Conflicts of Race, Class and Gender Under the Hidden Patriarchal System on Dance Moms

Images of the “housewives” are excessively pictured on the internet. Bravotv.com has pages full of group photographs of the women in their exotic southern outfits, sparking smiles and diva personas. Pictured on the first page is a photograph from Bravotv.com, featuring the cast of The Housewives of Atlanta. It is intriguing to note that this portrait has been cropped together as one unit. In reality, however, each woman is a picture in its self that the producers of the show pushed together to appear as one photograph. Each woman is given certain characteristics to make them, in turn, an actual character on a show. Characters are needed so that the viewer’s cans stereotype each woman, thus providing a cast of characters. This provides an array of misconceptions of who these women

With these mediums of oppression, her first theory, referred to as the Matrix of Domination is brought up. Previous models of oppression were considered additive, or hierarchal, meaning that they must be ranked. Collins uses the experiences of black women to explain that all these modes of oppression, gender, race and class are interlocking and equally important when viewing domination. This bleeds mores into Part II, but the essentials are discussed in this section.

In a scene from the film, Selena, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, a Mexican-American singer, is ignored by a white sales woman. The sales woman judges Selena on the color of her skin, determining her social status as one unimportant to her business, not realizing that Selena was actually a celebrity. Just as the sales woman predetermined a role for Selena rooted by race and ethnicity, Waretown High maintained class, gender, and race stereotypes in determining girl’s futures and outcomes. Julie Bettie’s Women Without Class discusses these stereotypes through expectations set for las chicas and the preps by the school, families, and themselves, the exclusion of hard-living students, those whose families were low income, and the ability for some girls to become upwardly mobile as an exception to the rules.

The journey from being a hidden figure to someone of credibility was far from easy amongst the three women. Each of the women were disposed to stereotypes of not being capable enough that resulted from their skin color. While being stereotyped, these women knew they had

After Selina’s debut solo performance, Margaret’s mother regards her “with an intense interest and irritation” (Marshall 286). Her voice is “preoccupied” (Marshall 286) with prejudice, as she keeps trying to label Selina’s identity. By asserting that there is “something different… about Negroes from the West Indies” that she could “always spot” (Marshall 287), Margaret’s mother shamelessly overgeneralizes Selina’s ancestry and characteristics. Although she asks questions, she hears only what she could identify and what she wanted to hear. Moreover, she goes on to talk about their old maid who was honest and implies how the same cannot be said about the majority of the black race. From an offensive and provocative sentences such as, “You can’t help your color” and “you don’t even act colored” (Marshall 288), readers can clearly see that Margaret’s mother is labeling Selina as one of the majority. All the while, Margaret’s mother has a “warm smile, which was cold at its source” (Marshall 287), on her face and places her “consoling” (Marshall 287), “restraining” (Marshall 288) hand on Selina’s knee, which symbolizes the white supremacy. With “a sharp and shattering clarity,” Selina realizes that the woman “saw one thing above all else” (Marshall 289) when she looked at her: her black skin. She truly sees

When a black woman lowers her life standard, she invites outsiders to pose judgement on the entire group. These unethical behaviors of black women is capitalized off of by mainstream media. Shows such as VH1’s Love and Hip Hop keeps the negative stereotypes of a black woman alive. The black woman who rises above all adversity gains value and respect amongst the

This week, the readings touched on issues relating to resistance and social change. Martinez explains how the U.S. has struggled to see issues of race beyond just Black and white. She also stresses the importance of including other races when speaking on these issues. Hernandez argues that the mainstream feminist movement fails to include minority and low-income women and the issues they face. She states that the movement only benefits white middle class women. Collins explains how people’s ideas and behaviors actualize other people’s inequalities. She says comparing levels of oppression is a competition for attention and instead we should use a new mentality that interlocks these inequalities. Harris

Television networks are continually expanding their programming slates, and many in the past have switched to a year-round programming schedule that makes the phrase “summer return” basically absolute. On every channel, in every magazine, every darken theater, we see the way pop culture limits women’s role- girlfriends, victims, hookers, corpses, sex bombs, and “teases,” but why? Television, for most women, was the first place where they were able to visually see themselves represented. And for quite a while, they didn’t see much besides the loving wife, the dutiful daughter, gossiping girlfriends, fashion models, and the occasional maid, granny, or nanny. In Where the Girls Are: Growing Up

A week ago I found myself reading Patricia Hill Collins, “It’s All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation” and it made me reflect on the ways in which both gender and race are socially built out of distorted interpretations of family. Collectively constructed as opposed to an innate understanding. We have grown dependent on dysfunctional projections of family, giving rise to a hierarchy which aims to serve all: “…a male headship that privileges and naturalizes masculinity as a source of authority…mothers comply with fathers, sisters defer to brothers, all with the understanding that boys submit to maternal authority until they become men.” (Collins 159) The commitment towards this flawed assemblage of characterizations, has in a way, normalized the social hierarchy. However, this expectation has become unrealistic. Many females find that they are not adequately prepared to survive in a male dominated country, although there is little rebellion against these imposed values.

