15 Frequently Confused Pairs of Adjectives

15 Frequently Confused Pairs of Adjectives 15 Frequently Confused Pairs of Adjectives 15 Frequently Confused Pairs of Adjectives By Mark Nichol A portion of these comparable looking words do have, among different implications, a similar sense, however their essential definitions are very unique. Know these qualifications: 1. equivocal/undecided: To be questionable is have the option to be comprehended in more than one way (or, less generally, of unsure character); to be irresolute is to communicate vulnerability or conflicting feelings. (The last term is likewise particular from aloof, which infers an absence of sentiment or concern.) 2. exchange/elective: To be interchange is to happen by turns or in an example that skips from one side to the next, or to give another chance; to be elective is to offer a decision, or to be a variety from a standard. 3. esoteric/harsh: Something recondite is, due to multifaceted nature, something not effectively appreciated; something inhumane is muddled in light of the fact that or reckless or uncertain data. (Heartless likewise portrays somebody who is dull or uncaring, or an article that is gruff or round, and then again alludes to an edge more noteworthy than 90 degrees.) 4. arrant/errant: Arrant methods â€Å"immoderate† or â€Å"extreme†; errant methods â€Å"traveling† or â€Å"being random, or â€Å"straying† or â€Å"misbehaving.† 5. abstinent/pure: A chaste individual is one who avoids sex or marriage; modest is an equivalent however can likewise mean â€Å"modest† or even â€Å"spotless† or â€Å"austere.† 6. climatic/climactic: Climatic alludes to atmosphere; climactic applies to a peak. 7. purposeful/concentrated: Something deliberate has been led in a planned way; amassed implies â€Å"focused† in the feeling of arranging toward a shared objective. 8. alluring/covetous: Something attractive will be appealing or profitable; burning alludes to being driven by want. 9. unbiased/uninterested: Both terms can mean â€Å"apathetic,† yet uninvolved likewise has the feeling of â€Å"neutral.† 10. extraordinary/sensational: Drastic methods â€Å"extreme†; emotional alludes to something reminiscent of show, or decided. 11. outstanding/exceptionable: Something extraordinary is unrivaled, or uncommon (it is likewise utilized to allude to those with mental or physical capacities); something exceptionable is hostile or bothersome individuals protest it. 12. broadened/broad: Extended methods â€Å"lengthened† (however it is additionally here and there utilized as an equivalent word for broad); broad methods â€Å"to an incredible degree† or â€Å"of an extraordinary magnitude.† 13. commanding/coercive: To be mighty is to be solid or enticing; something persuasive is cultivated by utilizing power (however it can mean â€Å"powerful,† as well). Constrained, in the interim, alludes to automatic activity or something done distinctly with exertion. 14. amusing/wry: An unexpected proclamation is one intended to be comprehended as significance some different option from its exacting importance demonstrates; a wry articulation can be amusing, however the word mocking for the most part alludes to something said jokingly to communicate disparage. 15. lavish/rich: Something extravagant is brilliant in extravagance; something rich is ripe and rich, however the word may likewise be utilized as an equivalent for sumptuous. Need to improve your English in a short time a day? Get a membership and begin getting our composing tips and activities every day! Continue learning! Peruse the Misused Words classification, check our mainstream posts, or pick a related post below:Good At, Good In, and Good With50 Nautical Terms in General UseShore It Up

The English Only Movement in US

Language has consistently been a significant piece of a country†s culture and lifestyle. At the point when the U. S. was established, it was not unexpected to hear upwards of 20 dialects spoken alongside numerous records that were imprinted in various dialects. There have been numerous discussions over setting up a national language, and a development emerged that endeavors to build up English as the nation†s official language. This development is known as the â€Å"English Only† development, and it â€Å"promotes the order of enactment that confines or denies the utilization of dialects other than English by government offices and, now and again, by private businesses† (ALCU). Numerous individuals whom bolster the â€Å"English Only† development accepts that multilingualism is excessively expensive and wasteful for the legislature to work in. Making English as an official language will have little everyday impact on the populace and their ways of life or private lives. They accept that pronouncing English as the official language is the most attractive approach to deal with more than 300 dialects spoken in the U. S. (LIA). Numerous individuals bolster multilingualism and restrict having English as an official language since it is out of line to people who are not conversant in English. Additionally, they make bogus generalizations of migrants and non-English speakers. They presume that it damages the assorted variety epitomized in our Constitution, making limitations and cutoff points as opposed to securing singular rights, and it doesn't help the joining of language minority residents into the American standard. I for one help keeping the U. S. as a multilingual country. I feel that the country is running easily enough and it shouldn't be changed in that manner. There are numerous countries that hold various authority dialects that run easily. I don't perceive any reason why it is important for our country to expect English to be an official language with in excess of 30 percent of the country originating from an alternate ethnic gathering or culture. Subsequently, I accept that this country ought not authorize English as the official language. For over 200 years, Americans have gotten by without announcing English our official language. Congress had never at any point considered proclaiming English the country's authentic language until 1981. The main past legitimate language enactment goes back to 1923: a bill assigning â€Å"American† the national tongue. Americans have customarily opposed language enactment, starting in 1780, when John Adams proposed to