Carmen Soret- blog #3

In Age, Race, Class, and Sex I identified with the author, Audre Lorde about feeling " a part of some group defined as other, deviant, inferior, or just plain wrong," although clearly not as deeply as she does. Even though I am not a "forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member on an interracial couple" , I am still a eighteen-year-old hispanic female. The author talks about elderly age being discriminated against, but as young adults we are also discriminated against, although maybe not as strongly. Youth opinion is not given much credit or weight and from personal experience discredited or rejected because we are "so young." I have also been made to feel like I am less of a person because I am a woman, as if I was insufficient and because I am hispanic. In consideration I have not felt discriminated against enough to write an article or start a revolution, but I have felt that most of the labels which society has given me fall under the subordinate category. I also found it interesting that the author does not try to persuade her audience that differences must be elminated from our conciousness. She says instead that, "Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all... [W]e do not develop tools for using human idfference as a springboard for creative change within our lives. She does not want to eliminate the idea of difference or for it to be ingnore. She is urging us to use differences in a way in which they can be used positively and appreciate instead of being subordinances.
I also found the How Working-Class Chicas Get Working-Class Lives article interesting, particularly when they were talking about each others styles and prefferences. I went to a middle school that was considered "ghetto" by all the surrounding middle schools, even though it wasn't as ghetto as everyone though. In 6th grade I identified more with the "prep" style, but when I was accepted into the "cool" group of kids in 7th grade it changed. The cool group included a large group of Mexican, "gangster" guys and in order to attract them I changed my image. I started to wear things that a Mexican girl was "suppose" to wear like hoops and slicked my hair back with "glue stick" bangs. Then I went to a 80% white high school and again my image changed. It was no longer possible to be "cool" and hispanic. I had to fit into a new definition of "cool," the white girl definition. I returned to my "prep" style in order to be accepted by the dominant group on campus.
I believe that "situated knowledge" is a resource to seeing the world clearly. While, it may make decisions such as court rulings based more upon personal experience, the reality of our world is that the opressed and subordinate groups make up a large part of our society. The superordinates are not the majority of people. They cannot rule over people they know nothing about. The majorit of people have experienced adversity and in order to understand the full situation one must understand what if feels like to be discriminated against because of how one was born.