Duneier’s "Sidewalk"

1180 Words3 Pages

Duneier’s Sidewalk takes place on the streets of Manhattan where on any given day a homeless black man sits on a curb and asks passers by for spare change. He calls out to white women walking by saying, “Hey baby, come over here!” hoping for an interaction. The women briskly walk by with their eyes darted straight ahead and regardless of the lack of verbal reciprocation; he continues to call out after them. In Duneier’s book he points out the problems with the interaction but has a hard time explaining the motive behind the derogatory behavior. Using Patricia Hill Collins’s matrix of domination we can realize that the men’s actions are a result of the difference between their gender, which leads to a desire to over power and oppress women in so called “entanglement” situations.

The matrix of domination sheds light on the invisible hierarchy that entwines both the homeless black man and the upper middle class white women in these situations. Collins’ matrix includes an individuals separate levels of social superiority in race, gender and social status and measures their level of oppression by all these factors, not by each characteristic individually. In this societies system, white is seen as superior to black, male superior to female, and wealthy superior to poor. The individuals exhibiting the least superior qualities thus are the most oppressed, and the individuals with the most superior qualities are the least oppressed. (Collins 228)

In the situation of entanglement with Mudrick, a Black homeless man, and his white middle aged female counterparts, both parties involved are susceptible to at least one form of oppression. This gender difference leaves a window for even the most affluent white women to be oppressed by any mal...

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...Both Mudrick and his women reside in separate places in the matrix of domination, and surpass one another in different social factors of the model, but does the existence of these differences justify how Mudrick treats these complete strangers? The answer is no. Simply because an individual has power he does not also have the right to abuse that power. Mudrick may have the ability to make derogatory remarks to women but if the reaction that he gets from them isn’t something he desires (which it rarely is) there is no reason to continue the behavior unless its for personal mental gain.

The situation of entanglement is a complex and troubling one a but by using the rubric of the matrix of domination, and the rules of its hierarchy of superiority and inferiority, one can better understand how and why individuals like Mudrick interact with women the way that they do.

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