Understanding…, Pt. 5

Pg 88 – “Race, class, gender, and sexuality are not just rankings of socially valued resources – who has more income or prestige. They are power relationships – who exerts power and control over whom – how the privilege of some results from the exploitation of others… (cited from many others)” ~ I like the idea of power relationships, how different cultures and personal histories affect each other and create a power struggle.

Pg 88 – “So socially valued resources such as money and prestige both accrue to those in power and, once procured, serve as tools for maintaining and extending that power into future social relations.” ~ Good for understanding how oppression happens and continues in the real world.

Pg 89 – “Looking at the relational nature of these systems of inequality – not simply at the differences in rankings of resources that accompany these systems – forces us to focus on privilege as well as on oppression.” ~ Good for understanding of multiple aspects of same idea of oppression and domination.

Pg 89 – “…Must incorporate an understanding of the ways that the privilege of dominant groups is tied to the oppression of subordinate groups.” ~ Creates cognitive dissonance, possible a portion of a stage or transformation from one stage to another.

Pg 93 – “…Major social institutions
• Ideological    Education, media, religion
• Political    The state, law
• Economic    Industry, work”
~ Good for understanding how identity, cultures, and personal histories can be affected in the real world.

Pg 95 – “Ideologies represent sets of beliefs that help us to make sense of the contradictions in our social world.” ~ Good for reference.

Pg 96 – “Because of the distorted images of subordinate groups that pervade education and the media, members of these groups are often viewed as weak human beings who passively accept – and even deserve – less of society’s socially valued resources.” ~ Media affecting identity, how people make their own personal histories based on outside references.

Pg 97 – “At the individual level, race, class, gender, and sexuality are fundamental sources of identity formation for all of us: how we see ourselves and who we think we are. They are so fundamental that to be without them would be like being without an identity at all.” ~ Good quote! Love the part about not having an identity at all.

Pg 97 – “…Not only shapes how we see ourselves but how other view us.” ~ Could be said of identity, culture, and personal history.

Pg 132 – “…Segregation isolates communities and sets up the conditions of control over the poor by concentrating poverty to build a set of mutually reinforcing and self-feeding processes of declining.” ~ Why people should integrate and experience others’ personal histories and cultures, so that this does not continue.

Pg 168 – “In any analysis, we should ask the following:
• What was left out?
• What difference does the omission make?
• What would change if it were included?”
~ Good questions to ask myself while writing the paper.

Pg 170 – “When all other social institutions are structured unequally, we cannot hope to achieve equality in the educational system.” ~ Good quote!

Understanding…, Pt. 4

Pg 29 – “This process is on of empowerment…” ~ Empowerment is a good word for finalizing personal identity, or what the stage is when identity of an individual is finally understood by the individual.

Pg 30 – “State policy changes typically mark the dominant culture’s accommodation to social, political, and economic pressures for change that have emerged in struggles with oppressed groups over a long period of time.” ~ Shows how to make change.

Pg 31 – “A war of maneuvers takes place when subordinate groups lack democratic rights…any substantial basis on which to challenge the dominant social order.” ~ Good for reference.

Pg 31 – “In a war of maneuvers, groups develop an alternative internal society as a counter to the repressive social system.” ~ External/internal identity? Maybe also external/internal culture.

Pg 31-32 – “…War of position, where subordinate groups have access to diverse institutional and cultural terrains on which to develop strategies to challenge oppression. In a war of position, subordinate group members, strengthened by the sense of community and political power developed in the war of maneuvers, are strategically positioned to challenge the state’s race, class, gender, and sexuality hierarchies.” ~ How to break domination through culture.

Pg 64 – “…Complex person trying to comprehend her life circumstances in light of the race, class, gender, and sexuality hierarchies in society…” ~ Just a few of the cultures that can affect identity development.

Pg 64 – “Race, class, gender, and sexuality are fundamental features of social organization and personal identity. They are deeply embedded in society’s basic political, economic, and ideological institutions…” ~ Shows how deep cultures run and why they affect so much.

