged in the society.
Works cited
Andersen, Margaret L., Collins, Patricia Hill. Why Race, Class and Gender Still Matter. RCG, Cengage Learning, 2014, pp. 1-14.
Gay, Roxane. Peculiar Benefits. The Rumpus, 16 May 2012. Accessed on http://therumpus.net/2012/05/peculiar-benefits/.
Lorde, Audre. Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. RCG, Cengage Learning, 2014, pp. 15-21.
