Invisible Man This paper will discourse the constructs of maestro position finding features, stratification, and hierarchy in respect to Invisible Man, an autobiographical text written by Lawrence Otis Graham. He wrote about his experiences as a successful black attorney sitting as a waiter’s assistant in an effort to understand the all white state nine society and why he is excluded from it. This paper will be organized in the undermentioned mode. First, I will give a sum-up of the article and the of import interactions that occur in this state of affairs.
Second, I will analyse what features determine the maestro position in this state of affairs. Third, I will demo how stratification contributes to implementing the maestro position and the features that determine it. Last, I will analyze the hierarchy in this state of affairs, particularly the hierarchy of the employees of the state nine. Analyzing this narrative in the context of these constructs helps the reader to the full grasp the many interactions among the characters involved in this state of affairs. At the clip the article was written, Lawrence Otis Graham was a thirty-year-old black attorney. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He worked for a corporate jurisprudence house in Manhattan, New York and had written 11 nonfiction books.
Graham was raided in a comfortable household. Much of his fiscal comfort came from the Memphis hauling house owned by his grandparents. He grew up the lone black child on his high school tennis squad, in his orchestra, and go toing his Roman Catholic verification category. His married woman was a successful black Harvard educated attorney. Despite his many successes in life, Graham had frequently wondered why he could non fall in one of the several state nines that were in the nearby town of Greenwich, Connecticut. To derive a first manus sense of the sole the state nine scene, Graham created a new sketch for himself and applied to work at eight such state nines. He erased all his college grades and portrayed himself to be a high school alumnus who dropped out of college after two old ages. He besides changed his age to 23 to be consistent with his college dropout narrative. Graham decided to aim the eight state nines in Greenwich as the topics of his experiment.
Over the phone the state nines had told him that they were seeking servers and that he would be perfect, but after run intoing him for interviews, the nines decided what they truly needed were waiter’s assistants. Graham eventually settled on the Greenwich Country Club which boasts such members as a former president, hall of fame baseball participants, large shooting attorneies and many other executives and business communities. The first twenty-four hours of work Graham’s supervisor, Mr. Ryan asked Graham to park in back, enter and issue through the back entryway. Graham is directed to work in the Men’s Grill, where adult females are non allowed except on Friday eventides. Woman and kids dine in the nearby Mixed Grill. Graham asks if work forces can eat at that place excessively and Ryan laughs and says,” Of class they can, clip and topographic point limitations apply merely to adult females and kids.” Upon debut to the functioning staff Graham realizes that all the servers are white and the remainder of the staff is black or Latino. During their tiffin interruption Carlos, one of the Hispanic waiter’s assistant, takes Graham to the” Monkey House.”
This is the installation that the employees live and dine in. It is so named because the serving staff used to me wholly black so club members named it so. During his first twenty-four hours Graham encounters several racialist remarks made in his presence, as if he were non at that place. When make fulling some iced teas, Larry overhears some older white work forces stating.” These Negroes wouldn’t even be believing about golf, they can’t afford to fall in a nine anyway.” And later a in-between aged white adult female says.” My goodness. Did you hear that? That waiter’s assistant ( Graham ) has enunciation like an educated white person.” During the remainder of his of his two hebdomads working at Greenwich Country Club, Graham encounters many discriminatory and racialist patterns. The most common of which is mentioning to” the Negroes,” and” the Mexicans.” The people in the state club normally over-generalize about certain cultural groups and do stereotyped remarks.
An illustration of this is conversation between a female parent and her freshly wed girl, They are discoursing housekeepers and the female parent recommends to engage black housekeepers because “they can at least speak English, while you can’t trust either one of them.” Graham besides discovered pollicies that were discriminatory against minorities. One such policy was the employee golf privileges. When Graham foremost heard about this he was rather surprised, but if turns out that that golf privileges were merely extended to staff at the server degree or supra. This happed to be all the white employees and no minorities. Graham systematically observed favoritism and racism during his employment at Greenwich Country Club. Graham’s experience in Greenwich Country Club provides a perfect illustration of maestro position finding features.
Maestro position finding features is defined by in Anderson’s Streetwise, “Some statues, in our society as in other, override all other positions and have a certain precedence. Race is one of these.” This fundamentally means that some people attain certain privilege that comes with race. In the instance of Anderson’s Streetwise, the privilege gained through race was respect via fright. However in Graham’s see the black race did non posses the maestro position finding features, it was the Whites which did so. At the Greenwich Country Club where Graham conducted his experiment being white was the definite characteristic which determined maestro position. The first illustration of this is the fact that there are non any colored members of this nine. This excludes many people, including Graham, who are non white, but have the agencies to fall in such a nine. Graham possess all the makings including Ivy League instruction, working for a large corporate jurisprudence house, large house, big income, and successful calling, that would do him a premier campaigner of the state nine. The lone factor that bars Graham from falling such nines is his race.
