The reading this week brought to my attention that historic events have a way of repeating themselves. In Folklore of the Freeway, Eric Avila explains that during the “Freeway Revolt” there were different ways that communities organized and the types of issues they were fighting against. These issues and organization structures mirror current day protests. Likewise, the connections between how women were treated with respect to protests during the “Freeway Revolt” and the recent Women's match are astounding. In the context of these two events, white women are seen as saints for fighting a fight that doesn’t affect them, while women of color as ridiculed for making a big deal out of nothing. Avila makes a point to contrasts the experiences of …show more content…
The sub-section “Women of the Freeway Revolt” focuses on women who made political and media coverage for their participation in the “Freeway Revolt”. Unsurprisingly all of the women in this part of the chapter are white upper and middle-class women from influential families. All of them started out as housewives and had the time and resources to participate in the freeway revolt. These women were seen as “mothers [that] kept insisting and wouldn’t give up” they were an actual force to be reckoned with. In contrast, the next section “Feminism under the Freeway” the role of women of color is finally explained. Unlike the white women in the previous section, these women don’t make any political gains or receive media coverage. Their work is not able to stop the Freeways from intersecting their communities. Instead, they allowed to create murals on the sides of the Freeway and under bridges. They try to repurpose these spaces and make them into a form of resistance against the oppressive nature of these new roads. These women use their culture and voices to “bring life, even to the deadening spaces created by men.” Though they were not able to prevent the creation of highways like their white counterparts-due to race, socioeconomic status, first language, etc.-they were able to facilitate cultural
It is the 1960’s and racism is still a major problem in the United States; however, there were those such as Martin Luther King and Flannery O’Connor who use speeches and stories to fight the ever growing problem of discrimination. As read in O’Connor’s short story “Revelation” , Mrs. Turpin is a prejudiced woman who believes she is better than African-Americans and “white thrash”. She even states at one time, “You can’t get the white folks to pick it and now you can’t get the blacks because they got to be right up there with the white folks (O’Connor 9).” She says this while she waits in a waiting room of a doctor’s office to a nice lady of her status.
To demonstrate an act of resistance against one of the many injustices imposed on the Chicano community, I’ve chosen the activist Lauren Jimenez whom came to discuss the film No Mas Bebes and the work she focuses on as Executive Director of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice. The film No Mas Bebes shows the systemic issue related to reproductive justice that is women of color reproductive rights. There is a resiliency in all these women, the fact that they didn’t back down from the powerful medical enterprises and officials, but fought back against the injustice they went through shows strength. Even though they did not win the case, that did not stop them from continuing the fight for other women to not endure the same pain inflicted upon them. Women, especially, of color, always struggle with their sexually and position in society which makes it hard for them to fight back.
On March 1 2017, I attended an event for the anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. This event included readings, musical performances, and a choreographed performance. The entire event completely captivated me, but I was most impacted by Andrea Jenkins reading from her part of the anthology titled “The Price We Pay: How Race and Gender Identity Converge”. In her piece, she talked a lot about gender identity, race, and how they intersect.
2) This extract is found in “The White Album” written by Joan Didion, who is the creator of many significant different literature pieces, both novels and essays. “The White Album” was published in 1979, and is the first and longest essay in the book. In this essay Joan Didion essentially uses a women as a connecting thread to describe what was happening in America at that time. I believe that the woman may even be herself to a certain extent, trying to externalize all her thoughts. What is perceived from the essay is that Didion was submerged into the focus of some big events that were happening in that year, not only as a journalist but also as a bystander and a normal Californian.
“But because of affirmative action or minority something—she is not sure what they are calling it these days and weren’t they supposed to get rid of it?,” writes Claudia Rankine in her critically acclaimed American book, Citizen. Within this quote, Rankine begins to showcase the narrative of a black women in a society that strives to be color blind. Affirmative action has caused controversy as it threatens white supremacy since it favors diversity. The bitter attitude towards affirmative action expressed by whites, causes people of color to feel apologetic for their achievements and opportunities. Claudia Rankine reveals how white supremacist attitudes trigger people of color to live their life in an apologetic nature through the short stories of the cafeteria, the neighbor calling the police, and the Serena William’s celebratory dance.
In the 1980’s black women are faced with a lot pressure in society, Because women of color are both women and racial minorities, they face more pressure in which lower economic opportunities due to their race and their gender. This pressure is reflected both in the jobs available to them and in their lower pay. Also because they are women of color they are likely to be the giver of the house and also within the families. Through the use of anecdotes,rhetorical questions, anaphora, ethos and metaphors, "In The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism, Audre Lorde argues that women of color need to respond to racism with anger spurred from their fear and that not a bad thing depends on how anger is portrayed.
