What needs to change...

I was reading an article this morning for my sociology class from the American Sociological Review. The article is called "Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places," and it gives personal accounts of situations and experiences that African Americans have had that showcase the oppression they face in their everyday lives and how they deal with this discrimination. One section really caught my attention because it reminded me of something that we have talked about before in class (and in the blog!), relating to the oppression of women. The section in the article that I am referring to focused on the personal account of a middle-class African American woman who happens to be a professor at a major all-white university. Here is a chunk of what she said:

"…Because I’m a large black woman, and I don’t wear whatever class status I have, or whatever professional status [I have] in my appearance when I’m in the grocery store, I’m part of the mass of large black women shopping. For most whites, and even for some blacks, that translates into negative status. That means that they are free to treat me the way they treat most poor black people, because they can’t tell by looking at me that I differ from that."

The last sentence is what really caught my attention because, as writer Joe Feagin explains later in the article, when she says "they can’t tell by looking at me that I differ from that," she is talking about her status as a professor. I felt that her statement was strange because she is almost trying to separate herself from her race and from her fellow African Americans by saying that she is different from them and that she basically doesn’t deserve to be lumped into that category.

This reminded me of an earlier discussion we had about the oppression of women and how there is no way that we are ever going to be able to overcome oppression if we keep picking on each other and pointing out our differences. This woman is an African American, whether she realizes it or not. I know that being a professor gives her more status than the "poor black people" that she refers to, but I think she needs to join forces with the poor, rather than try to separate herself from them, in order to combat the oppression that they are all facing because of the color of their skin.