The cycle of liberation bobbie harro citation

Readings for Diversity and Social Justice

Second Edition '.-

....

Edited by

Maurianne Adams, Warren J. Blumenfeld, Carmelita (Rosie) Castaneda,

Heather W. Hackman, Madeline L. Peters, and Ximena Zuniga

I~ ~~~:!r:n~s~~up NEW YORK AND LONDON

SECTION 1

NCEPTUAL FRAMEWO KS

Introduction

Maurianne Adams

~CJcic1.J div~rsity and so_cialjLf~ti~e c3:~e often used interchangeably to refer to social differences as well as to social inequality. These two terms are closely related but not interchangeable. When we refer to social diversity, we have in mind differences between social identity groups based on social categories such as race, gender, sexuality, and class. These differences are reflected in a group's traditions, language, style of dress, cultural practices, religious beliefs and rituals, and these are usually termed "differences" from some norm that is privileged. It is difficult to perceive oneself, one's family and group traditions, language, style of dress as part of diversity-rather, the norm shapes one's notion of the "differences" of others, who are marginalized precisely because they are different. In this sense, it is clear why diversity ("difference") profoundly shapes the advantages of some groups (those who are part of the norm) relative to the disadvantages of others (because they are "other") and maintains social inequalities that are rationalized on the basis of these differences. We also use terms such as oppression and social justice to emphasize our focus on inequality as something more than difference.

Thus, although these terms are not interchangeable, they are inextricably linked in everyday discourse in that diversity is too often used to provide an excuse or justification for inequality. It's much more comfortable to talk about diversity than inequality, although clearly we need to understand both. We need to appreciate and value social and cultural differences, if we are to envision a society that acknowledges and appreciates such differences, by de-centering the norm. At the same time, the appreciation of social diversity is a necessary but not sufficient step to understanding the inequalities experienced by peoples of marginalized social groups. It is necessary to understand injustice if we are ever to dismantle the institutions and policies that maintain injustice and to reconstruct institutions and policies based on fairness, equity, and justice. As Young suggests (in selection 5), our challenge is to appreciate social diversity while working to dismantle social inequality.

Several key assumptions inform our perspective throughout this volume, and we identify . them in this section as a cluster of four interrelated conceptual frameworks. Our core assump- tions are presented in the General Introduction, and include our awareness that social identity groups occupy unequal social locations or positions relative to each other (that is, one group's

.· privileges are directly related to another group's disadvantages). This awareness leads us to the following four concepts: (1) social group identities (such as racial and gender identities) have been used historically to justify and perpetuate the advantages of privileged groups relative to

/ the disadvantages of marginalized groups; (2) these social identities, together with their relative : inequality, have been socially constructed within specific historical conditions, although these

social constructions are often rationalized as being derived from the "facts of nature" or sustained

THE COMPLEXITY OF IDENTITY I 5

References Freire, P. (1994, 1970). Pedagogy of the Oppression (new revised edition). New York: Continuum. Hardiman, R., Jackson, B., Griffin, P. (2007). "Conceptual Foundations for Social Justice Education." In

M. Adams, L. A. Bell, P. Griffin (eds), Teaching tor Diversity and Social Justice, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. pp. 35-66.

Young, I. M. (1990). "Introduction, Displacing the Distributive Paradigm, Five Faces of Oppression." In Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 3-65.

Young, I. M. (2001). "Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgments of Injustice." Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (1), 1-18.

1

The Complexity of Identity

"Who Am I?"

Beverly Daniel Tatum

The concept of identity is a complex one, shaped by individual characteristics, family dynamics, historical factors, and social and political contexts. Who am I? The answer depends in large part on who the world around me says I am. Who do my parents say I am? Who do my peers say I am? What message is reflected back to me in the faces and voices of my teachers, my neighbors, store clerks? What do I learn from the media about myself? How am I represented in the cultural images around me? Or am I missing from the picture altogether? ... What has my social context been? Was I surrounded by people like myself, or was I part of a minority in my community? Did I grow up speaking standard English at home or another language or dialect? Did I live in a rural county, an urban neighborhood, a sprawling suburb, or on a reservation?

Who I am ( or say I am) is a product of these and many other factors. Erik Erikson, the psychoanalytic theorist who coined the term identity crisis, introduced the notion that the social, cultural, and historical context is the ground in which individual identity is embed- ded. Acknowledging the complexity of identity as a concept, Erikson writes,

We deal with a process "located" in the core of the individual and yet also in the core of his communal culture . ... In psychological terms, identity formation employs a process of simultaneous reflection and observation, a process taking place on all levels of mental functioning, by which the individual judges himself in the light of what he perceives to be the way in which others judge him in comparison to themselves and to a typology significant to them.

6 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

WHO AM I? MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

Integrating one's past, present, and future into a cohesive, unified sense of self is a complex task that begins in adolescence and continues for a lifetime .... The salience of particular aspects of our identity varies at different moments in our lives. The process of integrating the component parts of our self-definition is indeed a lifelong journey.

Which parts of our identity capture our attention first? While there are surely idiosyn- cratic responses to this question, a classroom exercise I regularly use with my psychol- ogy students reveals a telling pattern. I ask my students to complete the sentence, "I am _____ ," using as many descriptors as they can think of in sixty seconds. All kinds of trait descriptions are used-friendly, shy, assertive, intelligent, honest, and so on-but over the years I have noticed something else. Students of color usually mention their racial or ethnic group: for instance, I am Black, Puerto Rican, Korean American. White students who have grown up in strong ethnic enclaves occasionally mention being Irish or Italian. But in general, White students rarely mention being White. When I use this exercise in coeducational settings, I notice a similar pattern in terms of gender, religion, and sexuality. Women usually mention being female, while men don't usually mention their maleness. Jewish students often say they are Jews, while mainline Protestants rarely mention their religious identification. A student who is comfortable revealing it publicly may mention being gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Though I know most of my students are heterosexual, it is very unusual for anyone to include their heterosexuality on their list.

Common across these examples is that in the areas where a person is a member of the dominant or advantaged social group, the category is usually not mentioned. That element of their identity is so taken for granted by them that it goes without comment. It is taken for granted by them because it is taken for granted by the dominant culture. In Eriksonian terms, their inner experience and outer circumstance are in harmony with one another, and the image reflected by others is similar to the image within. In the absence of dissonance, this dimension of identity escapes conscious attention.

