5 Assignment 09

Growing up, I remember my classrooms consisting of predominately white children. Throughout high school there were a few incidences where I was the only person of color in my class. My school district primarily consisted of the white upper middle class so naturally I have felt like an outsider on multiple occasions. Although my school district consisted of largely white children there would usually be around 2-5 “outsiders” in a class. The first occasion in which I truly felt like an outsider was in second grade. In the mornings there would be ESL and speech instructors as well as math tutors who would go from classroom to classroom to pick up their students for a quick sessions before the  actual school day commenced. On one day I had a substitute teacher who was not aware of the group of kids who were assigned to go. As the ESL, speech and math instructors left my classroom I had gotten up to sharpen my pencil, when I returned to my seat the teacher asked me in front of all my classmates, “Don’t you have to go?”. I said no and carried on with my work. Throughout the day, I was confused I did not understand why he singled me out – I felt embarrassed. I later realized that I was the only non white person in the classroom after the assigned students had left. Before this day I was not fully aware that my external appearance could form preconceived notions about me. I became conscious. According to Collins this is a vital role in order to self define and self valuate. Once one becomes aware that they are being discriminated or oppressed they are able to determine form their true selves. This true self must establish “their analytical, emotional and ethical perspective of themselves and their place in society …” (1986:23). This meaning that one must know where they place themselves on the hierarchy in order and where others place them. This ignites action against it and promotes activism to fight oppression.

As a youth, there were many instances where I felt as though I was an outsider. The majority of students enrolled in both my elementary school and middle school originated from financially and socially fortunate families. Most of my friends and the student body were able to afford the quality clothing, school supplies, and other commodities. Their families were so fortunate that they were able to afford luxury cars, expensive family excursions, and vacation homes in addition to their permanent residence. I, however, received clothing that was either thrifted or passed down to me from older family members, meaning they were often too large for my much smaller form, or were damaged in a very noticeable shape or form. I could not afford even a handful of the things that my fellow youths had access to. Furthermore, I have lived within the projects all my life, surrounded by people who spend their entire lives being unproductive and simply selling illegal substances that they use to make themselves appear as powerful and important figures that they are in fact not. All of my friends from the past lived in buildings equipped with fancy looking furniture and doormen their entire lives. These were all things that I was not accustomed to. The differences that existed between my friends, fellow students, and I made me feel as though I didn’t belong in the same environment as them.

In Patricia Hill-Collins’ essay Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought, Collins states that one trait of the social construct identified a oppression is that it is based on the organization of both animate and inanimate beings according to the ways in which they differ from one another. Collins claims that certain members of society can be led to believe that they are justified in deeming others as outcasts if they are the “insiders” that possess similar experiences, histories, and knowledge.

Being an “outsider” is a soft word for feeling like an outcast. I have felt like this for the majority of my life and I still struggle with feeling like an “outsider” to this very day. Most experiences I have had with feeling like a “outsider” are very violent and bring back terrible memories from my past. Sharing this information with anyone else wouldn’t be appropriate and necessary for a public college discussion. Instead I can give a more controlled and less emotionally felt experience in my life as feeling like a “outsider”. In elementary school I grew up in an impoverished and violent neighborhood. I didn’t have the proper hygiene products to make me a likable student in school and my eczema was untreated and most of the time bloody and unattractive. Wearing ripped, smelly clothing and being physically unattractive made people avoid me. No one wanted to socialize with me. I never went to a birthday party, a get together, a dance or anything. I didn’t have no school supplies and I hadn’t read a book at all in elementary school . So the feeling of an outsider  followed me as I moved from school to school, it followed me into my home and it follows me even today in different forms. Patricia Hill Collins, “Learning from the Outsider within: The Social Significance of Black Feminist Thought” explains how these experiences teach black women about oppression and sociality. That being or feeling like an outsider allows them to realize how to distinguish themselves amongst other people and stereotypes like white women. That like the white women they too shared a similar source of oppression, the white man. Even though their oppression was felt in different degrees. Black women began to use their assertiveness and sass as functions that helped them survive. This enabled them to cope with and fend off oppression of being an “outsider”.

