Salt Of The Earth Analysis

Throughout this class, one thing Bettina taught me has stuck with me the whole time: the personal is political. Throughout every lesson, every essay, I felt this. I love how personal feminism is, every issue speaks to me personally, and I am encouraged to be angry, enraged, emotions so often not allowed to be felt by women. A point Adiche brings up speaking of her American friend who let her resentments simmer in the workplace.

I learned how issues of people with intersecting identities need an intersectional solution. The movie Salt of the Earth provided me with a wonderful example of this. The women had to first overcome the oppressions they faced as women before dealing with the oppressions they faced as Latinx people.

I also learned much more about institutionalized Racism in America. Of course I knew racism was alive and well in America, but I had no idea just how deeply ingrained it was in ur history, and beyond that how much it is still engrained in our culture and government today. Salt of the Earth was one historical movement I had no awareness of. Rape is another

area I was unaware of the Racism so strongly affecting things. Historically, black women were not seen as people but as property, and therefor rape was not a crime against them, but a theft of the value of an object owned by a white man. Stereotypes about black women as sexual deviants and temptresses arose, stereotypes that are still very much around today and effect black women victims of sexua assultt, leading to victim blaming.
Bettina's lecture on rape was very powerful, I learned a lot. She blew my mind with one thing she said and i triple underlined it in my notes; “rape is a form of social control” (Aptheker, Rape Lecture). I had never thought of it that way, but it is so easy to see the truth in it. The rape culture in America devalues women, especially black women, as people. Women are tod not to dress certain ways, not to walk in certain places at certain times. Women are being controlled through fear. Rape isn’t, and never has been about sex, it is about power, and as Bettina said, it is about control.
Bettin’s class not only made me aware of these and so many other issues, but it made me aware of solutions too.

The importance of intersectional solutions for people with intersecting systems of domination. She showed us time and time again how people have struggle, but triumphed in feminist issues using determination, by not giving up, by fighting for what's right. I showed up to class Thursday after the election feeling hopeless, this was my first election, and I was so involved in it, I managed to convince at least one person to vote for Bernie and Hilary when they wouldn’t have otherwise voted. I argued my heart out on facebook, and the election results managed to knock the wind out of me and my peers. I felt wronged when I came to Bettina’s lecture that day, but she inspired me to not fill myself with hopelessness, but with anger, and to use that anger, to harness it and to keep

fighting.
I loved coming to Bettina's class, because it was personal. When she lectured it felt like she was telling a story, and it captured my attention. I’m inspired to make my own stories in feminism, to bring my own personal experiences into the realm of the political.