The parts of our identity that do capture our attention are those that other people notice, and that reflect back to us. The aspect of identity that is the target of others' attention, and subsequently of our own, often is that which sets us apart as exceptional or "other" in their eyes. In my life I have been perceived as both. A precocious child who began to read at age three, I stood out among my peers because of my reading ability. This "gifted" dimension of my identity was regularly commented upon by teachers and classmates alike, and quickly became part of my self-definition. But I was also distinguished by being the only Black student in the class, an "other," a fact I grew increasingly aware of as I got older.

While there may be countless ways one might be defined as exceptional, there are at least seven categories of "otherness" commonly experienced in U.S. society. People are commonly defined as other on the basis of race or ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orienta- tion, socioeconomic status, age, and physical or mental ability. Each of these categories has a form of oppression associated with it: racism, sexism, religious oppression/anti-Semitism, heterosexism, classism, ageism, and ableism, respectively. In each case, there is a group considered dominant (systematically advantaged by the society because of group member- ship) and a group considered subordinate or targeted (systematically disadvantaged). When we think about our multiple identities, most of us will find that we are both dominant and targeted at the same time. But it is the targeted identities that hold our attention and the dominant identities that often go unexamined.

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION I xxxi

must also present pathways of hope by acknowledging the role of social movements in U.S. history and the many contemporary opportunities to participate in social change.

A further innovation in this edition is the website, which provides additional resources, curricula and discussion questions, and ideas for action and application for each of the sections and suggests further avenues for exploring a number of related topics. The website is organized by section and each section website is organized by three subheaders: Further Resources (readings, internet links, films, and videos); Curriculum, Activities, Discussion Questions (materials and handouts to foster an interactive approach to course pedagogy); Action and Next Steps (examples of action projects being taken nationally by coalitions and action groups, internet links to organizations engaged with social action). The section website for "Conceptual Frameworks" provides examples of discussion and review ques- tions and exam rubrics that we can recommend for instructional use. And for instructors, especially, who want to know more about the interactive, experiential, dialogic pedagogies used by the editors of this volume in our classrooms throughout the United States, we recommend Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice (second edition, 2007) as a resource. We have incorporated some of the resources and pedagogical activities from this book and its accompanying CD-ROM into a number of the section websites.

The alphabetically organized Permission Acknowledgments at the rear of the book is the only bibliographical citation provided for all of the reading selections. Readers wanting to track citations, notes, and references that were cut from the reading selections because of space constraints will be able to use this to enable them to follow-up on the readings. We did not cut intext page references for direct quotations, although the full citations appear only in the Permission Acknowledgments at the back of the book.

We offer this book for use by different readers in many settings and situations. We use these readings in our own general education and graduate diversity classes and in graduate and undergraduate weekend seminars, in teacher education classes, and in mul- ticultural education classes on our own campuses and communities in California, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Wyoming. We know that the earlier edition has been used in many other settings-in ethnic and women's studies, history, social studies, sociology and psychology courses, in social work and management, and in centers for teaching excellence-wherever there is an interest in the broad range of human experiences that have been shaped by social difference and by privilege or disadvantage. We anticipate that these reading selections will be understood differently, as readers them- selves have had similar or dissimilar experiences. Our intention and hope is that they will provide opportunities for personal thought and reflection, empathy, connection, and discussion.

References

Adams, M., Bell, L. A., Griffin, P. (eds) (2007). Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge.

Lorde, A. (1983). "There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions.'.' Interracial Books for Children Bulletin 14 (3-4), 9.

THE COMPLEXITY OF IDENTITY I 7

DOMINATION AND SUBORDINATION

Dominant groups, by definition, set the parameters within which the subordinates oper- ate. The dominant group holds the power and authority in society relative to the subordi- nates and determines how that power and authority may be acceptably used. Whether it is reflected in determining who gets the best jobs, whose history will be taught in school, or whose relationships will be validated by society, the dominant group has the greatest influence in determining the structure of the society.

The relationship of the dominants to the subordinates is often one in which the targeted group is labeled as defective or substandard in significant ways. For example, Blacks have historically been characterized as less intelligent than Whites, and women have been viewed as less emotionally stable than men. The dominant group assigns roles to the subordinate that reflect the latter's devalued status, reserving the most highly valued roles in the society for themselves. Subordinates are usually said to be innately incapable of performing the preferred roles. To the extent that those in the target group internalize the images that the dominant group reflects back to them, they may find it difficult to believe in their own ability.

The dominant group is seen as the norm for humanity .... Consequently, it remains per- fectly acceptable in many circles to tell jokes that denigrate a particular group, to exclude subordinates from one's neighborhood or work setting, or to oppose initiatives that might change the power balance.

The truth is that the dominants do not really know what the experience of the sub- ordinates is. In contrast, the subordinates are very well informed about the dominants. Even when firsthand experience is limited by social segregation, the number and variety of images of the dominant group available through television, magazines, books, and newspapers provide subordinates with plenty of information about the dominants. The dominant worldview has saturated the culture for all to learn. Even the Black or Latino child living in a segregated community can enter White homes of many kinds daily via the media. However, dominant access to information about the subordinates is often limited to stereotypical depictions of the "other." For example, there are many images of heterosexual relations on television, but very few images of gay or lesbian domestic partnerships beyond the caricatures of comedy shows. There are many images of White men and women in all forms of media, but relatively few portrayals of people of color.

In a situation of unequal power, a subordinate group has to focus on survival. It becomes very important for subordinates to become highly attuned to the dominants as a way of protecting themselves. For example, women who have been battered by men often talk about the heightened sensitivity they develop to their partners' moods. Being able to anticipate and avoid the men's rage is important to survival.

Survival sometimes means not responding to oppressive behavior directly. To do so could result in physical harm to oneself, even death ....

The use of either strategy, attending very closely to the dominants or not attending at all, is costly to members of the targeted group. "Not-learning" may mean there are needed skills that are not acquired. Attending closely to the dominant group may leave little time or energy to attend to one's self. Worse yet, the negative messages of the dominant group about the subordinates may be internalized, leading to self-doubt or, in its extreme form, self-hate. There are many examples of subordinates attempting to make themselves over in the image of the dominant group-Jewish people who want to change the Semitic look

8 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

of their noses, Asians who have cosmetic surgery to alter the shapes of their eyes, Blacks who seek to lighten their skin with bleaching creams, women who want to smoke and drink "like a man." Whether one succumbs to the devaluing pressures of the dominant culture or successfully resists them, the fact is that dealing with oppressive systems from the underside, regardless of the strategy, is physically and psychologically taxing.

