Reaction to Glenn’s article

Evelyn Nakano Glenn argues that gender and race cannot be considered independently; they are interconnected relations that people identify with simultaneously. I’ll admit, I usually separate gender and race, but having read Glenn’s The Social Construction and Institutionalization of Gender and Race: An Integrative Framework, I completely agree that race and gender should be an integrated, linked study. Glenn believes that the most effective way to achieve this analysis is through the study of social constructionism. This theory expresses that the way cultures have defined and established sex and sexual meanings, as well as race, is rooted in biological means. In an attempt to eliminate cultural expectations that are typified by our biological condition, the word “gender” was created. It allows individuals to claim both masculine and feminine traits; choosing to identify with one or the other is not dependent upon biology. Race is often associated with physical characteristics, even though scholars agree that “social attitudes and arrangements” are responsible for the dominance of one race over the other. For example, Europeans contributed to the concept of biological race to help distinguish between Christians and non-Christians in the 18th and 19th centuries, which eventually led to the social structure of white, European superiority over “other” races.

The formation of race and the act of engendering others are both manifested in a “system of relationships” including norms, symbols, and practices defined by differences. Glenn notes that race and gender share three chief features that can be utilized for further study: “they are relational concepts whose construction involves both representational and social structural processes in which power is a constitutive element.” For me, this unbounded study is too overwhelming and complex to tackle. It can take a lifetime to change a single person’s attitudes about race and gender. I applaud Glenn and other social scientists who are able to articulate issues related to race and gender, and who bring light to the fact that race and gender are nothing more than concepts that we as a society have created.