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4. Moral Identity and Racial Solidarity: How Lower-Status Workers Fashion a Superior Self
- University of Arizona Press
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61 4 Moral Identity and Racial Solidarity How Lower-Status Workers Fashion a Superior Self Feminists of color have made a case for the need to understand how numerous identities—race, ethnicity, gender, class, and nationality—are experienced in daily life, and how these identities intersect and shape each other. Intersectional feminist theorists contend that identities are fashioned by the multiple, interconnected oppressed and privileged groups to which we belong (e.g., Anzaldúa and Moraga 2002). Intersectional theorists “view race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and age, among others, as mutually constructing systems of power. [And] . . . these systems permeate all social relations ” (Collins 2000, 11). Intersectional theory in this study calls for an analysis of how health-care practitioners’ positions within multiple, interlocking systems of inequality shape their understandings of themselves and their construction of a moral identity. In the following analysis I explore the ways health-care workers’ race, class, and nationality contribute to their fashioning of a morally superior self. I highlight how intersectionality works “on the ground” and plays out in the everyday interactions of these health-care practitioners. doing good 62 The Lower-Status African American Staffers Several of the lower-status African American staffers had worked in the health-care industry for many years, although they had been working at Care Inc. for only a couple of years. Margaret, for example , the African American receptionist, had retired from University Hospital (a major local hospital) after working there for 30 years and had been working at Care Inc. for “three years. Three long years.” Eva, the African American medical assistant, had been a nursing assistant for 20 years and a medical assistant for three years. When I asked her how she decided to become a nursing assistant and medical assistant, she elaborated in an interview: I guess, growing up, I grew up being an asthmatic child. So, just being around a lot of people that, you know, that worked on me and helped me in my life. That’s probably why I chose to do what I do now. . . . My first job was at . . . a nursing home . . . that’s where I got my training. And that was a very good experience, you know, because I had no clue to what nurse’s duties were until I started doing it. And I mean, this is very good. I enjoy it, I really do. I enjoy working with people and helping people. For the majority of the lower-status African American female staff, the work felt less rewarding due to the changing demographics at the clinic. Language barriers made the African American staff feel “useless,” “frustrated,” “excluded,” “insulted,” and “disrespected,” and prompted one of them to wonder if the bilingual issue was not “pushing away other target people.” Not being able to identify or effectively communicate with their new clientele, these African American women searched for ways to make sense of, and respond to, their declining status. At the same time, the African American staff felt comfortable with the African American patients who came into the clinic. For example, Margaret, the African American receptionist, knew the African American patients’ names, complimented the women by saying things like, “What a nice dress you have on today, and perfect for this weather.” She usually greeted them warmly and talked and laughed with them [44.220.41.140] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:36 GMT) Moral Identity and Racial Solidarity 63 for a while. This behavior was in marked contrast to her interactions with whites and Latina/os. A possible explanation for her familiarity with the African American clients might have been that she knew African American clients from her neighborhood, church, or another community organization; however, Margaret had recently moved from New York to North Carolina, and she said that she didn’t know many people. Even if they weren’t personal acquaintances, African American clients apparently increased her comfort and sense of value within the clinic. Without African American clientele, she perceived that she would not be needed in her job. In this section I analyze how gendered and racialized frames shaped the way the African American health-care providers crafted a moral identity. The strategies—defining the lower-status Latina health-care staff as lazy and defining Latinas as bad mothers and as abusing the health-care system—drew on racial, class, and nationalist frames. The African American staffers’ master narrative about the moral self—the moral health-care worker and the moral client—categorized Latinas as...