Quote:

“‘Minorities rarely come of age explicitly thinking about what we want and how to get it,’ [Stacey] writes …. By contrast, ‘people already in power almost never have to think about whether they belong in the room’… ‘For most people from the outside, every story you read, every narrative you’re told, except for a couple months out of the year, is about how you’re not supposed to be one of these people.’”

 

Comment:

            This quote sits within the first few pages of “Stacey Abrams’s Fight for a Fair Vote” by Jelani Cobb and is pulled from Abrams’s political memoir, “Lead from the Outside.” Cobb brings this particular quote into his writing to help exhibit the mindset and views Abrams takes on both politics and life. In addition, it helps to explain the stance she took in ten years preceding her run in the gubernatorial election of Georgia. This quote in particular stuck a cord with me because of my background in education and because of my current enrollment of Contemporary Feminist Theories here at UNE.

            As an educator it my goal to enrich students’ lives with knowledge and help them believe that they are able to reach their dreams. This quote first and foremost gave me an insight to how students may feel growing up as a minority. It is my job as a teacher to help students feel as though they do have a place in the room and do belong on any stage that they may wish to be on. I believe that this mentality needs to change and that the only way to really truly eradicate this way of thinking is to teach students from a young age that anyone can join the political arena or whatever field they may pursue. This means changing both the way minorities see themselves and how non-minorities see monitories. To say something and project a view point is very different from believing and embodying it. Many people may say that that minorities deserve and can do certain things but few truly embody that belief.

           This brings me to my connection to my feminist theory class. We are currently discussing the history of females being a minority in society. Some experts are saying part of the reason the female sex is still considered a minority because of their tendency to remain immanent. However, to make society change its true way of thinking and believe in equality between the sexes females are being called to become more transcendent. In theory, over time society will truly believe females to be equal to males. I believe is when this occurs the females as a minority group will no longer experience what Stacey Abrams describes in her quote above.

 

Question:

Does a democracy or a society such as our own rely on the presence of a minority group?