Julie Bettie 's ' Women Without Class : Girls, Race, And Identity

“For Colored Girls” is comprised of seven women who represented a different shade of the rainbow. The colors are brown, red, yellow, white, green, orange and blue. Their costumes and make-up transformed each of them and were symbolic of the color their character embodied. The ensemble acting made all of their roles of equal importance, without one dominating the other. These women together formed a bond through their various adversities, gradually taking them from strangers to acquaintances. From an objective view, the audience is allowed to simply observe the events as they take place (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2011, pg. 82) chronologically. Throughout the movie during some of the conflicting and traumatic scenes, one of the women recites a

Jay Macleod’s ethnography, Ain’t No Makin It, sheds light on the institute of education in America and how the country’s capital economy both mirrors and produces inequality by creating hierarchies that make social mobility obsolete. He does this through the use of two groups of predominantly Caucasian and predominantly African American youth who reside in the same low income neighborhood and attend the same school. He soon learned that in contrast to the Hallway Hangers, the predominantly white group who for the majority believed that there was no escape from their socioeconomic background, the Brothers, the predominantly African American group do aspire to hold middle class jobs in the future that provided stable incomes and commit to long term relationships with significant others. However, in his pursuit to conclude his research on the two groups MacLeod found that with the exception of one or two, members from neither of the groups were able to climb up the social ladder and bring about change to their status. Although the two groups did share a common upbringing, they differed in race, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes and therefore their failure to achieve success cannot be seen as mutual.

In Jacoby’s essay, one of her main points is that girls and parents stereotype masculine and feminine knowledge. High school girls may believe that science and math is for boys, while English and the arts is for females. Math is seen as “too hard” and a “waste of time” to young girls, ultimately resulting in them announcing to their parents that they will not be taking math or science for their last years of high school. Jacoby argues that if girls were to say they will not be taking English anymore, parents would be horrified and that parents would be less sanguine about the decision if the girls were boys. She also believes adolescent girls fear unattractiveness and avoid being typed as “brains.”

African American women have long been stereotyped, discriminated against and generalized in this country. They have had to face both being black in America while also being a woman in America. African American women encountered and still do encounter double discrimination of both sex and race (Cuthbert, 117). Women like Elise Johnson McDougald, Marion Vera Cuthbert and Alice Dunbar-Nelson all tried to shed light on what it was like to be an African American woman living in the 20th century yet literature often portrayed them as emotional, hypersexual, unintelligent and of lesser worth. The literature highlighted that African American women have to serve both their employer and their husbands and families. They are not supposed to have an opinion or stand up for themselves, especially to a white man. ***Concluding sentence?

“Virgins,” a short story by Danielle Evans is a coming of age tale that details the arduous journey of upcoming womanhood taken by a young girl and her friend. This young girl is named Erica and her friend is named Jasmine they are both black teenaged girls living in a lower income neighborhood. As one reads, the question emerges of how Evans presents a commentary on the issues that girls on the verge of womanhood must overcome, appears. What aspects must be portrayed to fully paint a picture into this world? Danielle Evans uses teenage ideals of self worth, themes of maturity, and a common disregard of morals to present a commentary on the issues girls on the verge of womanhood must overcome to fully prosper.

In “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” Jean Anyon theorizes about the role education plays in society. Anyon’s central thesis is that public schools in complex societies like our own make available different types of education experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes. Jean Anyon performs a study on different elementary schools’ where the children come from different backgrounds, the parents had different incomes, occupations, and other relevant social characteristics. The method’s Anyon used to prove her point was gathering data in classroom observations, interviewing students, teachers, principals, and district administrative staff; and assessment of curriculum and other materials in each classroom and school. After careful analysis of Anyon’s model and my personal experiences in Windham High School I can confirm that I attend a school Anyon would identify as the working class. Anyon’s model about the working class is valid. For example on the demographics, Windham High School classifys’ as working class society and most families make less than $12,000 and face financial struggles. Anyon characterizes the working class as 85% white however the majority of the working class in my community are composed of Puerto Rican, Asian or African American groups.