set up an official Language Academy to set measures for English. This thought was dismissed by the Continental Congress as an ill-advised job for government and a danger to singular freedoms. There was no English capability necessity to get naturalized as a U. S. resident until 1906 †the principal significant language limitation to be sanctioned at the government level. Prior to World War I, bilingual instruction was basic in regions where nonanglophone bunches delighted in political clout. During the nineteenth century, state laws, constitutions, and administrative procedures showed up in dialects as various as Welsh, Czech, Norwegian, Spanish, French, and obviously, German. At different occasions, Americans have forced prohibitive language strategies. California revamped its state constitution in 1879 to dispense with Spanish language rights. In 1897, Pennsylvania made English capability a state of work in its coal handle, a none-too-unobtrusive approach to reject Italians and Slavs. Security fears during the World War I time prompted uncommon bans on open utilization of the German language †in schools, in the city, during strict administrations, and even on the phone. (Crawford) Proposition 227 was passed by a significant lion's share of California voters. Its section is the immediate consequence of the state's poor understudy execution in English. Until its entry, California grasped bilingual training. Recommendation 227 for all intents and purposes closes bilingual instruction in California and reintroduces phonics based projects. The California Content Standards and California Education Code unmistakably characterize the course necessities under Proposition 227 and the objectives for grade level execution. Numerous gatherings and associations feel that making English the official language is basic and advantageous for the U. S. government and its residents. These gatherings accept that official English advances solidarity. â€Å"This long custom of osmosis has consistently incorporated the appropriation of English as the basic methods for communication† (USE). Numerous examinations show that migrants learn English more slow when they are upheld by their local language. Since multilingual taxpayer supported organizations really empower the development of phonetic enclaves, this causes the U. S. to isolate into independent language bunches due to racial and ethnic clashes (USE). Additionally, foreigners will profit by learning English by having the option to take part in the legislature and the workforce. In the event that outsiders were not capable in English, they would be exposed to the low-gifted and low-paying employments. â€Å"Knowledge of English prompts the acknowledgment of the American long for expanded financial chance and the capacity to turn into an increasingly gainful citizen, which benefits everyone† (USE). Numerous associations likewise feel that official English can set aside cash from the pointless duplication of taxpayer supported organizations in different dialects. â€Å"It isn't the obligation of the administration to offer types of assistance in the 329 distinct dialects spoken in the United States. It is the obligation of every person to either learn English or to discover a companion or relative to translate† (USE). Obviously there are special cases including crises, unknown dialect guidance, security and wellbeing administrations, and the travel industry advancements. Additionally, official English doesn't influence private organizations, strict administrations, or private discussions (USE). On the restricting hand, associations contradict official English since they feel it is an infringement of individual†s rights. They accept that â€Å"such laws are in opposition to the soul of resilience and assorted variety exemplified in our Constitution. An English Language Amendment to the Constitution would change that report from being a contract of freedoms and individual opportunity into a sanction of limitations that limits, as opposed to ensures, individual rights† (ACLU). There are a few renditions of the proposed English Language Amendment that dismisses the legislature from offering types of assistance in dialects other than English. These gatherings that restrict the â€Å"English Only† laws accept that it abuses the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It meddles with the option to decide in favor of people who can not understand English and with the privilege of laborers to be liberated from segregation in specific working environments. â€Å"Today, as before, ‘English Only† laws in the U. S. are established on bogus generalizations of worker gatherings. Such laws don't just belittle the outsiders' local dialects however ambush the privileges of the individuals who communicate in the dialects (ACLU). With the discussion over â€Å"English Only† laws, a subject of bilingual training emerged. Numerous individuals who bolster official English restrict bilingual instruction. They feel that â€Å"bilingual training programs depend on the doubtful hypothesis that a youngster must go through years getting educated in his local language before the person in question can appropriately become familiar with a subsequent language. Under their own hypothesis, bilingual instructors ought not have put an English-talking youngster in a Cantonese-talking class† (USE). Squandered assets have gone into the help of bilingual instruction with the schools being wasteful at educating English. Studies have demonstrated that these bilingual training schools have almost no impact. â€Å"At the least, government and state bilingual instruction laws must be changed to guarantee that guardians can without much of a stretch expel their kids from bilingual training programs. Since in America, a kid shouldn†t be compelled to record a claim to get his training in English† (USE). Since the 1960s, inquire about has demonstrated that different language abilities don't befuddle the brain. An incredible opposite: when very much created, they appear to give psychological focal points, albeit such impacts are unpredictable and hard to gauge (Crawford). Another ruined thought is that youngsters will gain proficiency with a second language quickly on the off chance that they are completely drenched in it. â€Å"For ages, this way of thinking served to