Joyce Amen
SOCY 2101: Contemporary Sociological Theory
26 October 2020
Professor Vitale
Paper #2
In a New York Times article titled “Why Aren’t We All Talking About Breonna Taylor?,” it explained that Andrea Ritchie, a researcher at Barnard Center for Research on Women, had accompanied thousands of other people across the United States to become involved in protests on behalf of George Floyd. Like many other protesters outside the Barclays Center in New York City, she chanted his name. However, Ritchie did not understand why nobody uttered Breonna Taylor’s name at any period in time, referring to a Black emergency medical technician located in Louisville, KY, who was killed by policemen in March. Taylor died weeks prior to Floyd. In conjunction with the Breonna Taylor case, I will examine the ideas of two theorists—Raewyn Connell and Patricia Hill Collins—that should help readers understand it from a sociological perspective. In Raewyn Connell’s piece on masculinity and femininity, she emphasizes the structured embodiment regarding gender power relations by elucidating the complicated nature of masculinities and femininities because of their multitudinous natures. As a result, hegemonic masculinity concerns both the assorted patterns of connections to women and in its associations with lowly masculinities. In Patricia Hill Collins’ piece, she critiques Eurocentric and masculinist ideas, which attempt to disconnect the researcher from their emotions in association with their research, followed by a promotion of “a value-free research process.” Subsequently, Collins creates a “Black feminist epistemology” as a different possibility to the Eurocentric and masculinist approach. Critical to this is Collins’ affirmation of concrete experiences pertinent to everyday life as a means to approach meaning construction and the concept of understanding; this does not involve singular accomplishments but, rather, the outcome of the combined endeavors as a result of “sisterhood.”
Raewyn Connell’s piece on masculinity and femininity posits that what unites the femininities of a social environ concerns the “double context” in which they arise: (1) in connection with the experience and image of the female body, and (2) the “social definitions” of where a woman is deemed suitable as well as the cultural contradictions of masculinity and femininity (374). Connell asserts that femininity and masculinity are not composed of essences; instead, they are methods of living particular relationships. It accompanies the idea that “static typologies of sexual character” must be replaced by histories, analyses of the combined production of collections of psychological forms (374). Collins mentions the “gender structuring of production” in her article. She indicates that factors of sexual character are embedded in the particular forms of practices sometimes called “occupational cultures.” The combination that involves theoretical knowledge with technical abilities is key to a profession’s assertion of competence and to a “monopoly of practice.” This has historically resulted in a form of masculinity: “emotionally flat, centered on a specialized skill, insistent on professional esteem, and technically based dominance over other workers and requiring for its highest (specialist) development the complete freedom from childcare and domestic work provided by having wives and maids do it” (374).
The embodiment of masculinity via professionalism has been aided by the simplest possible method—that is, the exclusion of women. The key point is that women have experienced a years-old struggle even to procure basic training, and continue to be excluded from professions such as accountancy and engineering. I mention this entire conceptualization of professionalism within the context of gender because Breonna Taylor’s profession was as an EMT—a profession that, despite its somewhat masculine position, does not afford her the features that normally accompany professions proffered to or earned by men (irrespective of race or ethnicity). Indeed, she may have been provided basic training, but she did not possess abilities beyond that point nor was she perceived as someone worthy of the accoutrements customarily afforded to men. This is similar with other Black women who are killed by police and do not garner the same outrage that Black men do because of the latter’s complete freedom from the necessities of childcare and domestic work, as well as fitting the prototype of hegemonic masculinity (except, perhaps, in comparison to white men). Further, Black men—like men of other races and ethnicities (save if they are homosexual)—are considered appropriate models for hegemonic masculinity because of their physical features that they may sometimes work on (such as when they spend time at the gym), while women, with their makeup and high heels are considered beneath the superior status that men embody. In addition, Connell includes men’s immersion into the culture of the prototypical male, as evidenced by actors such as John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone; that is, what is considered the “alpha” male and one which is therefore accorded much attention.
In Patricia Hill Collins’ work on Black feminist thought, she explains that Black women’s experiences in the context of family, work, motherhood, sexual politics, and political activism have been customarily altered in or eliminated from traditional academic discussions (350). She mentions that specialized thought that challenges the idea of Black and female inferiority is unlikely to arise from a white-make-controlled academic milieu because it would express an absence of familiarity with Black women’s reality. The experiences of African-American female scholars express how persons who desire to re-articulate a perspective made by a Black woman will deal with suppression by a white-male-dominated “knowledge validation process” (352). Collins explains that although there may be sectors in which Black women can counteract the production of white-male-dominated academic circles, the latter can and will likely deny them the ability to involve themselves in other sectors deemed unsuitable to them. On a separate and more appropriate note, Collins asserts that despite disparate histories, Black societies contain elements of a central African value system that was present before and independently of racial oppression. In addition, because of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, apartheid, and other forms of racial concerns, Black people share a similar experience regarding oppression (353).
Feminist scholars proffer a similar argument by saying that women share a similar history of gender oppression, principally via sex/gender hierarchies. Such experiences transcend fissures among women due to social class, race, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity and create the basis of a woman’s perspective with a “corresponding feminist consciousness and epistemology” (353). Collins explains that in particular respects, Black women may more resemble Black men, and at other times, white women, and yet, on other occasions may be situated completely apart from both. The experiences Black women face, where they are either immersed in these groups or stand apart from them is an integral property of Black women’s consciousness. The separate—and as hitherto mentioned—more appropriate note from Collins’ work adequately answers the controversy surrounding Breonna Taylor and other victims who happen to be Black women as follows: Based on Collins’ statements, Black women—a prominent feature of the Black Lives Matter movement—normally appear to stand apart from the Black men whose names are normally uttered at countless protests. Their femininity, like in Breonna Taylor’s case, is especially salient and therefore their femininity stands more prominently but not in conjunction with that of white women.
In conclusion, Breonna Taylor’s death at the hands of police—as found in other cases of police brutality against the Black community—has sparked much attention. However, it has not dominated it in comparison to the innumerable ones which involve Black men, as found in the case of George Floyd, whose death has sparked much outcry and continues to impact the United States and abroad. This is the result of both hegemonic masculinity, as asserted by Raewyn Connell, and the fissure between Black women and Black men, as found in Patricia Hill Collins’ work. It is evident that despite the binding force between Black men and Black women in this critical movement (that is, the Black Lives Matter movement), that fissures still persist in the attention that is provided to these two groups—both connected yet concurrently separate.