In the student essay “It’s Hard Enough Being Me” written by Anna Lisa Raya, the author portrays herself as a credible source for understanding the role of identity in an educational setting. Raya then appeals to an audience of Latinos and other minorities through her emotions such as stating, “I had never questioned who I was or where I was from” (Raya 121). In the end, she resolves the life-longing issues of identity crisis and cultural shock by staying true to herself and “Soy yo and no one else…Punto” (Raya 122). The author asserts the idea of “not only experienced culture shock, but for the first time I had to define myself according to the broad term “Latina”” (Raya 121) throughout the essay. Raya then appeals to her audience through

Writer Gregory Mantsios in his article “Class in America”, talks about these things, and how wide the gap is between the rich and the poor and also discusses how the rich continue to get richer, while the poor continue to get poorer. Mantsios gives his readers the profiles and backgrounds of three hard-working Americans, two of them are white males, whose family background as well as education played a role in their success, while the other person is a black woman who is just above the poverty line despite her work as a nurse’s aide. Through these profiles, Mantsios article shows exactly how sex, race and shows how your parental and educational background of a person can play a role in the things that you achieve. Mantsios also talks about one’s performance in school and the level of school completed can suggest whether or not class that person may belong in.

Beegle begins her essay with references and personal stories from her childhood. She emphasizes on the gap of middle class and the class of poverty that she grew up in. Beegle says, “In school, I did not know the middle-class life examples teachers used to explain academic subjects. I was unable to understand and speak in their middle-class language; I said “ain’t,” didn’t know whether to use “gone” or “went,” didn’t know a difference between “seen” or “saw” (Beegie,342).” Her middle class teacher could not relate to her and Beegle could not relate to her peers or teacher. The lack of knowledge between the two classes as well as barriers pushed Beegle to quit school. The middle class had a different perspective on how a future with education looked

For this journal entry, I chose to compare Audre Lorde's Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference to the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. In Lorde's piece, she talks about how oppressed people are often taught to ignore the fact that they are oppressed. We are taught to handle the difference we face by either ignoring them, copying them or destroying them. Lorde says that society as a whole has failed to see differences as a "springboard for creative change." Her article focuses on the fact that refusing to see creative differences makes it impossible to see the different problems and pitfalls women face. Some problems all women share and other problems all women do not share. For example, the experience of a white woman is different

By  Luis Rodriguez writes how people from a different community is placed in under structure classes, which is not a class  for A+ students but toward lower income community minorities. He states, “But the school also took in the people from the hills and surrounding communities who somehow made it past junior high. They were mostly Mexican, in the “C” track (what were called the stupid classes), and who made up the rosters of the wood, print and auto shop. Only a few of these students participated in school government, in sports, or in the various clubs.(83) Rodriguez elaborates that Mexican students were placed in a classroom that is considered stupid and undesirable environment to be in. Also According to a study by John Eligon, writes how children, lack of education can cause implication of having a job in society, especially not graduate high school which will increase the unemployment rate. He states, “For some, there was admittedly a lack of motivation to job-hunt. For another, Criminal records got in the way. Kaos said he had been turned away from Walmart, walgreens, Footlocker and other. One in four adults in this neighborhood has not graduated from high school, and the unemployment rate is 33 percent, two and a half times the citywide

In order to properly view a story from a feminist perspective, it is important that the reader fully understands what the feminist perspective entails. “There are many feminist perspectives, and each perspective uses different approaches to analyze and interpret texts. One is that gender is “socially constructed” and another is that power is distributed unequally on the basis of sex, race, and ethnicity, religion, national origin, age, ability, sexuality, and economic class status” (South University Online, 2011, para. 1). The story “Girl” is an outline of the things young girls

In the article “ Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” by Audre Lorde , she talks about the differences between people in our society, the differences between black and white women, the different isms of society, and what we can do to change.

To begin, a white woman named Erin Gruwell decides to take up teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School two years following the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. She arrives on the first day to find out that her class is full of “at-risk” high school students— some of which are just out of juvenile hall and have very poor grades. These are kids who have segregated themselves into racial groups so badly that they can’t even sit near each other in the same classroom or walk by each other without getting into fights.

This course has opened my eyes to many new perspectives that I’ve never noticed before, especially perspectives from my own identities such as being Latina and being a woman. Three readings that resonate for me were Natalie Adams and Pamela Bettis’ “Commanding the Room in Shorts Skirts Cheering as the Embodiment of Ideal Girlhood”, Amott’s “The Growth of Wage Work” and Paulette Caldwell’s “A Hair Piece: Perspectives on the Intersection of Race and Gender”, each of which I can relate and identify with in multiple ways. These readings cover the expectations and limitations that women are supposed to follow due to social standards.