Doing Wrong for The Right Reasons There used to be a time where men, women, and people of color were not treated equally. Before a time of equality, women, and people of color, had little to no rights and were restricted within their society. Frederick Douglass and Emmeline Pankhurst knew that their society did not favor people of color or women and, would go on to fight for equal rights for the rest of their lives. Both Pankhurst and Douglas choose to break the law to bring attention to people’s natural rights and defend them.
Women had many different roles in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, otherwise known as SNCC, but the legacy of their roles is not as important as the debate over their treatment. The experiences of women varied greatly depending on whether the woman was black or white. Most literature examining this issue until recently was written by white women, which provided a different perspective from black women’s stories. White women had more complaints and frustrations regarding subordination compared to black women. Gender as well as race created tensions in SNCC, and these problems created foreshadowed the feminist movement.
In the poem “Ego Tripping” by Nikki Giovanni it is evident that it is difficult to fix a past filled with misogyny, and patriarchy that advance women as feeble vessels, whose words and activities put men at risk. Despite the fact that it implies battling a custom of subordinating women that stretches out back a large number of years, the women’s activist development has since the mid-1970s attempted to give a voice to ladies that offers trust, gives quality, and proposes approaches to battle for more equality. Nikki Giovanni fights for change for African American women in the form of present tense language that shows women’s strength, power, and beauty. Although she is speaking in present tense, she is alluding to the future she wants women
In the reading, What Has Happened Here by Elsa Brown, the author argues about how racial backgrounds are ignored in society. Furthermore, Brown also scrutinize how in feminist movements there are differences between black and white women. What I most found interesting from the text was the sexual harassment case Brown talked about and how Anita’s Hill race was not prevalent in case, for example, Brown stated “When Prof. Hill testified, a number of women rallied to support her…however (they) ignored the fact that she is a Black women, the thirteenth child of Oklahoma farmers, or treated these as merely descriptive or incidental matters” (302). In addition, the media also did not take into account her racial background because in the papers they
Susan S. Lanser’s “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the politics of color in America” examines the impacts “The Yellow Wallpaper” had on feminist writing styles and critiques. Lanser writes that the story helps to analyze the reading trough “the lens of a female consciousness” and apply the knowledge gained from a female perspective onto other literature (418). The transition that the narrator displays from being dependent on John to becoming independent reflects the feminist movement and challenges the “male dominance” that currently takes precedence in society (418). The “patriarchal prisonhouse” that is society controls the narrator and oppresses women not only in “The Yellow Wallpaper” but in real life as well (419). The
Whether it be a judicial change, a social movement, or a hate fueled act, it is undeniable that these shifts leave a toll on people. As such, it is crucial that our theory and praxis change with this unpredictable world. Some people insist that time makes a piece more credible, but when it comes to social advocacy and theory, this could not be more false. Moreover, Hersey’s ability to simultaneously focus on the experiences that Americans have faced in the past, while also emphasizing the need for change now gives her an advantage that the majority of second wave feminists simply do not possess. It is for this reason that Rest is Resistance could be deemed a credible source for academic study and feminist theory as a
This story in its universality usually negates the women’s experience, Pérez argues that through the deconstruction of the historiography at play, history can be posed through a feminist lense, which includes rather than negates the perspectives, views, and adversities of women throughout history. Within her argument she also poses several sub arguments aimed at forcing the reader to think outside of the basic lines that surround Chicano/a history. She argues that the use of binaries can no longer be used as modes to determine whether or not someone is a friend or an enemy. She also argues that society has yet to reach a post colonial era based on the simple fact that in order to become a post colonial society, there was be a decolonization of the object, in this case women, to become the decolonial subject. This Pérez states will finally allow society to enter
It either includes all women, or it’s not feminism” (Makers). She frequently reminds individuals that it was disproportionately women of color, especially black women, who created the feminist movement. She contends that erasing black women’s integral contributions disgraces the founders of the movement and eradicates the efforts of feminism’s true founding
Kareen Harboyan English 1C Professor Supekar March 15, 2018 Word Count: Crenshaw’s Mapping the Margins: The Marginalization of Women of Color Analyzed Through Generalization and A Feminist Lens Crenshaw's Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color expands on the multifaceted struggles of women of color and the generalizations ingrained in society that limit women of color and keep them in a box. In this text, Crenshaw builds on the concept of intersectionality which proposes that social categorizations such as gender and race are intertwined and have great influence on one another.