Patricia Hill Collins takes us on an oppressive journey. A time when white male were the dominant race and women were the lesser gender. Patricia opens with a very heart breaking detail of how both black and white women were extremely oppress except in different ways. Black women were the white man’s mule while white women were his dog. In order words, black women are exploit, for their labor, while white women were simply his wife and mother. In the end both women are dehumanize by patriarchal society; they were assign to different race, gender and roles. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​Patricia wants us to see the inequality and stereotype that women face in the past and what we encounter today. The history of inequality continue to live among us except, it changes it form, as society changes. I can relate the Ms. Collins. I too had experience stereotype and inequality. I once worked for a white male who did not pay me for sick days, no time and a half for holidays, I would never receive Christmas bonus, vacation pay not even a card for my birthday. Furthermore, there was a white employee; she was giving all these commodities while I was not. I remember one summer there was a heat wave and the house was blazing hot. I was sweating profusely and I asked, if the air condition could be on. He complied only to have it on, then quickly shutting it off after 10 minutes.
​Seconds later, his son arrived the air condition stayed on until he left. I remember his son commented, on how wonderfully cool it was in his home, and how he wish he could remain indoors than sadly having to go outside. This was the dealing breaking point in my life, I decided to quit that very day. I told him this is not a sweat job and by law, the air condition should be on not only when some arrive. I decided it was not worth losing my life and dying over some meager pay. In the end I understood what lies for me; I realized the importance of race gender and class.

Living in New York City alone often makes me feel like an outsider. There is a vast diversity of residents living in NYC and most of the times, I feel that the only place I can truly be myself is when I am home. In rare occasions, I would hear someone say a racist comment as I walk by, and my response is that I just ignore them and think nothing much of it. After reading Patricia Hill-Collins’s, “Learning from the outsider within,” it made it realize that maybe by ignoring it and not responding to it, I am actually succumbing to the oppression. Hill-Collins tells us that victims of oppression should be actively rejecting the stereotypes that dehumanizes and exploits. Moreover, the absence of objection is the same as accepting one’s “otherness” and allowing the oppression to go on. I believe that Hill-Collins is trying to persuade the readers that oppression is something we must actively fight against. When one becomes used to being subjugated, then one tends to forget their own value and start thinking about themselves in a way that society has shaped them to be. Oppression will continue to exist if the oppressed is unable to recognize when they are falling victim to objectification.

When I’m not in school, I am usually surrounded by people of my own race. I spend time with my family, go to Korean supermarkets, Korean restaurants, and Korean church. Maybe the reason why I sometimes feel so unfazed to racist comments is because I am able to feel so at home with my family and know there’s a community that I belong to. However, when I meet with my non-Asian friends, it becomes difficult to share my cultural experiences and I find myself trying to suppress that cultural part of myself. In opposition, Hill-Collins stresses the importance of being able to embrace ourselves and let out all of our qualities, because that enables us to truly find ourselves and reject what the rest of the world thinks of us.

Growing up, there were many times that I felt like, and was treated like an outsider. One example of this was in my 8th grade English class where 2 people in my working group of 4 decided to have a side conversation about black people by making fun of black hair, and even started to make fun of specific students from the school. I’ve always for the most part been very quiet and not really confrontational in school, so the way I used to respond to hearing things like this was to pretend I didn’t hear anything at all, but given the small group setting it was clear that I heard everything. They spoke as if I wasn’t right there, and it made me feel a strange combination of being invisible and like I’m standing out too much. Patricia Hill-Collins feels that by going through situations like this helps us learn more about sociality and oppression. What she is saying is that though being in a marginalized group comes with painful experiences it also can help bring you closer and feel like you are apart of a group, based on shared experiences. She says that the black women has a unique point of view on what they experience within this specific group. You can further analyse how specific black women see the world through the eyes of a black women who is also gay or a black women who is also a senior citizen and so on. All of these black women could find common ground through their physical similarities that lead them to have similar life experiences that vary to some degree. She also speaks on how oppression has many forms. In the comparison of black women being like mules and white women being like dogs we get a better understanding of this. Both groups of women had to deal with harmful stereotypes and treatments that pushed the idea that they were inferior, but there was still a hierarchy. The mule is to be worked and physically abused while the dog is to be obedient, can be loved but is always viewed as less than a human. The human is the white man. Both the black and white women can relate to being oppressed, but they can not completely relate on how they are being oppressed.

