Assignment #3

The two articles that stood out to me this week were "Age, Race, Class, and Sex" by Audre Lorde and "How Working-Class Chicas Get Working Class Lives" by Julie Bettie. First of all, Lorde's article discusses the differences that separate all humans, which are listed in the title of her article. She mainly talks about the contrasts between White and Black people and how they tend to "respond to differences with fear or loathing" (245). Furthermore, she brings up a good point that it's not always the differences that separate humans, but rather the refusal to recognize those differences. By refusing to recognize these differences, people (especially White and Black people) misname these differences and hence, largely distort the differences because they are not dealt effectively. In addition, Lorde brings up the idea of a "mythical norm". I agree with this mythical norm in that the media also takes up this mythical norm and displays it in advertisements, etc. She also mentions that White women focus on differences as sex, being women, instead of other differences. This may relate to the fact that the mythical norm is the same race, and therefore, the only major difference from the mythical norm is race. Lorde also related differences to ageism in which people do not learn mistakes from the past and thus, they practically repeat history itself. Again, she brings up the differences between White and Black people, more specifically White and Black women. She states that White women believe that they can live in "relative peace" if they do the "right things", such as marry the right man and have kids, which seem to be put in place by society. Clearly, this does not relate to Black women for the most part since Black women know that violence is in every part of their daily life due to their experience in the past. Lastly, Lorde expresses that we cannot take one part of us to describe ourselves as a whole but as all four of these characteristics work together to define us.

This article relates to the image of the ice cream advertisement featuring Obama in that the difference in race is emphasized. It seems that the advertisement is only taking into account this significant difference and using this difference to market their product.


Bettie's article talks about the classification of a certain group of people and how they have different attitudes and behaviors toward certain things (that may have been molded during their childhood). Furthermore, she calls into question the differences in stylistic preferences, such as make-up and apparel, and also the way they attend class and how they feel about pregnancies among the different groups at school. "Las chicas", who are the girls that do not seem to care for school and show little interest in the official school curriculum, tend to show more skin while wearing their clothes and prefer darker shades of make-up and nail polish while "the preps", who are the girls who have high aspirations for college, tend to wear more conservative style clothes and prefer lighter shades of make-up and nail polish that seem almost natural. One of the girls from "las chicas" even talks about how the different shades of colors have nothing to do with skin color, but they are used to identify with a particular group, as with the apparel they wear. Another thing that stood out was the attitude toward pregnancies. "Las chicas" seemed to be more natural around this topic of discussion, such that it seemed to be a normal thing to happen, not at all surprising to them. The differences of different groups are so distinct that they are usually easy to pinpoint.

This article somewhat relates to the video "Poser!" that was shown in class because the video showed three different races, White, Black, and Asian. Even though their emphasis was on the "peace sign" and other photographic poses used by the different races, one can also see the difference in the apparel that they wear. Though the apparel that each race (group) wears are not as distinct as "las chicas" and "the preps" in the article, there are some subtle differences between the groups. Music, for example, is another difference that we seem to characterize as music in accordance to the different races.

In response to Messner's question in class, I believe that situated knowledge is an impediment because since people may never get to experience the feeling of living in rural areas, or basically experiencing the life in different locations, people cannot fully understand all the worries and dangers of living in such places. Furthermore, situated knowledge depends on the age, location, and environment one lives in to name a few. Younger people do not know as much as older people do and being wiser and more knowledgeable about history and environment means more or less education. I mentioned how the difference in location earlier. The environment also plays a part of situated knowledge because the family values and peer pressures that are instilled into a person at a young age have a greater chance of staying with them for a majority of their life, possibly until they choose to make their own decisions about what they want to believe.