Pg 64 – “Yet every day, the meanings of these hierarchies are negotiated and renegotiated…” ~ Everything is constantly changing and never static.

Pg 70 – “We can ignore some aspects of our social location at any time, but because they are fundamental elements of society’s organization, we cannot render them inactive or unimportant.” ~ Social location key to understanding identity of an individual.

Pg 70 – “These systems are (1) historically and geographically/globally contextual, (2) socially constructed (3) power relationships that operate at (4) macro social structural and micro social psychological levels and are (5) simultaneously expressed.” ~ This is also how cultures are formed and how identities and personal histories are affected.

Pg 71 – Goes into greater depth of the 5 themes listed above. ~ Good for reference.

Pg 73 – “Their meaning develops and changes in group struggles that are firmly rooted in particular geographic locales and in particular historical time periods. From these group contests, new racial groups, new social classes, new gender constructions, and new sexual communities arise, transform, and dissolve. Through similar processes of biologizing, dichotomizing, and ranking, race, gender, and sexuality systems of power and privilege are created and challenged.” ~ Talks about changes in things due to personal histories affecting cultures which then changes identities.

Pg 73 – “Although they persist throughout history, race, class, and gender, and sexuality hierarchies are never static and fixed but are constantly changing as a part of new economic, political, and ideological processes, trends, and events.” ~ Idea that nothing is static.

Pg 81 – “…We also mean that we cannot fully capture their meaning in everyday life in the way that social scientists often attempt to do by employing them as variables in traditional quantitative research. When race, gender, and sexuality are treated as discrete variables, individuals are typically assigned a single location, along each dimension, which is defined by a set of presumably mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. This practice reinforces the view of race, gender, and sexuality as permanent characteristics of individuals, as unchangeable, and as polarities; that is, people can belong to one and only one category. So race, gender, and sexuality are not treated as social constructions whose existence and meaning depend on social relations among groups opposing one another for societal resources but rather as fixed and permanent characteristics of individuals – more like eye color than group membership.” ~ Why personal histories and cultures are so important, because you can’t just look at one thing you must incorporate everything.

Understanding…, Pt. 3

Pg 26 – “Social institutions such as work, the state, or education represent patterns of social relations that are intended to meet particular societal needs and are often associated primarily with a single domain:
• Ideological. The media, religion, and education represent institutions whose primary purpose is ideological – producing and distributing ideas and knowledge about society, why it is organized the way it is, what people need to know in order to function in society.
• Political. The government, law, civil and criminal justice, the police, and the military represent institutions whose primary purpose is politicized – creating and enforcing the laws and government structures that define citizens’ rights, responsibilities, and privileges.
• Economic. The major industries (e.g. finance, health care, manufacturing, housing, transportation, communication) and work represent institutions whose primary emphasis is economic – producing and distributing society’s valued goods and services.

~ Necessary for an understanding of identity, culture, and personal history in the outside world.

Each of these domains and the institutions within them is organized to reinforce and reproduce the prevailing social hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality. They do so by producing and disseminating ideas that justify these inequalities, by concentrating government power and social control mechanisms among dominant groups, and by distributing society’s valued material and social resources unequally to Whites, the middle and upper classes, men, and heterosexuals.”

Pg 26 – “Just as race, class, gender, and sexuality are interconnected dimensions of oppressions, so are social institutions intertwined with one another.” ~ Identities also intertwined with cultures and personal histories.

Pg 27 – “Families are institutions where the ideas that bolster and justify the dominant power structure are reinforced daily in an intimate setting.” ~ Personal history comes much from family.

Pg 28 – “A primary task for dominant groups is to maintain their control over subordinate groups. To do so, they must (1) structure ideology so that exploitations is explained, justified, and rationalized and is seen as a natural, normal, and acceptable part of social life; (2) structure the polity so that the state supports and enforces the exploitative relations; and (3) structure the economy so that the exploitative relations continue – that is, the poverty and labor of the exploited enhances the welfare of the exploiters.” ~ Culture and experience affecting others identity externally.

