20080224

Dominance?

1) We've gone over dominant/target groups in class somewhat. Where do YOUR identities lie? How has membership in those identites shaped who you are today? Do you have any reaction or feeling about the notion of some of them being dominant and others being target groups?

I'm a twenty year old heterosexual white male who's in good shape. That sentence alone puts me in four out of five dominant categories, my age being the only target trait. Who cares, I know I don't, in ten years ill be five out of five, big deal. I don't believe that being dominant makes me any better than anyone else or anyone who is older than me is better than me. Maybe its easy to say this from the dominant group because I haven't really been discriminated against besides my age here and there but nothing major. I guess being in the dominant group means there are more people out there like you, so i guess this means i would have an easier time than someone who is four out of five in the target groups, but nothing major has happened that really impacted my life, i guess I'm trying to say maybe I'm ignorant but it's not like i walk into a pizza place and I'm like hey you gay white woman, I'm better than you move out of my way...
So I guess my reaction to groups being target/dominant is that it's stupid and doesn't really make a difference to me, you have to prove to me your better than me, and i would expect to have the same challenge from anyone else, the way I see it were all equals until one of us is proven worse. Like in sports both teams start at 0-0, as far as i know it's that way in every sport, no teams get an extra point for being older or a certain color, obviously life is more complex then sports, but it would be nice if we were all equal wouldn't it?

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