The history of subordinate groups is filled with so-called troublemakers, yet their names are often unknown. Preserving the record of those subordinates and their dominant allies who have challenged the status quo is usually of little interest to the dominant culture, but it is of great interest to subordinates who search for an empowering reflection in the societal mirror.

Many of us are both dominant and subordinate. As Audre Lorde said, from her vantage point as a Black lesbian, "There is no hierarchy of oppressions." The thread and threat of violence runs through all of the isms. There is a need to acknowledge each other's pain, even as we attend to our own.

For those readers who are in the dominant racial category, it may sometimes be difficult to take in what is being said by and about those who are targeted by racism. When the perspective of the subordinate is shared directly, an image is reflected to members of the dominant group that is disconcerting. To the extent that one can draw on one's own experience of subordination-as a young person, as a person with a disability, as someone who grew up poor, as a woman-it inay be easier to make meaning of another targeted group's experience. For those readers who are targeted by racism and are angered by the obliviousness of Whites, it may be useful to attend to your experience of dominance where you may find it-as a heterosexual, as an able-bodied person, as a Christian, as a man-and consider what systems of privilege you may be overlooking. The task of resisting our own oppression does not relieve us of the responsibility of acknowledging our complicity in the oppression of others.

Our ongoing examination of who we are in our· fult°humanity, embracing all of our identities, creates the possibility of building alliances that may ultimately free us all.

2

Identities and Social Locations ~~~~~

Who Am I? Who Are My People?

Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey

Identity formation is the result of a complex interplay among individual decisions and choices, particular life events, community recognition and expectations, and societal cat- egorization, classification, and socialization. It is an ongoing process that involves several key questions:

Who am I? Who do I want to be? Who do others think I am and want me to be?

IDENTITIES AND SOCIAL LOCATIONS I 9

Who and what do societal and community institutions, such as schools, religious institu- tions, the media, and the law, say I am?

Where/what/who are my "home" and "community"? Which social group(s) do I want to affiliate with? Who decides the answers to these questions, and on what basis?

Answers to these questions form the core of our existence ....

The American Heritage Dictionary (1993) defines identity as

the collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitely known or recognizable;

a set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group;

The same dictionary defines to identify as "to associate or affiliate (oneself) closely with a person or group; to establish an identification with another or others."

These definitions point to the connections between us as individuals and how we are perceived by other people and classified by societal institutions. They also involve a sense of individual agency and choice regarding affiliations with others. Gender, race, ethnicity, class, nationality, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, and language are all significant social categories by which people are recognized by others. Indeed, on the basis of these categories alone, others often think they know who we are and how we should behave. Personal decisions about our affiliations and loyalties to specific groups are also shaped by these categories. For example, in many communities of color women struggle over the question of race versus gender. Is race a more important factor than gender in shaping their lives? If a Latina speaks out publicly about sexism within the Latino community, is she betraying her people? This separation of categories, mirrored by our segregated social lives, tends to set up false dichotomies in which people often feel that they have to choose one aspect of their identity over another., It also presents difficulties for mixed-race or bisexual people, who do not fit neatly into such narrow categories.

BEING MYSELF: THE MICRO LEVEL

At the micro level, individuals usually feel the most comfortable as themselves. Here one say, for example, "I am a woman, heterosexual, middle class, with a movement disabil- but I am also much more than those categories." At this level we define ourselves and

our daily activities according to our own preferences. At the micro level we can feel and experience the process of identity formation, which includes naming specific

t""':ces and events that shape our identities. At this level we also seem to have more control the process, although there are always interconnections between events and experiences

level and the other levels. life events, such as entering kindergarten, losing a parent through death, separa-

or divorce, or the onset of puberty,· may all serve as catalysts for a shift in how we about ourselves. A five-year-old Vietnamese American child from a traditional home

may experience the first challenge to her sense of identity when her kin- teacher admonishes her to speak only in English. A White, middle-class profes-

e:: .. vivua1 woman who thinks of herself as "a person" and a "competent attorney" may begin

10 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

to see the significance of gender and "the glass ceiling" for women when she witnesses younger, less experienced male colleagues in her law office passing her by for promotions. A woman who has been raped who attends her first meeting of a campus group organizing against date rape feels the power of connection with other rape survivors and their allies. An eighty-year-old woman, whose partner of fifty years has just died, must face the reality of having lost her lifetime companion, friend, and lover. Such experiences shape each person's ongoing formulation of self, whether or not the process is conscious, deliberate, reflective, or even voluntary.

Identity formation is a lifelong endeavor that includes discovery of the new; recovery of the old, forgotten, or appropriated; and synthesis of the new and old, as illustrated by several writers in this chapter who reflect on how their sense of identity has devel- oped over the course of their lives. At especially important junctures during the process, individuals mark an identity change in tangible ways. An African American woman may change her name from the anglicized Susan to Aisha, with roots in African culture. A Chinese Vietnamese immigrant woman, on the other hand, may adopt an anglicized name, exchanging Nu Lu for Yvonne Lu as part of becoming a U.S. citizen. Another way of mark- ing and effecting a shift in identity is by altering your physical appearance: changing your wardrobe or makeup; cutting your hair very short, wearing it natural rather than permed or pressed, dyeing it purple, or letting the gray show after years of using hair coloring ....

COMMUNITY RECOGNITION, EXPECTATIONS, AND INTERACTIONS: THE MESO LEVEL

It is at the meso level-at school, in the workplace, or on the street-that people most frequently ask "Who are you?" or "Where are you from?" in an attempt to categorize us and determine their relationship to us. Moreover, it is here that people experience the complexities, conflicts, and contradictions of multiple identities, which we consider later.

The single most visible signifier of identity is physical appearance .... Questions such as "Where do you come from?" and questioning behaviors, such as feeling the texture of your hair or asking if you speak a particular language, are commonly used to interrogate people whose physical appearances especially, but also behaviors, do not match the characteristics designated as belonging to established categories. At root, we are being asked, "Are you one of us or not?" These questioners usually expect singular and simplistic answers, assuming that everyone will fit existing social categories, which are conceived of as undifferentiated and unambiguous. Among people with disabilities, for example, people wanting to identify each other may expect to hear details of another's disability rather than the fact that the person being questioned also identifies equally strongly as, say, a woman who is White, working class, and bisexual.

