Chapter 9 healing the hurt
Teaching classes on race and gender I often stand at the front of classrooms looking out at a diverse body of students who are more often than not eager to tell me that racism and sexism are no longer a problem, that differences do not really matter, that no one notices because “we are all just people.” Then the next time we meet I ask them if they were able to die and be born again, which racialized body they would choose and why: a white male, a white female, a black male, or a black female. No matter the make-up of the class—sometimes predominantly white, and other times predominantly black and/or people of color, sometimes mostly female and sometimes a fifty-fifty split between female and males—overwhelmingly folks want to come back as white and male. The reasons they give all confirm the race/sex hierarchy in our nation; they all simply believe they will have a better chance at success and at living long and well if they are white males. The number of response for each cate gory usually follows the lines of the existing social order: white male, white female, black male, black female. Usually no one, even black females, chooses to return as a black female. No matter the amount of information students have received from mass media about black men being an endangered species, they look around and see that when it comes to fame and fortune individual privileged black men do better than black women. Even though black females may have access to more jobs than black males, better education, a higher life expectancy, lower likelihood of being imprisoned, everyone