Pg 28 – “Subordinate group members sometimes restrict their own lives out of a belief in the negative views and limits imposed on their group by the dominant ideology.” ~ Personal history affecting culture differently.

Pg 28 – “Subordinate group members sometimes restrict the lives of other members of oppressed groups or of their own groups out of a belief in the negative views of and limits imposed on another subordinate group or on their own group.” ~ Personal history affecting culture differently.

Pg 28 – “People resist oppression.” ~ Good quote. Necessary to understand why people do certain things.

Pg 29 – “Resistance also occurs at the micro level of the individual and the family when individuals develop an alternative consciousness, insist on self-definition and self-valuation, and refuse to incorporate negative images of their groups. An alternative consciousness is often nurtured in a community of resistance, such as a racial ethnic community, a community of workers, a gay and lesbian community, or a women’s community. When groups publicly resist oppression, the individuals within them can participate in the development of a positive definition of self in the face of dominant culture oppression.” ~ Changing culture and personal history changes experiences and identity.

Understanding…, Pt. 2

Pg 20 – “The dominant ideologies of a color-blind, gender-blind, classless, and sexually restrained society obscure oppression and history.” ~ Good quote.

Pg 20 – “The dominant ideology (belief system), particularly about race and gender but also about social class and sexuality, that pervades the media and dominates public policy is that the United States is or should be a gender-blind, race-blind, classless, and sexually restrained society.” ~ Shows how dominant views exist, but do not always occur in the way they think they should.

Pg 20 – “We do not hear the term class blind used in public discourse because the dominant ideology of class differs from the ideology of race and gender.” ~ Dominant thoughts overpowering the oppressed.

Pg 21 – “Why would we use denial and blindness as bases for social policy and the assessment of moral rightness? To do so implies that we seek not to see and therefore not to know.” ~ Interesting quote.

Pg 21 – About ideas on race, class, gender, and sexuality…
“1. Because members of privileged groups are not disadvantaged and in fact benefit from
these systems, people in these groups find it relatively easy to dismiss the claims of oppressed groups as unreal. ~ Dominant group not having a firm identity prohibits them from fully understanding an oppressed group.
2. In our education and in mass media we do not systematically learn about the totality of the experiences of subordinate groups.” ~ Identity being formed by media exposure.

Pg 21-22 – “In short, we typically learn of these groups only as they can be seen to present “problems” or threats to the dominant groups or as exceptions to the “normal” way of life.” ~ Problems with the dominant viewing the oppressed.

Pg 22 – “These systems are never perfectly patterned – some people have experiences that defy the overall patterns.” ~ Exceptions.

Pg 22 – “So even though a pervasive pattern of oppression exists, there are always individual exceptions. And these exceptions tend to reinforce the views of dominant groups that the system is not oppressive but is indeed open and fair, because those who have benefited from the current arrangements are not inclined to see the ways that the exclusion of others has made their inclusion in the successful mainstream possible. ~ The importance of personal history into culture and identity. While the exception might occur, the exception’s personal history will differ greatly from the others in the group.

Pg 22 – Good explanation of miners using a canary to social atmosphere.

Pg 23 – “These systems are not immutable – they change over time and vary across different regional locations, different cultural milieus.” ~ Identity, and everything that makes identity, is not static.

Pg 23 – “Because of the pervasive, persistent, and severe nature of oppressive systems, people resist subordination. And in their resistance, they can develop positive skills, talents, and abilities. These skills will fortify them to survive and to challenge more effectively the very system designed to limit their opportunities to use their skills, talents, and abilities.” ~ About experience and what forms experiences and why people have certain experiences that affect them. Also, explains why personal histories of the oppressed can be so very different from the dominant, or why the identities of the oppressed may form more quickly than the identities of the dominant, due to the fact that the oppressed experience more and have to form their own identity quicker in order to fight the oppression.

Pg 23 – “Since members of oppressed groups can withstand and even succeed while facing oppression, dominant group members often consider that success to mean that the oppression either does not exist or is not severe. But it is not the oppression itself that creates the success that some people experience: It is the human will to resist oppression and overcome obstacles that makes this success possible. Resistance in individual and collective forms pressures the dominant system to change and transform over time.” ~ How change occurs, through individuals’ experiences, changing of personal histories and cultures to affect final identity.