Community, like home, may be geographic and emotional, or both, and provides a way for people to express group affiliations. "Where are you from?" is a commonplace question in the United States among strangers, a way to break the ice and start a conversa- tion, expecting answers like "I'm from Tallahassee, Florida," or "I'm from the Bronx." Community might also be an organized group like Alcoholics Anonymous, a religious group, or a political organization like the African American civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Community may be something much more abstract, as in "the women's community" or "the queer com- munity," where there is presumed to be an identifiable group. In all of these examples there is an assumption of some kind of shared values, goals, interests, culture, or language.

At the community level, individual identities and needs meet group standards, expecta- tions, obligations, responsibilities, and demands. You compare yourself with others and are

IDENTITIES AND SOCIAL LOCATIONS I 11

subtly compared. Others size up your clothing, accent, personal style, and knowledge of the group's history and culture. You may be challenged directly, "You say you're Latina. How come you don't speak Spanish?" "You say you're working class. What are you doing in a professional job?" These experiences may both affirm our identities and create or highlight inconsistencies, incongruities, and contradictions in who we believe we are, how we are viewed by others, our role and status in the community, and our sense of belonging.

SOCIAL CATEGORIES, CLASSIFICATIONS, AND STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY: MACRO AND GLOBAL LEVELS

Classifying and labeling human beings, often according to real or assumed physical, bio- logical, or genetic differences, is a way to distinguish who is included and who is excluded from a group, to ascribe particular characteristics, to prescribe social roles, and to assign status, power, and privilege. People are to know their places. Thus social categories such as gender, race, and class are used to establish and maintain a particular kind of social order. The classifications and their specific features, meanings, and significance are socially con- structed through history, politics, and culture. The specific meanings and significance were often imputed to justify the conquest, colonization, domination, and exploitation of entire groups of people, and although the specifics may have changed over time, this system of categorizing and classifying remains intact. For example, Native American people were described as brutal, uncivilized, and ungovernable savages in the writings of early coloniz- ers on this continent. This justified the genocide of Native Americans by White settlers and the U.S. military and public officials, as well as the breaking of treaties between the U.S. government and Native American tribes. Today, Native Americans are no longer called savages but are often thought of as a vanishing species, or a non-existent people, already wiped out, thereby rationalizing their neglect by the dominant culture and erasing their long-standing and continuing resistance ....

These social categories are at the foundation of the structural inequalities present in our society. In each category there is one group of people deemed superior, legitimate, dominant, and privileged while others are relegated-whether explicitly or implicitly-to the position of inferior, illegitimate, subordinate, and disadvantaged.

Category

Gender

Sexual orientation

Religion

Physical ability

Men

White

Dominant

Middle and upper class

U.S./First World

European

Heterosexual

Christian

Able-bodied

Youth

Subordinate

Women, transgender people

Peoples of color

Poor, working class

Second, third Worlds

All other ethnicities

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender

All other religions

Persons with disabilities

Elderly persons

All other languages

12 j CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

This hierarchy of advantage and disadvantage has meant that the preponderance of analytical writing about identity has been done by those in subordinate positions: women of color, lesbians, bisexual women, and working-class women. . . . For White people descended from European immigrants to this country, the advantages of being White are not always fully recognized or acknowledged .... As a result, White people in the United States tend to think of all identities as equal: "I'm Italian American, you're Polish American. I'm Irish American, you're African American." This assumed equivalence ignores the very big differences between an individualist symbolic identity and a socially enforced and imposed racial identity ....

MAINTAINING SYSTEMS OF STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY

Maintaining this system of inequality requires the objectification and dehumanization of subordinated peoples. Appropriating their identities is a particularly effective method of doing this, for it defines who the subordinated group/person is or ought to be. This hap- pens in several ways:

Using the values, characteristics, features of the dominant group as the supposedly neu- tral standard against which all others should be evaluated. For example, men are generally physically larger and stronger than women. Many of the clinical trials for new pharma- ceutical drugs are conducted using men's bodies and activities as the standard. The results, however, are applied equally to both men and women. Women are often prescribed the same dosage of a medication as men are even though their physical makeup is not the same. Thus women, as a distinct group, do not exist in this research.

Using terms that distinguish the subordinate from the dominant group. Terms such as "non-White" and "minority" connote a relationship to another group, White in the former case and majority in the latter. A non-White person is the negative of the White person; a minority person is less than a majority person. Neither has an identity on her or his own terms.

Stereotyping. Stereotyping involves making a simple generalization about a group and claiming that all members of the group conform to this generalization. Stereotypes are behavioral and psychological attributes; they are commonly held beliefs about groups rather than individual beliefs about individuals; and they persist in spite of contradic- tory evidence. Lesbians hate men. Latinas are dominated by macho Latinos. Women with physical disabilities are asexual. Fat women are good-humored but not healthy. As Andre asserts, "A 'stereotype' is pejorative; there is always something objectionable in the beliefs and images to which the word refers."

Exoticizing and romanticizing. These two forms of appropriation are particularly insidious because on the surface there is an appearance of appreciation. For example, Asian American women are described as personifying the "mysterious orient," Native American women as "earth mothers" and the epitome of spirituality, and Black women as perpetual towers of strength. In all three cases, seemingly positive traits and cultural practices are identified and exalted. This "positive" stereotyping prevents people from seeing the truth and complexity of who these women are.

Given the significance of identity appropriation as an aspect of oppression, it is not sur- prising that many liberation struggles have included projects and efforts aimed at changing identities and taking control of the process of positive identity formation and representa- tion. Before liberation struggles, oppressed people often use the same terminology to name

IDENTITIES ANO SOCIAL LOCATIONS I i3

themselves as the dominant group uses to label them. One crucial aspect of liberation struggles is to get rid of pejorative labels and use names that express, in their own terms, who people are in all their humanity. Thus the name a group uses for itself gradually takes on more of an insider perspective that fits the evolving consciousness growing out of the political movement.

