Entangled Social Realities: Race, Class, and Gender—A Triple Threat to the Academic Achievement of Black Females

Abstract

It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other crea-ture, without forming an opinion about them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatso-ever. (Adams, 1987, p. 4)

Douglas Adam’s statement is illustrative of a complex positional social location in which one (the oppressor) holds down another (the oppressed). Oppression is a cruel form of domination (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 2000) that weighs heavily on the oppressed.

To conceptualize this type of oppression, I reference Mary Louise Pratt’s “Art of the Contact Zone,” in which she defines contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical power” (Pratt, 2000, p. 575). Pratt characterizes the contact zone as being an unsafe location that is filled with many emotions (i.e., “rage, in-comprehension, and pain”), where people are often misunderstood and hurt (p. 586). Because the contact zone can be a location of such emotional turmoil and pain, “groups need places [safe houses] for hearing and mutual recognition, safe houses in which to construct shared understandings, knowledges, claims on the world that they can then bring into the contact zone” (Pratt, 2000, p. 587).

Pratt and Anzaldúa (2000) emphasize the need for “safe houses.” Safe houses are locations where people can go and not feel threatened. They are sites where people may share their experiences in the contact zone with those who have had similar experiences and can empathize.