Identities

1
Identities

• Chapter Four
• Perception of Identities

2

• Identities our senses of who we are constantly
  changing and so is our gendered identities
  influenced by being member of religious group, or
  national or social movement
• Identity is fluid and not primordial
• It is socially constructed rather inherited
• Identity shifts with changing of the social
  contexts
• Identities affected by sex, class, culture,
  religion, and age
• Race, age, class, and sex women redefine
  difference
• Western European perceives in terms of
  dominant/subordinate, good/bad, up/down,
  superior/inferior
• Hence, under systematized oppression makes the
  oppressed feel dehumanized, inferior, and surplus
  
• This group include black. Third World people,
  working-class, older, women, and others as
  deviant, inferior and wrong
• We need to extend ourselves and bridge the gap
  between real lives and the oppressor
  consciousness
• Its is considered to be the oppressed
  responsibility to teach the oppressors their
  mistakes and to teach them about our humanity

3
Identities and Schools

• Schools ignore the needs of other kids
• It is considered to be the mothers
  responsibility to educate their teachers about
  their kids needs
• It is our job to alter these socially constructed
  futures that reject difference
• In a profit economy which is based on the need of
  outsiders as surplus people, we are programmed to
  fear and loath difference. We tend to deal with
  difference either by ignore it or copy it. If we
  think it is subordinate we destroy it. If we
  think it is dominant we copy it, but we have no
  patterns for relating across our human difference
  as equals
• Racism is the belief in inherent superiority of
  one race over others and that gives them the
  right to dominance
• Hence, we call human difference, human deviance
• Consequently we either refuse to explore
  differences believing they are insurmountable
  barriers or they do not exist, which leads to
  isolation and false connection instead of
  creating change in our lives

4

• The assumption is that as long as any difference
  between us means one of us being inferior, hence,
  recognition of this difference can be riddled
  with guilt
• To allow women of color step out of the social
  stereotypes is too guilt provoking it threatens
  the complacency of these women who view
  oppression only in terms of sex