As with individual identity, naming ourselves collectively is an important act of empow- erment. One example of this is the evolution of the names African Americans have used to identify themselves, moving from Colored, to Negro, to Black to Afro-American, and African American. Similarly, Chinese Americans gradually rejected the derogatory label "Chink," preferring to be called Orientals and now Chinese Americans or Asians. These terms are used unevenly, sometimes according to the age and political orientation of the person or the geographic region, where one usage may be more popular than another. Among the very diverse group of people connected historically, culturally, and linguisti- cally to Spain, Portugal, and their former colonies (parts of the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America), some use more inclusive terms such as Latino or Hispanic; others prefer more specific names such as Chicano, Puerto Rican, Nicaraguan, Cuban, and so on ....

COLONIZATION, IMMIGRATION, AND THE U.S. LANDSCAPE OF RACE AND CLASS

Other macro-level factors affecting people's identities include colonization and immigra- tion .... This ideology that the United States is "a land of immigrants" obscures several important issues excluded from much mainstream debate about immigration: Not all Americans came to this country voluntarily. Native American peoples and Mexicans were already here on this continent, but the former experienced near-genocide and the latter were made foreigners in their own land. African peoples were captured, enslaved, and forcibly imported to this country to be laborers. All were brutally exploited and violated- physically, psychologically, culturally, and spiritually-to serve the interests of those in power. The relationships between these groups and this nation and their experiences in the United States are fundamentally different from the experiences of those who chose to immigrate here, though this is not to negate the hardships the latter may have faced. These differences profoundly shaped the social, cultural, political, and economic realities faced by these groups throughout history and continue to do so today .

. . . Early in the history of this country, for example, the Naturalization Law of 1790 (which was repealed as recently as 1952) prohibited peoples of color from becoming U.S. citizens, and the Slave Codes restricted every aspect of life for enslaved African peoples. These laws made race into an indelible line that separated "insiders" from "outsiders." White people were designated insiders and granted many privileges while all others were confined to systematic disadvantage. As Mary C. Waters points out, the stories that White Americans learn of how their grandparents and great-grandparents triumphed in the United States "are usually told in terms of their individual efforts." The role of labor unions, com- munity organizations, and political parties, as well as the crucial importance of racism, is usually left out of these accounts, which emphasize individual effort and hard work.

On coming to the United States, immigrants are drawn into the racial landscape of this country. In media debates and official statistics, this is still dominated by a Black/

polarization in which everyone is assumed to fit into one of these two groups. Demographically, the situation is much more complex and diverse, but people of color,

14 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

who comprise the more inclusive group, are still set off against White people, the domi- nant group. Immigrants identify themselves according to nationality-for example, as Cambodian or Guatemalan. Once in the United States they learn the significance of racial divisions in this country and may adopt the term people of color as an aspect of their identity here ....

This emphasis on race tends to mask differences based on class, another important distinction among immigrant groups. For example, the Chinese and Japanese people who came in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century to work on plantations in Hawai'i, as loggers in Oregon, or building roads and railroads in several western states were poor and from rural areas of China and Japan. The 1965 immigration law made way for "the second wave" of Asian immigration. It set preferences for professionals, highly skilled workers, and members of the middle and upper-middle classes, making this group "the most highly skilled of any immigrant group our country has ever had." The first wave of Vietnamese refugees who immigrated between the mid-1970s and 1980 were from the middle and upper classes, and many were professionals; by contrast, the second wave of immigrants from Vietnam was composed of poor and rural people. The class backgrounds of immigrants affect not only their sense of themselves and their expectations but also how they can succeed as strangers in a foreign land. For example, a poor woman who arrives with no literacy skills in her own language will have a more difficult time learning to become literate in English than one who has several years of formal schooling in her country of origin that may have included basic English.

MULTIPLE IDENTITIES, SOCIAL LOCATION, AND CONTRADICTIONS

The social features of one's identity incorporate individual, community, societal, and global factors, as discussed in the accounts that follow. The point where all the features embodied in a person overlap is called social location. Imagine a diagram made up of overlapping circles, with a circle representing one specific feature of identity such as gender, class, ability, age, and so on. A person's social location is the point at which a part of each circle touches all others-where all elements are present simultaneously. Social location is a way of expressing the core of a person's existence in the social and political world. It places us in particular relationships to others, to the dominant culture of the United States, and to the rest of the world. It determines the kinds of power and privilege we have access to and can exercise, as well as situations in which we have less power and privilege.

Because social location is where all the aspects of one's identity meet, our experience of our own complex identities is sometimes contradictory, conflictual, and paradoxical. We live with multiple identities that can be both enriching and contradictory and that push us to confront questions of loyalty to individuals and groups ....

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DIFFERENCE I 15

3

The Social Construction of Difference

Allan G. Johnson

The late African American novelist James Baldwin once offered the provocative idea that there is no such thing as whiteness or, for that matter, blackness or, more generally, race. "No one is white before he/she came to America," he wrote. "It took generations and a vast amount of coercion, before this became a white country."

... ~,~-~::YA!!, isn't denying the reality that skin pigmentation varies from one person to another. What he is saying is that unless you live in a culture that recognizes such differ- ences as significant, they are socially irrelevant and therefore, in a way, do not exist. A "black woman" in Africa, therefore, who has not experienced white racism, does not think of herself as black or experience herself as black, nor do the people around her. African, yes, a woman, yes. But not a black woman.

When she comes to the United States, however, where privilege is organized according to race, suddenly she becomes black because people assign her to a social category that bears that name, and they treat her differently as a result ....

So Baldwin is telling us that race and all its categories have no significance outside systems~ o~ivilege and oppression in which they were created in the first place. This is what sociologists call the "social construction" of reality.

The same is true with the definition of what is considered "normal." While it may come as a surprise to many who think of themselves as nondisabled, disability and nondisability are socially constructed. This doesn't mean that the difference between having or not having full use of your legs is somehow "made up" without any objective reality. It does mean, however, that how people notice and label and think about· such differences and how they treat other people as a result depend entirely on ideas contained in a system's culture.

Human beings, for example, come in a variety of heights, and many of those considered "normal" are unable to reach high places such as kitchen shelves without the assistance of physical aids-chairs and step-stools. In spite of their inability to do this simple task without special aids, they are not defined as disabled. Nor are the roughly 100 million people in the United States who cannot see properly without the aid of eyeglasses ....

Disability and nondisability are ... constructed through the language used to describe people. When someone who cannot see is labeled a "blind person," for example, it creates the impression that not being able to see sums up the entire person. In other words, blind becomes what they are. The same thing happens when people are described as "brain damaged" or "crippled" or "retarded" or "deaf"-the person becomes the disability and nothing more. Reducing people to a single dimension of who they are separates and excludes them, marks them as "other," as different from "normal" (white, heterosexual, male, nondisabled) people and therefore as inferior ....

