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Black Women Performative Conception

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Performative Conception of Race and How it Impacts
Black Women in the Workplace

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Women, often seen as the weaker sex than their male counterparts suffer much discrimination due to their gender. This is made worse when such women are not white or belong to a lower socio-economic status. Unfortunately, although civil rights and feminist movements attempt to showcase and fight against racism, sexism and classism, stereotypes and discrimination apparently prevail as permanent features in the United States (Omni & Winant, 2006). Judith Butler (1993) analyzed how race and gender can become performative for people concerned. She claims that: “race proves to be performative - that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, race is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed .... There is no racial identity behind the expressions of race ... race is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ which are said to be its results”. (p. 181).
This means, people of a certain race are automatically expected to behave or perform the …show more content…
For example, Black women are expected to behave like how women of African-American descent are seen by society, or at least in the setting the women inhabit (Mallon, 2015). Society dictates how people are treated. MacKinnon (1987) explains that women have been trained by society to be subservient to men. Patriarchal cultures, which are cultures that uphold the dominance of men, ascribe to men the power over women, making them subservient and passive under the authority of men. This implies that black women can suffer in the performative conception of race and gender because for them, being a woman is being subordinate to men, and being Black is being subordinate to White people. This brings them notches down the hierarchy of societal

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