Johnson Chap 3: Capitalism, Class and the Matrix of Domination

The authors main idea is that we will never get rid of racism because we have other forms of discrimination such as sexism and classism and one produces another and then they all become connected. So in a bigger picture racism will never be elimated unless we work first on ending classism and sexism because with one there will always be another. Capitalism is the first issue that Johnson address concerning discrimination, he states on pg 42 "the system itself does not depend on such moral or ethical considerations, because profit is profit and there is no way to tell good money from bad.". He also brings to the attention of his readers that capitalism is what divides our social classes because those on top hold more than two thirds of all the wealth leaving the people at the bottom with enormous costs and poor living conditions. Johnson than goes on to talk about race and gender dealing with privelage. The section discussed how whites developed the idea of whiteness to define privelage in a social category. So because whitness defined what it meant to be "American" it became alright to oppress those who fell out of the defintion or category of whiteness. He also continues to say that capitalism exploits not only people of different races or religion but also people with disabilities because they can work in crap conditions with the lowest pay, and little opprotunity for growth or challenge. The idea of "Manifest Destiny" is also mentioned in this article. "Manifest Destiny" is the idea that the US was destined to expand. People who followed these ideas thought it not only obvious but also certain. "Manifest Destiny" had hard consequences for the Indians because usually when we expanded it was to their land, that they had already developed as their own. The idea of "Manifest Destiny" gave superiority to whites. The author than goes on to discuss privelage and the idea that people can be privelaged and at the same time not be, it is said on page 52 that each particular form of privelage is part of a much larger system of privelage. And a little bit farther down in the paragraph, the author says that we can belong to both privelaged and unprivelaged and oppresed categories all at the same time. Personally, I didnt really like this chapter or chapter 2. I really found it hard to understand and that might just be and is just my personal opinion about it. The article took an idea that could easily be common sense and made it really hard for me to understand at all. I do understand his main points and that he had good ideas, and yes each sub paragraph does have to do with the other, but I just think it could have been presented in a different less complicated manner.