The book examines the social construction of gender, race, and class related to the institutions such as families. When other texts concentrate on different forms of stratification and impacts on the member of sidelined society, Ore discusses the formation of the systems of stratification and how they are interconnected. The book also has critical thinking questions which help students to apply the situation into their lives; explaining how their behaviors, attitudes, and standpoints serve to preserve a stratified structure.
The book is a fourth edition concerned with socially based oppression and edited by Ore. The editor assembled about sixty-five journals, essays, magazines, newspaper, and book chapters to develop this document. The sections are not much intertwined as they do not come from the same source but different origins with different time periods. Moreover, they include individual and theoretical experiences as well as empirical research. The writing styles and content used from academic journalistic and personal sources creates an attractive learning experience, with a coherent theme throughout the book. These themes include race, sexuality, gender and a defined class based on political, economic and social power, which people should consider as a fallacy. The primary reason that makes this stratification a mistake is because of how some people see it; they think it is natural or biological. The bifurcation of these categories brings groups defined in terms such as white and black, male and female, homosexual and heterosexual as well as middle, rich and poor class, but overlooks many other varieties within this context. Moreover, it helps to diminish the regular reality that many people face on a daily basis, and also maintains much oppression even to the innocent individuals.
Social construction creates an internalization and externalization of identities. from such believes, people then objectify the reality and begin and learns how to think that those definitions precisely represent them but they go further to use the same terms to define others. Historically, changes have occurred construed on gender, race; but, these identities are dynamic as they continue to change according to the social context. Because people have tried to make these changes natural when they are not, then it means that it is possible to liberate them from this bondage of mind through approaches such as renaming the reality as well as encouraging self-definitions. All people experience the problem of discrimination, but in different degrees, and this should be the first thing to understand to help many accept social changes, which should happen at the institutional, interpersonal and individual level. People should understand the intersection of gender, race, class, and sexuality and then analyze how they all reinforce each other. Moreover, it is crucial to understand institutional barriers to help construct and deconstruct these statuses, since if they focus on the current standings, they can continue to evolve depending on the context that shall arise with time to increase their complexity.
Analysis
The book concentrated on four sections but divided into different parts of every segment. In each of the four sections, Ore provides an introduction, which includes framework and concept that help readers understand and critically analyze the content, and also help one to recognize the impact of the status inscribed in the analysis. At the conclusion of every section, the author puts some questions that help the student to focus on the theme of this book, and also think critically and apply the situation to their lives. Since the book has many examples which talk about the subject, this analysis shall focus on a few of them.
The first section talks about why and how the difference in social construction happens. Here, reading is more concerned with race and assesses it from a historical and theoretical perspective which argues that people can go beyond race as it is a dynamic idea. In the second part of this section, the reading differentiates between white people identifying with a specific ethnic group that enjoys many benefits and has no adverse results according to their choice. On the other hand, black people identify as being obligatory to categorize themselves with the contrary identity construction. Moreover, this part offers a crucial point that thinking individualistically causes a barrier of understanding the unavailable choices that some people experience, and the remedies that they should focus into including affirmative actions.
Part three of section one is relevant to today when talking about the fear-based policies that can make a religion like Muslim to become possible suspects of terrorism. The danger of this argument is that it can spill out to other innocent immigrant individuals and increase their suffering. In this part, it describes community decimation, and it is dominant in explaining the experiences of specific groups of Muslims, who face the harsh effects of these policies.
Part four of section one gives a historical account of Jewish people considered as a non-whites immigrant before world war two had erupted in the U.S, and this caused a massive problem for this group. After the war, the Jews were incorporated into the status of whites and began to enjoy their economic prosperity through the benefit of white’s policies which include the GI bill. On the contrary, the black community continued to have poor performance as their non-white status prevented them from enjoying any of the benefits from the federal policies, and many of them suffer the same problem until today.
Part five of section one talks about the historical gap of wealth between whites and blacks and indicates that barriers to black people continue to accumulate as passing the wealth to their family is institutionally created. The black community continues to face discrimination today, and it adversely affects their quality of life and opportunities. Part six shows how media prevents the creation of class perception and helps to shape the egalitarian impression. This section does not fit in section one but would have been better if in chapter two to help show how institutions impact on social stratification. However, lack of reference for this argument does not provide credibility and a genuine reason for its inclusion in the book. Part seven of section one is a piece concerning the connection between class, and race, and ways in which policies, laws, and verdicts from the courts cause disparity and discrimination at a higher level than common behaviors of people. Part eight talks about the corporate welfare and rarely does it back the theme occupying this document, meaning that its impact on the agenda of the book is negligible.
The social construction of gender shall dominate the following example. Part ten is a piece concerned with gender, as it explains the intellectualization of gender and sex as points in different dimensions (p.124). Again, it is possible that the author here was transgendered, as she raises the concept that, although anatomy defines gender, the idea can also be a state of mind (p.128). However, people can solve the problem by not conforming to the norms of gender but understanding and express their unique identity.
Part twelve is a manhood social construction indicating that for a person to be named a successful man, he must accept his definition that opposes the roles of women. The psychological cost burdening men who try to follow this idea is unbearable, and the author suggests another description of the American manhood. The concluding analysis to consider for segment one is the sixteenth portion, where transgendered individual talks about her capacity to understand interpretive signs of how to behave and look for the identification of whether one is a male or a female. The person here sees herself without gender but has much information about its social construction, but she has much control to the point of choosing when to show her identity.
