I find “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”, by Audre Lorde an interesting essay. What drew my attention was when Ms. Lorde talks about how “by ignoring the past, we are encouraged to repeat its mistakes” when talking about discrimination in our society (p. 117). Over the winter break, I took an African Americans Studies online course and I had to talk about this topic. Some colleges don’t even offer a lot of cultural studies courses; that is not the direction that we should be going. We would need to learn about different things, such as other beliefs, sex, race, social statuses, and age to have a better understanding of our world.

Another interesting quote that Ms. Lorde said, is “as white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women of Color become “other,” the outsider whose experience and tradition is too “alien” (p, 117) to comprehend. I find this part to be one of the most important statements in this essay. White women who are middle to upper class don’t have to worry about things as compared to African Americans in the lower class. For instance, a younger white woman who lives with her parents who have money to spend would have a different mentality than an African American woman who lives with her parents that can barely pay the bills each month. These sorts of standards are given to these women whether they like it or not. Another great example of white privilege would be white women are more likely to be hired for certain jobs than African American women. Fox News always ceases to amaze me how they have more white women anchors on their stations than African American women.

I believe by having a better understanding of others, we can minimize discrimination (specifically towards women who are lesbian and/or of Color) in our society. In the last paragraph of Ms. Lorde’s essay, she said, that “change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals” (p. 123). We don’t live in this world to be judgmental of others, but for experience and learning from what we know.

Work Cited Page

Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984), pp. 114 – 123.