Race, Class, and Gender

The categories of race, class, and gender are concepts that govern our social lives. Every interaction between two people is colored by their differences or similarities in these three aspects. For some they are sources of pride and success. For others they are tools used to oppress and destroy. The creation and interactions between these concepts have an incredible influence upon today’s society. This paper will explore the social construction of these categories, the theory of intersectionality put forward by Kimberlé Crenshaw, as well as my own personal reflections on my place in these categories.

In order to understand the complexities of the interaction between race, class, and gender, an understanding of the origins of these categories must be established first. While the predominant cultural view in the United States is that these categories are based in inherent biological traits, the truth of the matter is that all three of these categories are artificial. Each of them is created and affirmed through the daily interactions of everyday people, the media they consume, and the people in positions of power. This section of the paper will analyze each of these three concepts individually in order to examine the connection between the categorization of people and the oppression of minority groups.

To begin, we shall take a look at the aspect that has most consistently been on the mind of America since its inception: race. The topic of race in American culture is a volatile one. This is in large part due to America’s history of systemic oppression against non-white races. There has been a deep historical divide between whites and blacks, Asians, Native Americans, etc. The question of whether or not this divide still exists has different answers depending on who you ask. The difference in answers often falls along racial lines. The history of race in the United States begins before the country was even formed with the introduction of African slaves into the colonies. Prior to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1677, both whites and blacks were kept under servitude. At this time the difference between a black slave and a white indentured servant was not race, it was instead in the cultural differences between the Africans and the Europeans. This resulted in people of all backgrounds joining together when Bacon’s Rebellion broke out in Virginia. This collaboration scared the ruling elites. When the rebellion was suppressed, the Virginia legislature began passing a series of laws that strengthened the divide between whites and blacks. By 1723, the right to vote was taken from all who were deemed to not have European ancestry (Buck 2001). As time progressed and slavery entrenched itself more and more into American society, this division widened. Enslavement became synonymous with black. Black men were denied any form of determination through laws that made children inherit the mother’s enslaved status. In comparison, poor whites were given the right to property and family. The official policy was to take rights away from blacks to convince poor whites that they gained from being white. In reality, whiteness did not confer any real benefit beyond the retainment of human rights. This lesson, that inherent whiteness meant the superiority over others, was learned by the poor whites of the American South. This “psychological wage,” as described by Buck (2001), was compensation in order to appease the lower classes from rebelling against the elite. This belief remained after the Civil War and acted as one of the driving forces behind Jim Crow, segregation, and the continued oppression of racial minorities in the United States. Race was manufactured as a tool of oppression that could be and has been used to deprive certain groups of their rights in order to maintain the position of a ruling elite.

The topic of gender is one that has come up sporadically through American history. While rarely reaching the same levels of mainstream attention as the conflicts surrounding race, the fight for gender equality is one that is just as important. Historically gender has been synonymous with sex though this is not the case. Sex is used to describe the biological traits that govern the reproductive system and its associated hormones. This is usually separated into the two categories of male and female despite the existence of numerous conditions that fall under the intersex umbrella. Gender describes the sociocultural norms surrounding a person’s sex. There is a long history of violent enforcement of these gender norms in the West with examples stretching back at least as far as Joan of Arc. In Western society, gender norms have traditionally given inordinate power to men. As such the nature of masculinity in its modern incarnation must be understood before significant change can be made to reform our society’s understanding of gender as a whole. Historically masculinity has been associated with land ownership or workmanship. With the rise of industrial capitalism in the early to mid 1800s, these ideas gave way to a new form of masculinity that still holds sway in modern America. The Marketplace Man, as described by Kimmel (1996), is someone who bases his worth as a man around his ability to make money and hold power. Since women were largely barred from participating in much of the higher workings of capitalist society, men began to compete with solely other men in a struggle for more money and power. Masculinity became a performance for those of the same sex rather than a means to affirm oneself. Since masculinity had become a competition with the reward of approval of one’s peers, there became a motive to reduce the status of others. This naturally took the form of the denial of femininity (Kimmel 1996). If one is to be successful, one should avoid being like the people who are not allowed to compete. This new aspect of masculinity would become the core of oppression against those who were seen as violating gender norms. Women were supposed to be feminine. Since masculinity meant power and wealth and masculinity is the opposite of femininity, women were thus barred from participating in business and politics. Since femininity is the opposite of masculinity and being attracted to men is associated with women, homosexual men were thus seen as less masculine and thus less deserving of power and wealth. The gender that has been dominant in American culture has changed in definition over time. In doing so it not only shows the nature of gender as a whole as a social construct, but it also has become a tool used to oppress people beyond the strict definition of masculinity.

