SOC 608 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Africville, Feminist Movement, Black Feminist Thought

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 608
• Professor: Kelly Train

Document Summary

Race was based on physiological characteristics, but those characteristic have no meaning, but we give them meaning. They become racial signifiers; and signifiers of superiority or inferiority. That social meaning has real material consequences. White men wondered why they had power, and determined it was because they were superior, and used science to support this. Said you were born inferior and there was nothing you could do about it. Matt rays: poor whites were not considered to be white; changed in1950. White privileged men, deemed women inferior and were denied access to resources. When europeans arrived to canada, indigenous people were seen as savages, and had to be changed and helped in only a way europeans could. They were not seen/play a part in building a nation because they were inferior. Aboriginal women were seen as swives/promiscuous, and men were seen as inheritably pathologically violent. Men married aboriginal women, which weren"t recognized by the church, kids were seen as accidents.