The Barbershop 'And Prelude: The Real Negro'

Although society claims that we are in the age where there is gender equality, it is clear that women are still not of equal standing than men. In our society, women are of lower status than men. Such as in the workplace, a male employee’s project proposal is favored over a female employee’s proposal because a male superior believes that women cannot construct ideas as well as male employees. This is a result of how our culture has influence our view that women are less superior than men. Our male dominant culture taught us that women are not as capable as men are and that between the two genders, the man is the superior. While women seem weak in the workplace, it is really due to our culture that teaches us that women are lower in status than

In Vershawn Ashanti Young’s, “Prelude: The Barbershop,” he uses an anecdote from Shelly Eversley’s, The Real Negro, to argue that women are disregarded when they try to join in conversations with men. Young explains that Eversley was in a black barbershop in Baltimore. Eversley was in college at the time and as she was listening to men talking about making a political statement in the Million Man March, she tried to express her beliefs on the march to them. Young states, “‘For a few seconds, the men … seemed to listen,’ she writes, ‘[but] then continued with their conversation’” (Young par. 6). Young uses this anecdote to show that because Eversley is a woman, the men felt it was not worth taking her seriously and ignore her. This may also apply in the workplace that since our culture views women in such a lower status than men, men will feel that women are not worth listening to. This is unfair to the women who gathered the courage to express their thoughts, given how our culture treats them, but are ignored. Women should be heard and given feedback to show that people are listening and thought about what was said. Hence, as a result of our culture, women who do give voice to their thoughts in the workplace