Race as the maestro status-determining feature is farther emphasized in the address of the nine members. The work forces who talked about how inkiness couldn’t even afford to fall in such a nine are a good illustration. Ironically, he merely assumed that his race was superior and that no inkiness could afford to fall in such a nine, even though Graham was standing right at that place pouring iced tea. The middle-age adult females who commented on Graham’s English is another illustration of white being the maestro position finding characteristic at the Greenwich Country Club. By stating that Graham, “has enunciation like an educated white individual,” the adult female is presuming that merely white people are educated and speak English good. Ironically Graham likely has a higher degree of instruction than this adult females does.
Being white is non the lone maestro status-determining feature at the Greenwich Country Club. Bing male besides determines position over being female. This is shown in the illustration of the Men’s Grill, where merely work forces are allowed. Females are to eat with the kids in the Mixed Grill, thereby implementing the stereotype that it is a adult female’s topographic point to take attention of the kids. Graham’s supervisor Mr. Ryan confirms this in his statement,” clip and topographic point limitations apply merely to adult females and kids.” By putting limitations on adult females and kids, this shows that being male is a determiner in status. Greenwich Country Club displays caste, patriarchal, and category stratification. Dr. Lofland’s press release, “Hierarchy as Social Location,” defines societal stratification as “a system of ranking persons in a hierarchal manner which is a map of and has effects for their entree to, and ownership of, the things valued within their society/social order.” In the state of affairs of the Greenwich Country Club, the things valued within the society are rank to the nine and the freedom to travel approximately in the nine.
Patriarchal stratification is defined in the press release as,” System of gender and kin ranking marked by domination of the male parent in the kin or household in both domestic and spiritual maps, the legal dependance of the married woman or married woman and kids and the calculation of descent in heritage in the male line.” In the Greenwich Country Club being male allows one certain privileges that can non be otherwise attained. Bing female forces one to confront limitations such as merely being allowed to dine in the Mixed Grill. This is a state of affairs where patriarchal stratification is present.
Caste stratification is defined in the press release as,” peculiarly stiff systems of “cultural” or “racial” ranking in which people are divided into hierarchically arranged groups, rank in which is determined by birth and is immutable.” Letting merely white members at the Greenwich Country Club is an illustration of caste stratification. Being white is something that 1 has to be born into; it can non be changed so there is no manner to fall in the nine if you are non white. This does non let anyone from another race to fall in despite his or her makings. Class stratification is defined in the press release as,” systems of family-group ranking affecting the prolongation of blunt inequalities in income and wealth from one coevals to another. Class systems are characterized by a figure of strata which, in footings of power and privileges of stratum members, constitute a hierarchy; the theoretical possibility if, every bit good as some existent interstratum perpendicular mobility ( upward and downward ) informal barriers which restrict the sum and signifier of societal interaction between strata. An illustration of category stratification is the remark by the white male that” these Negroes wouldn’t even be believing about golf. They can’t afford to fall in a nine anyway.”
This adult male grounds that inkiness can non fall in a state nine because they can non afford rank, in some facets this is true but there are besides many affluent inkiness like Graham. Class stratification keeps some inkiness out of state nines because of economic grounds. The construct of hierarchy can be observed in Graham’s experiences at Greenwich Country Club. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines hierarchy as, “a group of things or persons organized by rank or value.” The hierarchy that exists among the nine member is apparent. White males take precedence over females and other races. This is exemplified in the fact that there are non any colored members. It is interesting to see that even among the workers a hierarchy exists. This hierarchy is based upon race, which determines place of employment. The upper direction of the state nine is all white. The servers are the following highest ranked, and they are all white excessively. Finally the waiter’s assistant and evidences staff are the lowest ranked in respects to business and they happed to be all minorities such as black and Latino.
This is besides apparent in the fact that all the white servers get precedence in the “monkey house,” the topographic point where employees live and dine. So even among the workers a hierarchy can be observed. Lawrence Graham’s experience working at the Greenwich Country Club is a good illustration of societal interaction. Maestro position finding features, stratification and hierarchy are all used to form the societal construction of those who are involved with the state nine. Using these constructs to analyse the state of affairs allows for a greater apprehension of the complex interactions and the forces that motivate them in this illustration. The article Invisible Man was written in 1994, demoing that this sort of favoritism still occurs in America, nevertheless by utilizing sociological constructs to analyse the implicit in motives allows an apprehension that can take to alter.