There is a world of difference between using a wheelchair and being treated as a normal human being (who happens to use a wheelchair to get around) and using a wheelchair and being treated as invisible, inferior, unintelligent, asexual, frightening, passive, dependent, and nothing more than your disability. And that difference is not a matter of the disability itself but of how it is constructed in society and how we then make use of that construction

16 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

in our minds to shape how we think about ourselves and other people and how we treat them as a result.

What makes socially constructed reality so powerful is that we rarely if ever experience it as that. We think the way our culture defines something like race or gender is simply the way things are in some objective sense .... In the 19th century, for example, U.S. law identified those having any African ancestry as black, a standard known as the "one-drop rule," which defined "white" as a state of absolute purity in relation to "black." Native American status, in contrast, required at least one-eighth Native American ancestry in order to qualify. Why the different standards? ... Native Americans could claim financial benefits from the federal government, making it to whites' advantage to make it hard for anyone to be considered Native American. Designating someone as black, however, took away power and denied the right to make claims against whites, including white families of origin. In both cases, racial classification has had little to do with objective characteristics and everything to do with preserving white power and wealth.

This fact has also been true of the use of race to tag various ethnic groups. When the Chinese were imported as cheap laborers during the 19th century, the California Supreme Court declared them not white. Mexicans, however, many of whom owned large amounts of land in California and did business with whites, were considered white. Today, as Paul Kivel points qyt, Mexicans are no longer considered white and the Chinese are "condition- ally white at times."

WHAT IS PRIVILEGE?

No matter what privileged group you belong to, if you want to understand the problem of privilege and difference, the first stumbling block is usually the idea of privilege itself. When people hear that they belong to a privileged group or benefit from something like "white privilege" or "male privilege," they don't get it, or they feel angry and defensive about what they do get. Privilege has become one of those loaded words we need to reclaim so that we can use it to name and illuminate the truth ....

Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they've done or failed to do. If people take me more seriously when I give a speech than they would someone of color saying the same things in the same way, then I'm benefiting from white privilege. That a heterosexual black woman can feel free to talk about her life in ways that reveal the fact that she's married to a man is a form of heterosexual privilege because lesbians and gay men cannot casually reveal their sexual orientation without putting themselves at risk.

WHAT PRIVILEGE LOOKS LIKE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

... Privilege shows up in the daily details of people's lives in almost every social setting. Consider the following examples of race privilege ....

• Whites are less likely than blacks to be arrested; once arrested, they are less likely to be convicted and, once convicted, less likely to go to prison, regardless of the crime or circumstances. Whites, for example, constitute 85 percent of those who use illegal drugs, but less than half of those in prison on drug-use charges are white.

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THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DIFFERENCE I 17

Whites are more likely than comparable blacks to have loan applications approved and less likely to be given poor information or the runaround during the application process. Whites are charged lower prices for new and used cars than are people of color, and residential segregation gives whites access to higher-quality goods of all kinds at cheaper prices.

Whites are more likely to control conversations and be allowed to get away with it and to have their ideas and contributions taken seriously, including those that were suggested previously by a person of color and ignored or dismissed. Whites can usually assume that national heroes, success models, and other figures held up for general admiration will be of their race.

Whites can assume that when they go shopping, they'll be treated as serious customers not as potential shoplifters or people without the money to make a purchase. When they try to cash a check or use a credit card, they can assume they won't be hassled for additional identification and will be given the benefit of the doubt.

Most whites are not segregated into communities that isolate them from the best job opportunities, schools, and community services. Whites have greater access to quality education and health care .

Whites can succeed without other people being surprised. Whites don't have to deal with an endless and exhausting stream of attention to their race. They can simply take their race for granted as unremarkable to the extent of experiencing themselves as not even having a race. Unlike some of my African American students, for example, I don't have people coming up to me and treating me as if I were some exotic "other," gushing about how "cool" or diff~rent I am, wanting to know where I'm "from," and reaching out to touch my hair. Whites don't find themselves slotted into occupations identified with their race, as blacks are often slotted into support positions or Asians into technical jobs.

Whites can reasonably expect that if they work hard and "play by the rules," they'll get what they deserve, and they feel justified in complaining if they don't. It is something other racial groups cannot realistically expect.

In the following list for male privilege, note how some items repeat from the list on race but other items do not.

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In most professions and upper-level occupations, men are held to a lower standard than women. It is easier for a "good but not great" male lawyer to make partner than it is for a comparable woman. Men are charged lower prices for new and used cars. If men do poorly at something or make a mistake or commit a crime, they can gener- ally assume that people won't attribute the failure to their gender. The kids who shoot teachers and schoolmates are almost always boys, but rarely is the fact that all this violence is being done by males raised as an important issue.

Men can generally assume that when they go out in public, they won't be sexually harassed or assaulted just because they're male, and if they are victimized, they won't be asked to explain what they were doing there.

18 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

Male representation in government and the ruling circles of corporations and other organizations is disproportionately high.

• Men are more likely than women are to control conversations and be allowed to get away with it and to have their ideas and contributions taken seriously, even those that were suggested previously by a woman and dismissed or ignored.

• Most men can assume that their gender won't be used to determine whether they'll fit in at work or whether teammates will feel comfortable working with them.

• Men can succeed without other people being surprised. • Men don't have to deal with an endless and exhausting stream of attention drawn to

their gender (for example, to how sexually attractive they are). • Men don't find themselves slotted into a narrow range of occupations identified with

their gender as women are slotted into community relations, human resources, social work, elementary school teaching, librarianship, nursing, and clerical, and secretarial positions.

• The standards used to evaluate men as men are consistent with the standards used to evaluate them in other roles such as occupations. Standards used to evaluate women as women are often different from those used to evaluate them in other roles. For example, a man can be both a "real man" and a successful and aggressive lawyer, while an aggressive woman lawyer may succeed as a lawyer but be judged as not measuring up as a woman.

In the following list regarding sexual orientation, note again items in common with the other two lists and items peculiar to this form of privilege.