legitimize approaches of instructive disregard †doling out minority understudies to standard study halls, with no uncommon assistance in conquering language obstructions. Lopsided numbers fizzled and dropped out of school as a result† (Crawford). The do or die approach was governed illicit by the U. S. Incomparable Court in Lau v. Nichols. Research has indicated that the nature of English introduction is the main consideration in English procurement and not the amount. Many accept that English as a subsequent language is best instructed in regular circumstances, â€Å"with the subsequent language utilized in important settings instead of in monotonous drills of sentence structure and vocabulary† (Crawford). This methodology is basic in bilingual instruction programs, composed with exercises in understudies' local language. Additionally, local language guidance likewise assists with making English fathomable, by giving relevant information that guides in comprehension. Since language has consistently been a significant piece of a country†s culture and lifestyle, I feel that the U. S. should keep this country a multilingual country. In the event that this country can go 200 years without making English the official language, I accept that things should proceed with along these lines. I don't feel that the chance of setting aside cash should substitute the simplicity of life for migrants and schools. I additionally accept that â€Å"an English Language Amendment to the Constitution would change

An Introverts Guide to Making Friends in College

An Introverts Guide to Making Friends in College In the weeks leading up to move-in day, the biggest thing I worried about wasn’t how I would adjust to living on my own or how I would do in classes; it was how I would make friends. I read dozens of college blogs to see if there were any tips on the subject, but I found that most of them said something along the lines of “be extroverted.” If you’re an introvert like me, you know that “being extroverted” is much easier said than done. Luckily, making friends in college doesn’t require you to stretch yourself in such a way. The best thing you can do is be yourself, 100%. Making friends can often seem tough at the beginning, but if you continue to show your quirky, awesome self, you’ll ultimately be welcomed by some quirky, awesome people. Beyond this, here are a few other tips that worked for me as I made new friends this semester. Branch out! Whether you know dozens of people going to the same college as you or don’t know anyone, the start of college is the time to branch out. Everyone is in the same boat at this point, and people are super eager to make new friends. It’s easy to cling to the people you know, but branching out and trying to make new connections at the beginning is much easier than trying to do the same later on. If branching out doesn’t come so naturally to you, try to challenge yourself to meet three new people a day. Just go up and introduce yourself. I promise, they’ll be glad you did. You don’t have to strike up an elaborate conversation with each of these people or become their best friend. Just learn something about them and see where it goes. You may stay in touch, or you may just smile at them in passing for the rest of the year. Either way, it will not have been a wasted effort. Dont be afraid to try out different groups. During orientation days, you’ll meet more people than you’ve probably ever met in your life. For me, this was probably one of the coolest experiences of college so far. It’s so much fun to meet people who have different life experiences and different stories to tell. The strange part for me was realizing that I would never talk to most of these people ever again. Likewise, as I started attending meetings for clubs, there were some that I found just didn’t click for me. This is completely okay! Not everyone that you meet is going to be your new best friend, and not every group that you join is going to be the right fit for you. Making friends is an ongoing process, so don’t be discouraged if you find that you’re drifting from your initial friends. Keep meeting new people and trying out new clubs until you find the ones that are the best fit for you. Bond over shared experiences. If you sometimes find it hard to carry on a conversation, sharing a new experience with someone can be a great way to start a friendship. I bonded with one of my current best friends when we tried out the campus bus system for the first time and ended up on a 45 minute long adventure on the wrong bus home. This was definitely a fun conversation starter and something we still look back on and laugh at now. There are tons of things to do on campus, and it’s completely okay to try out these things with people you just met. I’ve tried new restaurants, attended volleyball games, and played board games on the quad with various groups that I met at orientation. Each of these experiences was a great way to get to know the people better. Invite your neighbors over for a movie night. The people that you live with have the potential to be some of your best friends. Neighbors are the best go-to people when you need a buddy to go to dinner with, have a random question about a class, or just need to borrow some ketchup. One way to get to know your neighbors better is to invite them over for a movie night. My roommate and I hold movie nights every Friday, and it has become a pretty popular event on our floor. We still have neighbors that we’ve never met who stop by sometimes, so were constantly getting to know new people. Just be you! As I mentioned at the beginning, being yourself is the most important thing you can do to make friends in college. Don’t worry about trying to make yourself seem more outgoing than you are; just be you, exactly as you are. Starting over and trying to find new friends in a massive school can be pretty daunting, but if you stay true to yourself, the people you were meant to find will come your way. Abby Class of 2023 I'm a Civil and Environmental Engineering major in the Grainger College of Engineering and I hope to one day work to lessen society's impact on the environment. I am a major nerd, have a passion for all things outdoors, and I can't wait to see what new opportunities are in store for my freshman year at University of Illinois!