The final of the three categories is the one that has gone under the radar in America’s consciousness. This is in spite of economic class being one of the most important categories a person is represented in. Class determines an American’s access to healthcare, education, housing, and practically every other major indication of success in this country. Class is a category that is blatantly not biological. How could a person be inherently poor? Despite the ridiculousness of the claim, the idea that a person’s class is inherent to their being is one that has pervaded American culture and ideas. The central thesis is that the impoverished are the cause of their own poverty. The poor are too lazy to work jobs and are bad parents to their children. It is a lack of incentive created by welfare programs that leads to increased poverty. These claims are blatantly false. This theory is simply a convenient explanation to continue to uphold a fundamentally broken system that prevents upwards mobility and to strip away any protections that do exist. However, this cannot be simply disregarded as the blatantly false excuse for oppression that it is. This explanation has wormed its way into American economic policy from 1965 to at least 2014 (Greenbaum 2014). As pointed out by Greenbaum (2014), this individualization of large-scale economic issues has a clear motive. It keeps the elite rich and powerful while maintaining the powerlessness of the lower classes. In the United States, there is also a clear racial dimension as a result of racist, historic policies. The poor are not uniquely fit for poverty. They are forced into that position by those in power in an effort to maintain an unjust hierarchy. To say otherwise is laughable at best and despicable at worst.

Now that we have discussed the socially constructed nature of race, class, and gender, we may continue to discuss intersectionality. Intersectionality, put forward by civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw, is the theory that there are times where discrimination occurs because someone is a part of more than one discriminated group simultaneously. The example that led to Crenshaw developing the theory in the first case is crystal clear in illustrating the point. Emma DeGraffenreid was one of several women who sued General Motors for discriminatory hiring practices. DeGraffenreid lost her case because General Motors hired both blacks and women individually. However, General Motors had different jobs for men and women. The company hired blacks, but only to work the jobs meant for men. DeGraffenreid was discriminated against because she was black or because she was a woman. She was discriminated against because of she was both black and a woman (Crenshaw 2015). Intersectionality is not just between race and gender either. Young black men in prison are incarcerated in high numbers because of their race and their economic class. There are connections between each of the three categories that result in unique circumstances that can only be explained by the victim being at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression. This is the issue intersectionality examines and hopes to resolve.

To end this paper, I will speak of my own place within the categories of race, class, and gender. In addition, I will be discussing how my perception has shifted over time. As a transgender woman, I have had a difficult relationship with masculinity. While I have never been particularly feminine, I launched myself into it soon after I had realized my identity. Over time I have come to realize this was an overcorrection for a life lived playing a role that did not fit me. I have come to terms with masculinity, not as an evil that I must avoid, but as an aspect of myself that I would need to delve into just as much as my relationship with femininity. I have become more comfortable with the more masculine aspects of myself and have found myself becoming more of who I want to be. My relationship with class and race has been one that I have not examined greatly until recently. I am white and come from a middle class background. My entire family is best described as Reagan-era conservatives. As such, I was not raised with consciousness surrounding my race or class. As I aged, I became more aware of the classist nature of American society and found an increasing distaste for my family’s wealth. It was not out of a form of guilt for things I could not control, but instead it was an anger towards my family for upholding this system of inequality. I also recognized that in matters of race, I have little room to speak. Once more I need to clarify, I am not ashamed of my race. I simply understand that racial minorities have historically been deprived of a voice and that it is their voices, as the oppressed, that matter most in discussions of oppression. Minority voices must be listened to when the topic of racial inequality is brought up, lest we fall into the same traps of the past by thinking that we know more about what’s best for a community than the community members themselves.

This paper has examined the social construction of race, class, and gender as well as intersectionality and my own experiences with these categories. Knowledge of these aspects of our identity and their interactions in the modern world is invaluable for examining the greater issues at play within our culture. As a result of this course, I have found a greater understanding of the issues plaguing our country as well as a greater appreciation for the work of modern civil rights activists.

References

Buck, Pem Davidson. 2001. Worked to the Bone: Race, Class, Power, and Privilege in Kentucky. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 2015. “Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait.” The Washington Post.

Greenbaum, Susan. 2014. “Opinion: Debunking the Pathology of Poverty.” Al Jazeera America. Retrieved April 13, 2024 (http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/culture-of-povertysocialwelfarepaulryanaffluenza.html).

Kimmel, Michael S. 1996. Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity. St. Augustine, Florida: Centre for Gender & Development Studies, University of the West Indies.