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Assignment 01

In chapter 3 of, “Women, Race & Class”, Angela Y. Davis uses prominent historical figures and events to explain the relationship between gender, race and class. This relationship is best represented during the Akron Convention when African-American women named Sojourner Truth distinguished herself in the midst. The relationship amongst people around the nineteenth century was based on class then divided itself into gender and race. The white man was considered the superior figure, being able to vote and hold land. The white woman was the housewife in some cases tending to the children, being unable to be self-sustainable and education was barred for most women. African Americans on the other hand were slaves, sort of like domesticated animals at the time due to the insensitivity of their jobs and the harsh treatment they received. Black woman were treated no differently, raising kid, tending to land, equal punishments. One group that was not mentioned during the Seneca conventions was the African American woman. Sojourner Truth connected the relationship between race, gender and class by representing the last group of women who faced both racism and sexism which were two controversial topics at the time, during the abolition movement and women right movement. Truth goes on to explain in her famous “aint I woman?” speech she gives counterclaim to argument that women were too fragile to help themselves, what purpose do they need to vote. Stating she hasn’t not experienced the courteous side to a man seeing that she is a woman. That she too has done the same load of work as other African American men in the field and take the same punishment as they do while bearing thirteen children, all to watch them be sold as slaves. Sojourner  Truth was mentioned by Davis to explain the connection between race, class and gender. African –American women needed their equal rights just as much as white woman and white woman needed their equal rights just as African American men needed their human rights. All these issues at the time from sexism and racism all depended on the superior figure at the time, White men.