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Assignment 9: Patricia Hill-Collins

There has been plethora times in my life where I have felt/been treated like an “outsider”. The one that I will be talking about was how I felt like an outsider growing up in my own family. Growing up in my family I was the youngest of my siblings and cousins. I was also the darkest person in my family. My siblings would always joke around stating how I am adopted due to the fact that I was  darker than my parents and them. There was even a time during the summer where I went to the pool with my cousins and I ended up getting darker and they made a comment how I looked like Harriet Tubman, so I just walked away and then seconds later they asked where did I go and one of my cousins yelled out, she’s probably in the underground railroad. All of my cousins then proceeded  to laugh. My own family made me feel like an outsider all because I was  darker then them. They made it seem like being dark was a negative thing. That experience made me realize how people can be so quick to judge you for what you look like and not for who you are. In Patricia Hill-Collins’ essay “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought”, she states how these experiences can teach us more about society and the nature of oppression. By going through these “outsider” moments she states how the marginalized groups have common experiences, which brings them together. She talks about how black women have been a marginalized group for the longest. With their many experiences of feeling like outsiders, black women found it really important to insist on self-definition, self-valuation, and the necessity for a Black female-centered analysis. This is significant because it is an important way of resisting the dehumanization experiences of the dominate group. The experiences of feeling like an outsider really helps you realize how society views differences, also being treated like an outsider brings you closer to the other outsiders where you soon form common understanding and bring awareness about such issues.