Next Cultural Diversity Discussion Question

And my response

Q 2. In Jean Baker Miller's article: Domination and Subordination she poses two questions: When does the engagement of difference stimulate the development and the enhancement of both parties to the engagement? And, conversely, when does such a confrontation with difference have negative effects? Pick two hypothetical instances of what she describes and discuss them. Make sure that you explain how one learns from encountering difference and when does such an encounter lead to difficulty?


Miller talks about two different situations in her article: Domination and Subordination. She talks about the Temporary Inequality and the Permanent Inequality, the first is more rare and kind of an ideal while the second is the more prevalent in our society.

Temporary Inequality is explained as a relationship like a Parent/Child, or an Instructor/Student, where one party is dominate but the goal of the relationship is to serve and give to the lesser party to raise them up to the level of the dominate one. This seems, at least on the surface, to be a healthy relationship where both parties can learn from one another and there is an end to the inequality. Ideally a parent is teaching their child enough that the child can then become a parent, thus leveling out the relationship. Unfortunately this is the exception instead of the rule.

Permanent Inequality, Miller discusses, is where a group is considered “… some people or groups of people are defined as unequal by means of what sociologists call ascription; that is, your birth defines you.” When reading over her essay, the problem of illegal immigrants came to mind. I live in Southern California and there is a very big illegal, and legal, Mexican population. These people are the subordinates, they learn out language, they take the jobs we don’t want and make it look like they enjoy the process.

This last week I had people come to the house and clean. A group of three, a man and two women came to my house and did a wonderful job. All three were of Mexican decent and only the man spoke English. They were all smiles and polite, as I said they did a fantastic job, but I can’t help but wonder what they were really thinking as they were cleaning my dirty dishes. I am not required to learn their language, but they have to learn mine, they are doing a job I didn’t want to do and were apparently happy to do it. All of these behaviors tie directly into Miller’s description of these Subordinate relationships.

The difficulty in my specific situation is as all of these service jobs are held by people either from Mexico or descended from those who are, now service seems to be ‘their’ job. It can lead to a false feeling of superiority for the one being served, and then just perpetuates this problem.