Mixing Race, Class, and Gender

Abstract

In the previous chapter on production, I described how one element of gender—the unruly woman archetype—is socially produced, and I likened this process to the production of beet sugar. In this chapter I bring this sugar together with hot water and lemon juice to make lemonade. Like these ingredients, specific elements of race, class, and gender come together in ways that are both common and idiosyncratic, and in so coming together, they create something. In this case, they create a glass of lemonade that did not exist before, even while we recognize the form and taste of this drink because it has been institutionalized among us for so long.