CR4 - Dominant and Subordinate Roles and Identities
In Tatum's article, dominant groups are defined as the group holding all the power, and authority in society. They're believed to “ determine who gets the best jobs, whose history will be taught in school, or whose relationships will be validated in society.” Dominant groups hold the greatest power and influence over society. Subordinates are defined as the ones being controlled by the dominants because they are seen as “innately incapable of performing preferred roles.” the existence of both dominant and subordinate groups is believed to be the cause of prejudice and discrimination especially on racial and ethnic issues. Dominants need to learn to put the feelings and treatment of the subordinate groups under consideration, while the subordinates need to learn to be attuned to the dominants in order to protect themselves. This is how we can change the dynamic from its social norm.
Intersectionality can be best described as, taking into account the various experiences and identities that people have, in order to understand the socio-economic problems they face, and that leads to critical consciousness because you’re becoming aware of those identities and situations. My identities in San Rafael that would be considered “intersectional” are, I am a woman, a person of color, I am considered low class, and I do not come from a nuclear family. Back home, based on the community, and demographic of people I lived around, these identities I previously described as intersectional, would not have not been considered so, because they would fit into the socio-economic norm following where I live when I’m not on campus. Intersections of multiple subordinate identities make a community more vulnerable, because communities will begin to group people and their character to whether they fit into the subordinate, or dominant identities. In DiAngelos’s article, she points out that her intersectional identities are being poor, and being a woman. Naturally to the community, nobody normally categorizes somebody in the white community as “poor” right off the bat, but she was. She did not have much regard for the fact that she was white, and more on the fact that she was poor. DiAngelo empowers herself by recognizing what “Our poverty had separated us from”, she would listen to other women of color in order to also understand their intersectional identities, and encourage other people in the white community to recognize their “own internalized racial dominance,” and oppression.
For my service learning work during this semester, I work for RotaCare. There are a lot of similar identities between the community members. In addition there are differences of identities among the community members and staff at the clinic that may make the environment more vulnerable than others. Some of those identities include, citizen statuses, families in singular language households, individuals that may be socially considered as “poor” or “lower class”, and age differences. RotaCares programing helps solve for these intersectional identities by, providing as much free medical care possible to those who do not have it, providing patients with translators to address the language barriers between patients and doctors, and can provide these services regardless of someone’s citizenship status. Race, gender, class like identities could all be shifted depending on the environment. If a white American woman were to travel to Cuba, for example, she makes experience a form of reverse racism. She may be seen as a minority because she in not from there, they may be a language barrier, or people may negatively categorize her simply for knowing she’s American. For some countries, that may not carry positive opinions.