Freedom Is Never Equal By Harriet Jacobs - 2085 Words

‘Murica!!! The land of the free! The home of the brave! Call it what you want! Dream about it, celebrate it and worship it! Just know, you’re worshipping one of the most hypocritical countries there is! How do I know!? One word: Slavery! Freedom is never equal. That’s always been the reality. Let’s go back to the 1800s. Slavery was the basis of Southern society and robbed millions of African Americans of their freedom. So what did they do? They got it back. But, not every runaway slave dreamed of the same freedom. Between those who made it North and out of the Cotton Belt, there were various different perceptions of freedom. Two examples of this are Harriet Jacobs, a female slave from North Carolina who eventually runs away to the North and Frederick Douglass, a Maryland slave who escapes and becomes a leading abolitionist. To document their lives, both would go on to write autobiographies, with Douglass penning Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and Jacobs writing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the name Linda Brent. Each books tell the story of how the author became free and the journey they took to get there. Even though they both encounter the harshness of slavery and experience similar successes once they escape it, the circumstances regarding their situations are completely different. These circumstances play a huge role in deciding their fates. Stemming from that fact, the types of freedom each is looking for becomes differentShow MoreRelatedSharing The Same Fate in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain1212 Words   |  5 PagesIs it possible for two people who have never interacted with each other throughout their lives to share the same fate? In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is a young boy who decides to run away from his abusive father, accompanied by an escaped slave who believes that he will be sold and separated from his family. Huck has no choice but to take on an adventurous journey, which allows his relationship with the slave, Jim, to blossom while testing their mental and physical skills. In correlationRead MoreThe Death Of Harriet s Punishment1126 Words   |  5 Pagespaternalism, but as we can see, the severity of punishments was not equal. Charles suffered greatly for crimes he wasn’t even involved in yet he still faced the brunt of the master’s and overseer’s wrath. The extent of Harriet’s punishment ranged from being slapped by Dr. Flint. There did not seem to be common ground between the three autobiographies. Partially due to the time it was written, Kate Drumgoold’s recollection never once details any forceful or unbearable punishment laid upon the youngRead MoreHarriet Ann Jacobs s Life Essay1659 Words   |  7 PagesBorn as a slave in Edenton, North Carolina in 1813, Harriet Ann Jacobs was raised by her slave mother and father. Since Harriet’s father was very skillful in his tra de of carpentry, he was allowed to pay his mistress 200 dollars a year to work at his trade and manage his own affairs. As a result, his family was able to live comfortably in their home, and Harriet was â€Å"fondly shielded that [she] never dreamed [she] was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, and liable to be demandedRead MoreThe Life Of A Slave Girl, By Harriet Tubman And The Fight For Freedom1394 Words   |  6 Pagesbeholder, the notion of freedom varies according to the person describing it. In the context of slavery, for example, the concept of freedom is different in the perspective of enslaved women, enslaved men, or white women. To black women, the idea of freedom was conceived around the concept of family. For white women, freedom meant achieving equal footing with men, and getting their natural rights. And, for the enslaved black man, the idea that they could grasp their own freedom was first found throughRead MoreIncidents Throughout The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs1505 Words   |  7 PagesIncidents in the life of a slave girl’ written by Harriet Jacobs and published by L.Maria Child (in 1831), is an autobiography by the author herself which documents Jacobs life as a slave and therefore The book starts when Jacobs is born as a slave in a city of North Carolina and then continues through her escape, her status as a runaway fugitive in the North, and finally her path to freedom when one of her northern white friends buys her in the year 1852. Incidents in the Life of a Slave GirlRead MoreSummary Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl1189 Words   |  5 Pages‘Incidents in the life of a slave girl’ written by Harriet Jacobs and published by L.Maria Child (in 1831), is an autobiography by the author herself which documents Jacobs life as a slave and therefore The book starts when Jacobs is born as a slave in a city of North Carolina and then continues through her escape, her status as a runaway fugitive in the North, and finally her path to freedom when one of her northern white friends buys her in the year 1852. Incidents in the Life of a Slave GirlRead MoreThe Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacob993 Words   |  4 PagesHarriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, depicts a personal and true account of how woman were sexually and physically abused rather than just physically abuses as that of an enslaved man. Enslaved woman struggled tremendously to not only be considered equal to man though to be seen equal pure and virtuous identical to the white women. Jacob’s female slave narrative was a special kind of autobiography, were she not only used another person to represent her, however, she wanted the readerRead MoreIncidents During The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs1818 Words   |  8 PagesSlave Girl Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs is an Autobiography from the point of view of a southern slave. She has named herself Linda Brent in the book to keep her identity anonymous. The book takes place in between 1820-1840 in which slavery was still legal and common throughout the United States south. The book begins in an unnamed town in the south in which the protagonist was raised in as a slave. Harriet Jacobs wrote the book to shine light on how slaves were treatedRead MoreHarriet Jacob And Phillis Wheatley1904 Words   |  8 PagesHarriet Jacob and Phillis Wheatley, Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl and On Being Brought from Africa to America both presents the existential conditions of being a black woman in a male dominated society. Despite their years span differences, both author present different, yet similar views of enslavement in America where black women struggle to reclaim their humanity and seek freedom within their society. For both Harriet and Phillis, both women used literacy as their voice to raise concernRead MoreSummary Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl1785 Words   |  8 Pages Introduction ‘Incidents in the life of a slave girl’ written by Harriet Jacobs and published by L.Maria Child (in 1831), is an autobiography by the author herself which documents Jacobs life as a slave and therefore The book starts when Jacobs is born as a slave in a city of North Carolina and then continues through her escape, her status as a runaway fugitive in the North, and finally her path to freedom when one of her northern white friends buys her in the year 1852. Incidents in the Life

Coeliac Disease - 978 Words

Untreated coeliac disease can be life threatening. Coeliac are more likely to be afflicted with problems relating to malabsorption, including osteoporosis, tooth enamel defects, central and peripheral nervous system disease, pancreatic disease, , organ disorders (gall bladder, liver, and spleen), and gynaecological disorders. Untreated coeliac disease has also been linked an increased risk of certain types of cancer, especially intestinal lymphoma A diagnosis of celiac disease does not mean giving up all your favourite foods. It just means adapting them to be gluten free. Many different gluten-free products, baking mixes, and recipes are available. A support group is a great resource for finding out which recipes and products are best†¦show more content†¦Carbohydrates such as rice, potatoes, bananas and gluten free pasta and bread are needed by the body for energy (glucose) for the brain and muscle’s and is used for respiration. Fat provides energy, cushions your organs and allows the body to absorb necessary nutrients such as vitamins A, D, E and K, examples of unsaturated fat include nuts, avocado, tuna and salmon. The body needs vitamins and minerals in order to grow and develop Fibre is important because it: stimulates the digestive tract and helps it work efficiently; encourages the presence of health-giving bacteria in the large intestine. A good source of fibre is include brown rice, high fibre/multigrain gluten-free breads. Coeliac disease affects approximately 1 in every 100 people within the united kingdom. It does not discriminate against age although it is more common among people with type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes, autoimmune thyroid disease and many others. Treatment for Coeliac disease. Celiac disease is treated by not eating gluten. This can be difficult because gluten is in many foods, but a dietician can help adjust someones diet to cut out gluten. It is important not to start a gluten-free diet unless you are truly diagnosed with celiac disease. In general, avoid the following foods unless theyre labelled as gluten-free or made with corn, rice, soy or other gluten-free grain.Show MoreRelatedCoeliac Disease Harms the Lining of the Small Intestine529 Words   |  2 PagesCoeliac disease Coeliac disease is a condition that harms the lining of the small intestine and stops it from absorbing parts of food that are important for staying healthy. The damage is cause by taking in gluten. 