Alfie Corteza

Professor Bullock

Assignment #9

An event or period in my life where I have like an outsider would be in my previous educational institutions from elementary to high school. I felt like an outsider as being a Filipino at the time and still is a minority amongst other Asian nationalities. Even though I am technically Asian, there are still discrepancies when it comes to the social hierarchy of who is the “superior” Asian nationality. When I listen to other individuals, many states that South-East Asian’s consisting of Philippines, Indonesia, or Malaysia is the “Mexico” of Asia, as if we are inferior and less developed in our continental region. It is similar to when Patricia Hill-Cobbs mentions that a black woman as mules, and white women as dogs that a white male would never treat them as people. It is similar to how I feel as an outsider within as my race as the South-Eastern Asians are considered the mules and the more prosperous 1st world Asian countries treat them like the dogs to the white European counterpart.
It is all too familiar to find that many East Asian countries consider those in the South-East to be inferior. East Asians find us as proletariat countries as we work in the primary and secondary markets of digging up raw materials, and manufactured commodities to be sold elsewhere in the world in impoverished and underpaid conditions. While first world Asian countries are “closer” to the West by their ideal economies, the rest fall under a less prioritized fashion. As a result we the South-Asians are considered to be second class and have difficulty to achieve the same equal status that mainland Asia countries have. The burden of feeling “inferior” carries over to those who share these nationalities in other developed nations. I can recall numerous times being treated as a lower working class by my slightly darker complexity, and look somewhat Latino. There is nothing wrong about being Latino, or a person of color, but those individuals who were white were in the wrong for assuming that any person of color is all of a sudden a worker performing manual labor jobs. It is especially frustrating as it is the 21st century and equality is expected, however, there is still prejudices, and stereotypes still preserved and enacted.

There was two incidences that revolved around me being an outsider. However, these experiences did impair view of the world I was living but at the same time helped develop my personality. These incidences happened when I was quite young so my views have changed a bit over time but it does erase the oppression that is there.

I developed a skin condition called Eczema, which altered my life forever. To this day, I have no idea why I got it but it is a part of me and I accept it. However, when I was younger I had no idea what I had was not normal and it was not until kindergarten I realized that. On the first day of kindergarten, a girl noticed my hands and she immediately told everyone in our class that I had a disease. She even mentioned that if anyone got near me they would get it too. I was isolated instantly. No one dared to come near to me. This taught me that not everyone was kind or to be trusted. I oppressed based on my skin just because it was different from everyone else. This difference became special to the other kids and took advantage of it. There was no difference between us but the fact I had a skin condition they could never really include me into their group.

I went to a middle school predominately Asians. I had a lot of friends that were Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc. Basically it was a different part of Asia that I was from. I got along well with them. It was very competitive, we were constantly comparing our grades and I was able to keep up with excellent grades. However, I knew I was still not fully accepted regardless of our cooperation. There was always this sense I kept getting that I should not get too close you have no idea what they were thinking about you. Eventually I met my best friend’s mother and that was when it officially kicked in. She absolutely adored me because I was a student and wanted her daughter to be like me but nothing more than that. She thought my health was poor and I was very fat. She tried to give my mother books to help me lose weight and change my diet. This coincides with what Collins was trying to say with racial and sexist domination. My best friend’s family was naturally skinny and had a different kind of diet that I was not used to. When you were south-Asian, your portions were huge and the more you eat the better. With east-Asians, their portions were rather smaller and were encouraged to eat healthy. Most of the people in my family developed diabetes and other health problems and they had more weight on their body. This ran through my genetics so it was easier said than done to lose weight for me.

Due Sunday, November 5th, by midnight. Word count, at least 300 words. You may include a brief quotation, but be sure this is followed by your interpretation of the text and include the proper citation (either MLA or APA). Late assignments will be accepted for partial credit if they are submitted no later than one week after the original deadline.

Think of and describe a time in your life when you felt like and / or were treated like an “outsider.” Next, noting details from Patricia Hill-Collins’s essay, “Learning from the outsider within,” explain what she believes these kinds of experiences can teach us about sociality and the nature of oppression.