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Heterosexuals are free to reveal and live their intimate relationships openly-by refer- ring to their partners by name, recounting experiences, going out in public together, displaying pictures on their desks at work-without being accused of "flaunting" their sexuality or risking discrimination. Heterosexuals can marry as a way to commit to long-term relationships that are socially recognized, supported, and legitimated. This fact confers basic rights such as spousal health benefits, the ability to adopt children, inheritance, joint filing of income tax returns, and the power to make decisions for a spouse who is incapacitated in a medical emergency.

Heterosexuals can move about in public without fear of being harassed or physically attacked because of their sexual orientation. Heterosexuals don't run the risk of being reduced to a single aspect of their lives, as if being heterosexual summed up the kind of person they are. Instead, they can be viewed and treated as complex human beings who happen to be heterosexual. Heterosexuals can usually assume that national heroes, success models, and other figures held up for general admiration will be assumed to be heterosexual. Most heterosexuals can assume that their sexual orientation won't be used to deter- mine whether they'll fit in at work or whether teammates will feel comfortable work- ing with them. Heterosexuals don't have to worry that their sexual orientation will be used as a weapon against them, to undermine their achievements or power.

Heterosexuals can live where they want without having to worry about neighbors who disapprove of their sexual orientation.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DIFFERENCE I 19

• Heterosexuals can live in the comfort of knowing that other people's assumptions about their sexual orientation are correct.

In the following list regarding disability status, note again items in common with the other lists and items peculiar to this form of privilege.

• Nondisabled people can choose whether to be conscious of their disability status or to ignore it and regard themselves simply as human beings.

• Nondisabled people can live secure in other people's assumption that they are sexual beings capable of an active sex life, including the potential to have children and be parents.

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Nondisabled people can assume that they will fit in at work and in other settings without having to worry about being evaluated and judged according to preconceived notions and stereotypes about people with disabilities.

Nondisabled people don't have to deal with an endless and exhausting stream of atten- tion to their disability status. They can simply t~ke their disability status for granted as unremarkable to the extent of experiencing themselves as not even having one. Nondisabled people can ask for help without having to worry that people will assume they need help with everything. Nondisabled people can succeed without people being surprised because of low expe<.:- tations of their ability to contribute to society. Nondisabled people can expect to pay lower prices for cars because they are assumed to be mentally unimpaired and less likely to allow themselves to be misled and exploited.

Nondisabled people are more likely to control conversations and be allowed to get away with it and have their ideas and contributions taken seriously, including those that were suggested before by a person with disabilities and then dismissed or ignored. Nondisabled people can assume that national heroes, success models, and other figures held up for gene:ral admiration will share their disability status.

Nondisabled people can generally assume that when they go out in public, they won't be looked at as odd or out of place or not belonging. They can also assume that most buildings and other structures will not be designed in ways that limit their access. N ondisabled people can assume that when they need to travel from one place to another, they will have access to buses, trains, airplanes, and other means of transportation. Nondisabled people can count on being taken seriously and not treated as children . Nondisabled people are less likely to be segregated into living situations-such as nursing homes and special schools and sports programs-that isolate them from job opportunities, schools, community services, and the everyday workings of life in a society.

Regardless of which group we're talking about, privilege generally allows people to assume a certain level of acceptance, inclusion, and respect in the world, to operate within a relatively wide comfort zone. Privilege increases the odds of having things your own way, of being able to set the agenda in a social situation and determine the rules and standards and how they're applied. Privilege grants the cultural authority to make judgments about others and to have those judgements stick. It allows people to define reality and to have prevailing definitions of reality fit their experience. Privilege means being able to decide

20 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

who gets taken seriously, who receives attention, who is accountable to whom and for what. And it grants a presumption of superiority and social permission to act on that presumption without having to worry about being challenged.

To have privilege is to be allowed to move through your life without being marked in ways that identify you as an outsider, as exceptional or "other" to be excluded, or to be included but always with conditions ....

OPPRESSION: THE FLIP SIDE OF PRIVILEGE

For every social category that is privileged, one or more other categories are oppressed in relation to it .... Just as privilege tends to open doors of opportunity, oppression tends to slam them shut.

Like privilege, oppression results from the social relationship between privileged and oppressed categories, which makes it possible for individuals to vary in their personal experience of being oppressed ("I've never been oppressed as a woman"). This also means, however, that in order to have the experience of being oppressed, it is necessary to belong to an oppressed category. In other words, men cannot be oppressed as men, just as whites cannot be oppressed as whites or heterosexuals as heterosexuals, because a group can be oppressed only if there exists another group with the power to oppress them.

As we saw earlier, people in privileged categories can certainly feel bad in ways that can feel oppressive. Men, for example, can feel burdened by what they take to be their respon- sibility to provide for their families. Or they can feel limited and even damaged by the requirement that "real men" must avoid expressing feelings other than anger. But although access to privilege costs them something that may feel oppressive, to call it oppression distorts the nature of what is happening to them and why.

The complexity of systems of privilege makes it possible, of course, for men to experi- ence oppression if they also happen to be of color or gay or disabled or in a lower social class, but not simply because they are male. In the same way, whites can experience oppres- sion for many reasons, but not because they're white.

Finally, being in a privileged category that has an oppressive relationship with another isn't the same as being an oppressive person who behaves in oppressive ways. That males as a social category oppress females as a social category, for example, is a social fact. That doesn't, however, tell us how a particular man thinks or feels about particular women or behaves toward them. This can be a subtle distinction to hang on to, but hang on to it we must if we're going to maintain a clear idea of what oppression is and how it works in defense of privilege.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS I 21

4

Theoretical Foundations

Lee Anne Bell

WHAT IS SOCIAL JUSTICE?

We b_rlie.v..e_.th;i.t§QC!9:l h1.~tic.~)5. __ pgtl_i g_prQc;;~.s.S .. 3-:1:!.4.e: ggc:tJ:._Jhe goal of social justice is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. We envision a society in which individuals are both self-determining (able to develop their full capaci- ties) and interdependent (capable of interacting democratically with others). Social justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others, their society, and the broader world in which we live. These are conditions we wish not only for our own society but also for every society in our interdependent global community.

We realize th.at developing a social justice process in a society and world steeped in oppression is no simple feat. For this reason, we need clear ways to define and analyze oppression so that we can understand how it operates at individual, cultural, and insti- tutional levels, historically and in the present. Although inevitably an oversimplification

a complex social phenomenon, we believe that the conceptual frameworks presented can help us make sense of and, hopefully, act more effectively against oppressive

'"'u.w1nstances as th~e arise in our teaching and activism.