1 in 100 in UK have coeliac disease, 1 in 300 in Ireland, 1 in 250 in Italy and 1 in 133 in the USA. Studies have shown that in Europe, USA and other places coeliac disease has enlarged as much as 4 times in the last 30 years. The cause of coeliac disease is sensitivity to gluten. GlutenRead MoreThe, No Bread For Thanksgiving1148 Words   |  5 PagesWorld War II that a cause was attributed to â€Å"Gee-Herter’s disease†Ã¢â‚¬â€the name of this unusual disorder. A shortage of grain led a Dutch pediatrician, Willem-Karel Dicke, to draw the conclusion that wheat was the culprit (Gut). He made this connection when the death rate of children with this disease went from about 35% to 0% during the grain shortage (Sanghavi). Today, Gee-Herter’s disease, more commonly kno wn as coeliac or celiac disease, is better understood. Advanced methods in molecular biologyRead MoreProblems Associated with Celiac Disease and Lactose Intolerance1172 Words   |  5 Pagesrepairing and structuring of every cell. Inadequate production of digestive enzymes can have a negative impact on the breakdown of food into the various nutrients our bodies require. Problems associated with Celiac Disease and Lactose Intolerance â€Å"Celiac disease is an inflammatory disease of the upper small intestine caused by intolerance to gluten.† The small intestine has an inner lining of cells which contain villi (Marks). The substance, known as gluten damages the villi which line the small intestineRead MoreCeliac Disease And Its Effects On The Body System2429 Words   |  10 Pages Celiac disease seems to be on an up rise today. You now walk into grocery stores and restaurants and see gluten-free food everywhere. Thankfully, for the celiac disease community, life has become a little easier with these accommodations. When most people hear celiac disease many just think gluten-free diets, but they do not realize that celiac disease can affect all parts of the body and mind, or that the disease has a higher prevalence in women. It is a new lifestyle that many have to take onRead MoreCeliac Disease : An Overview On How It Affects The Body And Mind2448 Words   |  10 PagesCeliac Disease: An Overview on How It Affects the Body and Mind. Sarah LoTempio NU 127 (Professional Paper) March 24, 2015 Celiac disease seems to be on an up rise today. You now walk into grocery stores and restaurants and see gluten-free food everywhere. Thankfully, for the celiac disease community, life has become a little easier with these accommodations. When most people hear celiac disease many just think gluten-free diets, but they do not realize that celiac disease can affectRead MoreCeliac Disease8765 Words   |  36 Pages50 Celiac Disease Dascha C. Weir, MD Ciaran Kelly, MD Celiac disease (CD) is an immune-mediated enteropathy secondary to permanent sensitivity to wheat gluten and related proteins in rye and barley. It results in characteristic histologic changes consisting of inï ¬â€šammation, crypt hyperplasia, and villous atrophy of the small intestine in genetically susceptible individuals. Signiï ¬ cant variability in the clinical presentation of CD in the pediatric population complicates recognition ofRead MoreEssay on Celiac665 Words   |  3 Pages Origin of the name/history of the disease nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The name celiac comes from â€Å"coeliac† which is derived from the Greek Koilia, which means belly. The â€Å"coeliac flux† is an old expression meaning the same as diarrhea. The disease celiac is not just diarrhea though it just means that the disease pertains to the abdomen. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The celiac disease comes from early farmers and hunters. But because the wheat and grain of the cropsRead MoreDetermining The Success Of A Restaurant Business1498 Words   |  6 Pageswith gluten intolerance, or permanent damage to the small intestine for people with coeliac disease (National Foundation for Celiac Awareness, 2015). Piko offers an eggs benedict which caters to different types of dietary requirements, a vegetarian will choose baby spinach, a person with an unrestricted diet may choose bacon benedict, a pescatarian may choose the smoked salmon benedict, a person with coeliac disease would something gluten free such as the â€Å"Warm bacon, lettuce, tomato asparagus salad†Read MoreCeliac Disease : A Disease2422 Words   |  10 Pages Celiac disease, which is also called coeliac disease, is a genetic autoimmune disease that injures the small intestine. Gluten is a protein that is in some wheat, barley, and rye. It is also a new fad diet and being gluten intolerant is something a majority of the population may claim. However, for those who really have celiac disease it is more serious. In fact, Despite popular belief, celiac disease is a serious genetic autoimmune disease, not the latest fad diet, according to the organizationRead MoreThe Best Present Treatment For Celiac Disease ( Cd ) Is A Gluten Free Diet ( Gfd )955 Words   |  4 PagesResults Across the research, there have been commonalities and similarities. Most of the authors agree that the best present treatment for celiac disease (CD) is a gluten-free diet (GFD). A cross-sectional age-matched study done on 18 Italian children, aged four to 10 years, demonstrated that there were statistical differences in eating habits and frequency of eating among CD children and a control group. These dietary intakes were measured using the semi-quantitative Block Food Frequency Questionnaire

Stefan’s Diaries Origins Chapter 20 Free Essays

