One the most interesting topics that we had this past week is the one about Audre Lodre’s Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women redefining Difference. In her text, she mainly talks about how differences and how we perceive them affect our lives, for the most part, negatively. In any society, differences are inevitable. Ignorance is usually the main reason why differences separate us, just like what she mentions on page 115, “But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectations“. After thinking about it, I think this is true to a certain degree because most people tend to stay in their comfort zone and be “ignorant” to anything that they are not used to. Most people grow up according to the mythical norm set in that society. Another problem she mentions in the text is that ignorance to see differences still exist within a group that is fighting for other differences. For example, within a group of woman who fight for woman’s rights, sometimes white women fail to see the differences between them and black women. She also goes on to talk about how men also play a role in this whole situation etc.

While reading her text, I keep thinking ‘This type of issues are apparent in a lot of countries and we have been dealing with this in America for quite long. Will there be any point of time where we reach a decent understanding about differences and not just simply ignore them?’ Maybe yes, or maybe it’s just the nature of who we are. I guess the main key to this problem is acknowledging these differences first. In order to do so, sometimes it requires effort, such as reading article like these or getting to know people who are different to you. I think effort is needed because in reading Lorde’s text, there are a lot of things that she mentions about black women, white women, and men that still seem abstract to me because I never have any first-hand experiences of it. The very least thing that we can do is try to accept and understand these differences.

Lorde, Audre.  Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.  Received from https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/5e00ea752296c/5328871?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27Lorde-Age-Race-Class-Sex.pdf&response-content-type=application%2Fpdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20200206T022754Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAZH6WM4PLTYPZRQMY%2F20200206%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=22e1d1f6fa8f59e70fdcfb7571f83c25d59ff18eb34ff6d89d016b41995fd991