Institutional Inequality

When thinking about institutional inequality, I realized Professor Sepp was right: until I was a student in the school of Social Work, I didn’t know exactly how to talk about it—there never seemed to be the right moment, or the right vocabulary, or the right group of people. Now I understand that this is how the people who actually face these institutional injustices feel in their everyday lives.

I really liked Jean Baker Miller’s essay because it provided a different insight into social justice. I like that we can learn about social justice through the stories and lives of actual people that are either fighting for social justice or have experienced injustice, but it’s also interesting to read about the theories behind justice issues in our society, like in “Domination and Subordination.” I think her note that children can only grow through engagement with people that are different than they are is important. Additionally, her discussion on how the dominants stay in power made me realize that there is almost a formula for this—it seems like every dominant group in society has found a way to make themselves the model for “normal” while defining a couple of roles available for subordinates (usually the roles no one wants). What especially stuck out to me was Miller’s definition of subordinates—that they often have to concentrate solely on survival. It reminded me of a series of art I studied by Elizabeth Catlett, an African American woman artist that eventually had to flee to Mexico. The series of art was called “I Am the Negro Woman” and detailed the experience of African American women in the United States. One of the fifteen linocut pieces in the series was called “A Special Fear for My Loved Ones” and was meant to show that every time a family member or friend walked out of an African American woman’s door, she had to worry about whether or not they would be returned home alive.

"A Special Fear for My Loved Ones" by Elizabeth Catlett.

“Discrimination Comes in Many Forms” is also useful when talking about institutional inequality. I had to idea about the differences between institutional and structural discrimination—I would have thought they were the same thing. The author mentioned that structural discrimination is the hardest to deal with because it is neither intentional nor illegal. I think she is right—the best way to try to get people to understand why their actions are unfair or target a minority group is education! Like I said last week, I think we can start by offering the Social Justice class to people in all majors.

I found the “Prison State” video especially intriguing because I’m currently in a sociology class about our criminal justice system and the way it sets people up to end up in jail or prison (kind of like one of the ladies in the video said: it’s “from the cradle to the grave). Our prisons are in desperate need of reform, because once people get out they are sort of “stuck.” This week  in my class, we learned that while prisons offer barber training to inmates, once they get out, they are not allowed to be barbers! I liked that the video ended with McDuffie getting therapeutic help to handle his shame and guilt. This it the kind of rehabilitation that would be beneficial in not just the criminal justice system, but in any form of corrections or rehab—looking at everyone as individual case.

Sources:

Edge, D., & Mucciold, L. (2014, Apr 12). Frontline: Prison State (Video). Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/prison-state/.

Miller, J. (2014). Domination and Subordination. In Race, Class, and Gender in the United States (9th ed., pp. 110-117). Worth.

Pincus, F. (1996). Discrimination Comes in Many Forms. The American Behavioral Scientist,40(2), 186-194.