I didn’t see Damon for the next few days. Father said he was spending time at the camp, an idea that clearly filled him with no small amount of pleasure. Father hoped that Damon spending time there would lead to him rejoining the army, even though I figured his hours would be spent mostly gambling and talking about women. We will write a custom essay sample on Stefan’s Diaries: Origins Chapter 20 or any similar topic only for you Order Now I, for one, was glad. Of course, I missed my brother, but I would never be able to spend so much uninterrupted, unquestioned time with Katherine if Damon was around. Truthfully, although I felt disloyal to say it, Father and I adapted well to Damon being gone. We began taking meals together, companionably playing hands of cribbage after dinner. Father would share his thoughts about the day, about the overseer, and about his plans to buy new horses from a farm in Kentucky. For the hundredth time, I realized how much he wanted me to take over the estate, and for the first time, I felt excitement in that possibility. It was because of Katherine. I’d taken to spending each night in her chambers, leaving just before work began in the fields. She hadn’t bared her fangs since that night in the woods. It was as if that secret meeting in the forest had changed everything. She needed me to keep her secret, and I needed her to keep me whole. In her small, dim bedroom, everything was passionate and perfect–it almost felt as if we were newlyweds. Of course, I wondered how it would work, me growing older each year as Katherine stayed just as young and beautiful. But that was a question for later, after the fear of the vampire scourge was over, after we were engaged, after we’d settled into a life without hiding. â€Å"I know you’ve been spending time with young Katherine,† Father said one night at the dinner table, as Alfred cleared the table and brought Father his well-worn deck of cards for us to play. â€Å"Y es.† I watched as Alfred poured sherry into Father’s glass. In the flickering candlelight, the normally pink liquid looked like blood. He held the decanter to me, but I shook my head. â€Å"So has young Damon,† Father observed, taking the card deck in his thick fingers and slowly palming it from hand to hand. I sighed, annoyed that Damon had once again come into a conversation about Katherine. â€Å"She needs a friend. Friends,† I said. â€Å"That she does. And I’m glad that you’ve been able to provide her with companionship,† Father said. He placed the cards facedown on the table and glanced at me. â€Å"Y know, I don’t know very much about her ou Atlanta relations. I’d heard of her through one of my shipping partners. Very sad, a girl orphaned by my shipping partners. Very sad, a girl orphaned by Sherman’s battle, but there aren’t very many other Pierces that say they know of her.† I shifted nervously. â€Å"Pierce is a common enough name. And maybe she doesn’t want to be affiliated with some of her relations.† I took a deep breath. â€Å"I’m sure there are other Salvatores out there that we haven’t heard of.† â€Å"There’s a good point,† Father said, taking a sip of his sherry. â€Å"Salvatore isn’t a common name, but it’s a good one. Which is why I hope you and Damon know what you’re getting into.† I looked up sharply. â€Å"Fighting over the same girl,† Father said simply. â€Å"I wouldn’t want you to lose your relationship. I know I don’t always see eye to eye with your brother, but he’s your flesh and blood.† I cringed, the familiar phrase suddenly complicated. But if Father noticed, he didn’t say anything. He picked up the deck and glanced at me expectantly. â€Å"Shall we play?† he asked, already beginning to deal six cards to me. I picked up my stack, but instead of looking at the cards, I glanced out of the corner of my eye, to see if I could spot any movement from the carriage house through the window. Alfred walked into the room. â€Å"Sir, you have a guest.† â€Å"A guest?† Father asked curiously, half standing up from the table. We rarely had guests come to the estate unless there was a party. Father always preferred meeting acquaintances in town or at the tavern. â€Å"Please forgive my intrusion.† Katherine walked in, her thin arms filled with a bouquet of flowers of all different shapes and sizes–roses and hydrangeas and lilies of the valley. â€Å"Emily and I were picking the flowers by the pond, and I thought you might appreciate some color.† Katherine offered a small grin as Father stiffly held out his hand for her to shake. He’d barely had a four-word conversation with Katherine since she’d arrived. I held my breath, as anxious as I would be if I were introducing Father to my betrothed. â€Å"Thank you, Miss Pierce,† Father said. â€Å"And our house is your house. Please don’t feel you need to ask permission to come visit. We’d love to have you, whenever you wish to spend time with us.† â€Å"Thank you. I wouldn’t want to be an imposition,† she said, batting her eyelashes in a way that was irresistible for any man. â€Å"Please, have a seat,† Father said, settling down at the head of the table. â€Å"My son and I were just preparing to play a hand of cards, but we can certainly put them away.† Katherine eyed our game. â€Å"Cribbage! My father and I always used to play. May I join you?