Alicia Keys is reiterating an identity that is universally accepted by most African-American women (Harris-Perry 184). This is the cultural identity of the Strong Black Woman (SBW): self-reliant, tough, and hardworking. Stuart Hall defines cultural identities as, “[A] sort of collective ‘one true self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves’, which many people shared history and ancestry hold in common” (Hall 223). SBW is a self-construction manifested by black women in the Americas. It is used a coping mechanism in response to pervasive sexism and racism. The SBW construct dates back to slavery because the image projects traits of all three stereotypes established during the era of slavery: She looks like the Mammy but is loyal to the black community; She does not require physical and emotional security from men, thus, she resembles the Jezebel; She is angry, just like the Sapphire (Harris-Perry 187). This paper unveils the unfavorable impact of the Strong Black Woman (SBW) cultural identity in the Americas. The argument is centered on the effect of this cultural image on the private sphere, public sphere, and the health of black women. The paper also proposes

Hall 's importance on the anti-racist character of the Southern women 's anti-lynching campaign is seriously misleading. Although Hall reports the racism of white women leaders of various anti-lynching initiatives toward black women collaborators, “But the notion of “racial integrity which white woman asserted as a fundamental goal, functioned for blacks as a code word for segregation.” (100). she does not deliver a continuous examination of the contradictory, often mutually aggressive impulses these leaders displayed. However, in all fairness, Hall does report that within the white women 's movement; "spontaneity gave way to a reassertion of traditional hierarchies and assumptions…" (95). Ironically, during this influential period of women 's consciousness, the plight of black men provided a central opportunity for white women to participate in the forbidden arena of public talk about race and sex.

When watching Dance Moms or the Real Housewives, adolescents are exposed to seeing their beloved stars belittle and back-stab each other. On cyberbullyhotline.com, it states that most reality shows are scripted and force the celebrities to "fight" or "argue" because they believe the more conflict between females, the more viewers they'll receive. Unfortunately, teens think it's acceptable to gossip about their friends and bully other people. Reporter, Shelba Waldron says, "On these shows, girls are being told that they must beat down another girl, in order to get ahead." Times newspaper has shown that girls who watch these violent reality shows have a higher incidence of bullying, cyber bullying and other vicious behaviors than girls that do not. Waldron also stated that thirty-seven percent of the youth that watch reality shows believe that being cold-hearted gets them more respect than being

Samuels (2011) analyzes different television shows in an attempt to draw the conclusion of the portrayal and demeanor of African American women on television. Using current African American dominated shows that attract viewers such as “Love and Hip Hop”, “Real House Wives” and “The Bad Girls Club”, Samuels came to the conclusion that these shows use black women to justify the stereotype of the “angry black woman”. Although Donald Trump’s show “Celebrity Apprentice” is not an African American dominated show, Samuels uses it as an introductory and perfect example that black women are used on television as a whole to exemplify this stereotype when Star Jones and NeNe Leakes are shown arguing. Samuels analyzes simple things such as facial expression, movement and gestures on a variety of television shows that feature African American women using it as proof that it defines them as the angry black woman because Caucasian women do the complete opposite when being analyzed through the shows. When taking a look at VH1’s “Basketball Wives” and “Love and Hip Hop”, Samuels noticed that each show had a pattern and contained a confrontation between the women or the threat to do bodily harm to another person.

Similar to the author Kimberle Crenshaw, the author of “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” I would like to start my critical review essay by mentioning the Black feminist studies book entitled “All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.” Having this idea of problematic predisposition to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive entities in mind, I would like to review Angela Davis’s book entitled “Women, Race, and Class”, and compare my findings to Kimberle Crenshaw’s groundbreaking article that we have read in class, where she famously terms the idea of “intersectionality.” I will start with the examination of similarities between Davis’s and Crenshaw’s arguments regarding the erasure of the Black women’s experiences in social sciences and feminist writings, and will also point out the additional consideration of class that Davis brings to the idea of intersectionality of race and gender initially suggested by Crenshaw, and further discuss the triple discrimination that Black women face on the fronts of race, gender, and class. My main aim in the review of the two author’s texts is to reveal the prevalent problematic notion in Black societies of viewing race implicitly gendered as male, and recognizing gender mainly from the white women’s standpoint.

The result showed that, at the surface level, women are portrayed in “Desperate Housewives” is much different from other TV-series, however, in deep level, women still similar to the norms and traditional