Week 2 GC blog ...Race and Gender (2 sides of the same coin? or not)

  So there is this notion that has been bothering me since reading Evelyn Nakano Glenn's article on gender and race. Glenn brings up the paradox of being a woman as well as being a woman of color. Triple oppression or double jeopardy are some of the terms that she uses to describe the hardships that come with being a female minority. And yet she talks about the prospect of creating an integrative framework to address both racial and gender concepts, both define by the values/laws of society. I interpreted Glenn's article as her wanting to bring all women (men), despite color, culture, socio-economic status,together into the debate over the concepts of gender( whereas before, the movement to redefine gender was lead solely by white women (19th amendment, Equal Rights Amendment etc.)). I believe that Glenn was expressing how both race and gender are related in the processes how each social construct was created. 
  Now granted I mostly agree with Glenn and her analysis but I believe that in modern times, there is distinction in the process of engendering and racialization. In fact, I believe that in an individual who may experience both at once may have one social construct actually cancel out the other. I do say this because I have seen/heard instances where Hispanic and black girls have actually admitted that at times in society, they feel genderless. As if because of their race they often do not experience or realize that they experience engendering because their racial identities play a bigger part in their overall social interactions and lifestyles than their sexual identity.
 I, myself being a black woman, have experienced times where I felt that my color factored more in my everyday life than me bring a girl. In sports, it was pre-determined that I would be good. Not because of my skills or hard work but because of my genetics, because "black people" as my assistant basketball coach once stated, "are natural born athletes, its in their ancestry"   And so it was the case in tournaments and games that most opposing teams would refer to me as "number 32, the big black girl). I always focused on "big black", those words taking complete precedent over "girl", evening canceling it out because most ideal girls, in my mind (during high school) were skinny, pretty and white...never big and certainly not black.
So I guess my point is is that the certain kind of oppressions we experience in our society can differ in overall effect on an individual based on who that individual is, where they grew up and what experiences affected them the most. To treat race and gender in an integrative framework, may instead take away from the solutions and critiques by blending together the processes of engendering/ racialization, when really the processes are simply too different/complex to ever be understood as one.
Any who all food for thought!