WHY SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION NEEDS A THEORY OF OPPRESSION

is always shaped by theory, whether formal or informal, tacit or expressed. How approach social justice education, the problems we identify as needing remedy, the

, ~vrntions we entertain as viable, and the methods we choose as appropriate for reaching solutions are all theoretical as well as practical questions. Theory and practice inter-

ine as parts of the interactive and historical process that Freire calls "praxis."

DEFINING FEATURES OF OPPRESSION

use the term oppression rather than discrimination, bias, prejudice, or bigotry to ·;,-:

as embedded within individual consciousness. The term ?PPression encapsulates

22 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

the fusion of institutional and systemic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry, and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures that shade most aspects of life in our society .... Woven together through time and reinforced in the present, these patterns provide an example of the pervasive of oppression.

RESTRICTIVE

On the most general level, oppression denotes structural and material constraints that significantly shape a person's life chances and sense of possibility. Oppression restricts both self-development and self-determination. It delimits who one can imagine becoming and the power to act in support of one's rights and aspirations. A girl-child in the United States in 2006, for example, especially if she is poor or of color, is still unlikely to imagine herself as president since, unlike many other countries, we have yet to elect a woman to this high office. 140 years after the abolition of slavery, African Americans as a group have still not achieved full equality and cannot even rely on their government for basic human treatment and aid in a time of crisis, as in the recent scandalous government desertion of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Despite rhetoric that anyone can get ahead if they work hard enough, a father's economic status continues to be the best predictor of the status of his offspring, a situation that worsens as economic inequality grows and the possibilities for social mobility steadily decline.

HIERARCHICAL

Oppression signifies a hierarchical relationship in which dominant or privileged groups reap advantage, often in unconscious ways, from the disempowerment of targeted groups. Whites, for example, gain privilege as a dominant group because they benefit from access to social power and privilege, not equally available to people of color. As a group, Whites earn more money and accumulate more assets than other racial groups, hold the majority of positions of power and influence, and command the controlling institutions in society. White-dominated institutions restrict the life expectancy, infant mortality, income, hous- ing, employment, and educational opportunities of people of color.

COMPLEX, MULTIPLE, CROSS-CUTTING RELATIONSHIPS

Power and privilege are relative, however, because individuals hold multiple complex and cross-cutting social group memberships that confer relative privilege or disadvantage dif- ferently in different contexts. Identity is not simply additive but multiplicative. An upper- class professional man who is African American, for example (still a very small percentage of African Americans overall), may enjoy economic success and professional status con- ferred through male, class, and perhaps dominant language and citizenship privilege as an English-speaking native-born citizen, yet face limitations not endured by white, male and female, or foreign national coworkers. Despite economic and professional status and suc- cess, he may be threatened by police, be unable to hail a taxi, and endure hateful epithets as he walks down the street. The constellation of identities that shape his consciousness and experience as an African American man, and his varying access to privilege, may fluctuate depending upon whether he is light or dark skinned, Ivy League-educated or a high school dropout, incarcerated, unemployed, or a tourist in South Africa, Brazil, or Europe.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS I 23

INTERNALIZED

Oppression not only resides in external social institutions and norms but lodges in the human psyche as well. Oppressive beliefs are internalized by victims as well as perpetra- tors. The idea that poor people somehow deserve and are responsible for poverty, rather than the economic system that structures and requires it, is learned by poor and affluent alike. Homophobia, the deep fear and hatred of homosexuality, is internalized by both straight and gay people. Jews as well as Gentiles absorb antisemitic stereotypes.

SHARED AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF "ISMS"

In grappling with these questions, we have come to believe in the explanatory and political value of identifying both the particular histories and characteristics of specific forms of oppression such as ableism or classism, as well as the patterns that connect and mutually reinforce different oppressions in a system that is inclusive and pervasive. In this book we examine the unique ways in which oppression is manifested through racism, white privi- lege, and immigrant status; sexism, heterosexism, and transgender experiences; religious oppression and antisemitism; and classism, ableism, and ageism/adultism.

We look at the dimensions of experience that connect these "isms" in an overarching system of domination. For example, we examine the roles of a dominant or advantaged group and (a) subordinated or targeted group(s) in each form of oppression and the dif- ferentials of power and privilege that are dynamic features of oppression, whatever its particular form. At the same time, we try to highlight the distinctive qualities and appreci-

the historical and social contingencies that distinguish one form of oppression from another. In this model, diversity and the appreciation of differences are inextricably tied

social justice and the unequal ways that power and privilege construct difference in our

From our perspective, no one form of oppression is the base for all others, yet all are connected within a system that makes them possible. We align with theorists such as Young

describe distinctive ingredients of oppression without prioritizing one over another. also share with Young the view that eradicating oppression ultimately requires struggle

i against all its forms, and that coalitions among diverse people offer the most promising Strategies for challenging oppression systematically. Therefore, we highlight theory and practice that demonstrate interconnections among different forms of oppression and sug-

common strategies to oppose it collectively.

CONSTRUCTING AN INCLUSIVE THEORY OF OPPRESSION

t:e touch on concepts from writing and activism in the Civil Rights, New Left, and wom- ~p's liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and from more recent movements for , quality and social change, to discern lessons about oppression that provide a conceptual ~,mework for understanding its operations. Tracking the history of ideas developed in ~se movements grounds our theoretical understanding in lived experience and highlights

contradictions and conflicts in different approaches to oppression and social justice as are lived out in practice over time and place. Here, we highlight broad themes drawn rich and well-developed academic and social movement traditions to which we are

24 I CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

RACISM

The social science literature on racism and insights about racism that emerged from the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s profoundly shaped the way scholars and activists have come to understand oppression and its other manifestations. The Civil Rights movement fired the imagination of millions of Americans, who applied its lessons to an understanding of their particular situations and adapted its analyses and tactics to their own struggles for equality. For example, Native American, Chicano, and Puerto Rican youth styled themselves after the African American youth in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Black Panther Party. The predominantly white student antiwar movement drew directly from the experiences of the black free- dom struggles to shape their goals and strategies. Early women's liberation groups were spawned within SNCC itself, as black and white women applied the analyses of racial inequality to their own positions as women, as did Latinas within the Puerto Rican Youth. The gay liberation and disability rights movements credit the Civil Rights movement as a model for their organizing and activism, and poor people's and welfare rights movements likewise drew upon this heritage as do immigrant and youth activists today.