Pg 24-25 -  Good table on oppression and systems of oppression.

Pg 26 – Ways in which dominant groups oppress others:
“• Ideological. Control over such belief-shaping institutions as schools, the legal system, and the media enables dominant groups to shape public images and cultural beliefs about both dominant and subordinate groups.
• Political. Control over political decision-making processes enables dominant groups to shape public agendas and social institutions in a variety of ways, such as through political platforms, government operations and public policy.
• Economic. Control over such material resources as good jobs, wages and benefits, quality housing, health care, quality day care, and education makes dominant groups more competitive in the workplace and in community life.”
~ Necessary for an understanding of identity, culture, and personal history in the outside world.

Understanding race, class, gender, and sexuality: A conceptual framework, Pt. 1

Pg 4 – “Patricia Hill Collins (1991b; 1998) has described social positions like the one I occupied as ‘outsiders with’; others have called it ‘border-crossing,’ or ‘migrating.’ Outsiders within occupy social positions that enable them to gain knowledge of a dominant group without gaining the full power accorded members of the group.” ~ Outsider within is kind of the idea of getting to know other cultures without actually being a part of that culture…interesting for identity, too.

Pg 5 – “The interplay of exploitation and the struggle against it have always characterized the relations of dominant and subordinate groups in this country. Yet despite major changes in these social relations over time, the same groups who seized power and established this nation-state in 1776 – married (heterosexual), upper-class, White men – continue to dominate it politically, economically, and socially.” ~ So while things change, kind of like how identity changes, minor things to change, but the major aspects stay the same unless something drastic happens.

Pg 6 – The author speaks of analyzing social life in much the same way I want to analyze identity, with complex solutions with multiple facets and unranked.

Pg 8 – “Because the privilege – advantages, benefits, options – of one group is dependent upon the oppression – disadvantages, harms, restrictions – of others, privilege and oppression cannot be understood in isolation from one another.” ~ This affects identity and culture, as well.

Pg 9 – “Education is the formal institution whose central purpose is to promote dominant culture beliefs about how and why society is the way it is, including the rationale for our systems of race, class, gender, and sexuality.” ~ Important for why understanding identity is good.

Pg 14 – “Then multiple cultures can bring diverse knowledge and perspectives to bear effectively on the complex issues facing modern societies in an increasingly interdependent world system.” ~ The importance of diversity in society and in cultures.

Pg 17 – “…Pattern of social relationships among people – that are…complex…pervasive…variable…persistent…severe…hierarchical.” ~ This is important for identity since identity is primarily built from social relationships.

Pg 17-18 – Explains oppression and stereotyping in society. ~ Good for notes.

Pg 18 – “Social location refers to the social “place” of an individual or group in the race, class, gender, and sexuality hierarchies as well as other critical social hierarchies such as age, ethnicity, and nation.” ~ Another important piece of personal history and culture is where it takes place.

Pg 18 – “…Is a structure of inequality that is intricately intertwined with and mutually reinforces the other systems. The meanings of race, class, gender, and sexuality are not fixed, immutable, or universal but arise instead out of historically and geographically specific group struggles over socially valued resources, self-determination, and self-valuation.” ~ Has the idea that everything is constantly changing. Also, the idea that personal identities and cultures affect one another and change one another constantly.

Pg 19 – Defines race, class, gender/sex, and sexual orientation. ~ Good for notes, just in case.

Pg 19 – “Every social situation is affected by societywide historical patterns of race, class, gender, and sexuality that are not necessarily apparent to the participants and are experienced differently depending upon the race, class, gender, and sexuality of the people involved.” ~ Every experience is viewed different depending on a person’s personal history, cultures, and identity.

Pg 19 – “Systemic patterns of inequality can also be obscure to those disadvantaged by them because they lack access to information and resources that dominant groups control.” ~ How domination continues. Why forming identity is important is to experience these things and to break the domination.