The second section of the volume contains an overview and explanation of how institutions including families, media economy, social policies and the social power of language as well as how social control affects the lives of people of different individuals. The seventeenth part gives a historical interpretation of families and ways in which they have been built to support and maintain privileges and oppression, which creates inequality, particularly to the black and ethnic women. Nineteenth part shows how economic disparities connect with sexism to cause hardship to some families due to inappropriate policies such as childcare and the living wage. In twentieth part, the author creates a case to legalize marriages of same-sex individuals, as it would reduce the unfair ideologies about families and help to open more diversified institutions.
The twenty-first and twenty-second reading of section two gives a juxtaposition of disparities in learning institutions and the possible influence on underprivileged children as compared to the privilege of wealthy families spilling to these generations. Kids from low-income families attend schools with inadequate facilities, where they are trained to take low-income jobs while those from the affluent families have all opportunities to put in place and participate in good schools and colleges and later assume positions of power and occupy more paying jobs in both private and public organizations. The twenty-third part discusses the U.S. shameful practice of taking children of the Native Americans and boarding school facilities where their identity is stripped off and enforced to adopt the culture of whites; however, the trial was a total failure.
The reading on the twenty-sixth part indicates how societies see people living in the inner-city as jobless and without social qualifications for employment, meaning that they can be dangerous as their habits and action does not match the formal expectations. Moreover, this part points on a strong impact created by the intersection of class and race. Twenty-seventh reading is research of employers interrogated concerning the person they nominated for hire, and it proves their bias based on ethnicity, class, and race, according to their perception on the association between productivity and members of a group. Section twenty-nine indicates the relationship between social inequalities and life outcomes, and it shows a positive connection between increased disparity, lack of proper health as well as high mortality rates.
The thirtieth portion is an analysis of welfare reforms in the United States, which happened in 1996 and shows race and ethnicity biases that provide the impetus for oppressive policies which includes the operationalization of systems especially the challenges faced by legal immigrants and black women. One force used to preserve gender’s adverse social structure is violence, expressed in part forty-four. The scene shows rape occurrence against college young women, and some bars and fraternities assist in socially constructing the setting that can increase chances of this rape.
Mostly, section three provides personal experiences of oppression, but on one situation, a privileged person who expresses what it looks like to face abuse and privilege at the same time. Part fifty-three talks about a Native American who was a gay but suffered from the impact of being an outcast at both inside and outside his social norms and practices; he depicts the oppression power through fear. For instance, he states that he panics when in a chamber with white individuals, and wonders whether he would leave that place alive (Ore, 2008, p. 666). In the fifty-fifth reading, the author shows a compelling statement of the effort of a person to integrate the identity of ethnicity, gender, feminism, and nationality yet not allowing others to define him. The person has developed comfort of existing at the “margin of categories” (p.680).
The ending section of this volume discusses ways of changing the privilege and oppression systems as well as recognizing that change should happen at all levels right from individuals to institutions. This section contains redundancy to other parts of the book, and the information does not flow precisely. Moreover, the segment does not have instances of commitments that can transform vision and systems or strategies for doing so. However, part sixty-three provides guidelines for supporting blacks, which would be beneficial for being an alley to other groups of oppressed people. The section covers roles and justifications used by people for not being supportive and strategies applicable in eliminating “Isms.” The sixty-fifth part is what the book should emphasize more as it describes the Latinos current movements of organizing labor and building coalitions between Mexican maquiladoras and the U.S.
Personal reflection
The overall book is impressive when portraying the oppression across different statuses, roles and manifestation among individuals and groups. The book also helps to raise consciousness and inform people about individuals and systemic acts that preserve the status quo. Moreover, it offers expectation by providing the information on the social stratification dominating these retrogressive and unmerited standings and the probability of destroying as well as reconstituting them to help achieve self-actualization and freedom.
In my case, I remember one day after playing football with my white friends, my four friends and I decided to go home, and on the way, we came across a black guy who was a little bit younger than our age, who my friends were quick to start a conversation. At first, I thought they knew him, and thus I opted to listen, but as talks continued, I saw this black friend disgusted by a statement from my colleagues. At this time, I decided to intervene to know why the conversation was nasty, but I realized that my friend was making racial comments about John's friend. Quickly, I had to change that situation, but luckily, John appeared on his way home when he saw his friends crying. The case was not pleasing, but he opted to reconcile both of these guys as they were both his friends but warned against the occurrence of such incidence. From that time, I realized that some people face insults and discrimination only because of who their natural appearance.
In my view, more emphasis should be placed on the last section of the book to assist in strengthening it, and more articles should be added to provide instances of commitments to change policies and institutions creating problems against people. However, in helping to solve the misery, the available resources can be used to educate people on dangers of discrimination and that it only happens to mentally retrogressive individuals. As this book explains, it is clear that bias against some societies is a state of mind, people grow knowing that they are superior as compared to other communities, which then strengthens that stereotype and eventually amplify the hatred between societies. Moreover, electing good leaders can be beneficial in maintaining the value and respect of every group. For instance, good leaders would change policies and the curriculum that forces the culture of whites into children of native American society.
Reference
Ore, T.E 2008. The social construction of difference and inequality: Race, class, gender, and sexuality.
