Does poverty matter more than race and gender?

From Mary Hermes writing in the Spring 2005 issue of Critical Inquiry, I note her analysis that "poverty and socioeconomic oppression are larger day-to-day factors in students' ability to concentrate and succeed in school than are the differences between Native American and white cultures." Hermes wrote about secondary level Native-American kids and their white instructors. This idea that poverty dominates over other identities reminded me of Studs Terkel quipped that Hyde Park was the one neighborhood in Chicago where Black and White lived united against the poor. I'm also put in mind of Sancho Panza's pithy counsel to Don Quijote that hunger is the best sauce in the world, making all foods tasty. Trained in the analytical trinity of history (race, class, gender), my response to these insights are less scholarly and more visceral. If a student is hungry, what matters their race or gender? How that student experiences hunger may be situated in identity, but poverty seems the greater uniter than the divider of human cultural constructions.  Mulling that one today. 

Safe home. 

 

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