• Dominance, according to Tatum, is possessed among a group of people who can set power and authority over subordinates. Examples of dominant people are those “who get the best jobs, whose history will be taught in school, or whose relationships will be vlaidated by society” (Tatum 12). Furthermore, those who hold the dominance get to control how society is structured and where the subordinates lie in this structure.
• Dominants are able to maintain power over the subordinates by deeming them as “defective or substandard in a significant way” (Tatum 12). The best roles in society are preserved for the dominant, while the subordinates are given the roles that associate with their labeled defectiveness, such as lack of intelligence in African Americans or emotional stability in women.
• Calderon noted a few instanes where perspective-taking broke down the characteristics that adhered to dominant or subordinate positions in society, and allowed the two groups to see each other as equals. A relevant example is in the teacher-student relationship; most classrooms operate where the teacher is the dominant figure, while the students are quiet and submissive.

Our classrooms are microcosms of society. They can be structured in a top-down fashion with

the professor in command and students quiet and passive, as Myles Horton described his students when he met them. Or they can be, as Ira Shor proposes, places where students and teachers have relatively equal status as colearners and coeducators. Shor claims that inequalities in society at large result from the distribution of power in these microcosmic settings. He suggests that classroom cultures that support debate and critical study are necessary to advance a more democratic society. (Calderon 3)

While building an alternative school called the Highlander Center to empower working-class people in rural Tennessee, Horton came to see that his students “were usually quiet around strangers or people they considered ‘well-spoken,’ meaning educated.” But once the school’s staff surpassed that barrier and came to understand

their students, they saw that traditional top-down approaches to teaching would be ineffective. By working instead toward “mutual learning,” the staff and students “could and did learn from each other, each respecting the individual character of the other.” (Calderon 2)