† She flashed a smile as she settled into my chair and picked up my hand. Instantly, she frowned and began rearranging the cards. How could she, when worried for her very existence, be so carefree and enchanting? â€Å"Why, of course, Miss Pierce. If you’d like to play, I’d be honored, and I’m sure my son would be happy to help you.† â€Å"Oh, I know how to play.† She set a card in the center of the table. â€Å"Good,† Father said, putting his own card on top of hers. â€Å"And, you know, I do worry about you and your maid, all alone in the carriage house. If you want to move to the main house, please, just let me know and your wish is my command. I thought that you would like some privacy, but with things as they are and all the danger †¦Ã¢â‚¬  Father trailed off. Katherine shook her head, a shadow of a frown crossing her face. â€Å"I’m not frightened. I lived through a lot in Atlanta,† she said, placing an ace on the table faceup. â€Å"Besides, the servants’ quarters are so close, they would hear me if I screamed.† As Father placed a seven of spades on the table, Katherine touched my knee, slowly brushing it with a feathery stroke. I flushed at the intimate contact when my father was so close, but I didn’t want her to stop. Katherine placed a five of diamonds on the card pile. â€Å"Thirteen. I think I may be on a lucky streak, Mr. Salvatore,† she said, moving her peg one spot on the cribbage board. Father broke into a delighted grin. â€Å"Y ou’re quite a girl. Stefan’s never really understood the rules of this game.† The door slammed, and Damon walked into the room, his rucksack over his shoulder. He shrugged it off onto the floor, and Alfred picked it up. Damon didn’t seem to notice. â€Å"Looks like I’m missing all the fun,† Damon said, his tone accusatory as his gaze flicked from Father back to me. â€Å"Y are,† Father said simply. Then he actually ou glanced up and smiled at him. â€Å"Y oung Katherine here is proving that she’s not only beautiful but that she has brains, too. An intoxicatingly infuriating combination,† Father said, noticing that Katherine had racked up an additional point on the board when he wasn’t looking. â€Å"Thank you,† Katherine said, deftly discarding and picking up a new card. â€Å"Y ou’re making me blush. Although I do admit that I think your compliments are just an elaborate plan for distracting me so you can win,† Katherine said, barely bothering to acknowledge Damon. I strode over to Damon. We stood together in the doorway, watching Katherine and Father. Damon crossed his arms over his chest. â€Å"What is she doing here?† â€Å"Playing cards.† I shrugged. â€Å"Do you really think that’s wise?† Damon lowered his voice. â€Å"Given his opinions on her †¦ provenance.† â€Å"But don’t you see? It’s brilliant. She’s charming him. I haven’t heard him laugh so hard since Mother died.† I felt suddenly delirious with happiness. This was better than anything I could have planned. Instead of trying to come up with an elaborate plot to push Father off the vampire trail, Father would simply see that Katherine was human. That she still had emotions and wouldn’t do any harm save for ruining his winning streak at cribbage. â€Å"So what?† Damon asked. â€Å"He’s a madman on the hunt. A few smiles won’t change that.† Katherine erupted into giggles as Father put down a card. I lowered my voice. â€Å"I think if we let him know about her, he’d change his mind. He’d realize that she doesn’t mean any harm.† â€Å"Are you crazy?† Damon hissed, clenching my arm. His breath smelled like whiskey. â€Å"If Father knew about Katherine, he’d kill her in an instant! How do you know he’s not already planning something?† Just then Katherine let out a peal of laughter. Father threw his head back, adding his hoarse laugh to hers. Damon and I fell silent as she glanced up from her cards. She found us with her eyes and winked. But since Damon and I were standing side by side, it was impossible to tell who it was meant for. How to cite Stefan’s Diaries: Origins Chapter 20, Essay examples

Womens Studies free essay sample

Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination From Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 221–238 Black feminist thought demonstrates Black womens emerging power as agents of knowledge. By portraying African-American women as self-defined, self-reliant individuals confronting race, gender, and class oppression, Afrocentric feminist thought speaks to the importance that oppression, Afrocentric feminist thought speaks to the importance that knowledge plays in empowering oppressed people. One distinguishing feature of Black feminist thought is its insistence that both the changed consciousness of individuals and the social transformation of political and economic institutions constitute essential ingredients for social change. New knowledge is important for both dimensions of change. Knowledge is a vitally important part of the social relations of domination and resistance. By objectifying African-American women and recasting our experiences to serve the interests of elite white men, much of the Eurocentric masculinist worldview fosters Black womens subordination. But placing Black womens experiences at the center of analysis offers fresh insights on the prevailing concepts, paradigms, and epistemologies of this worldview and on its feminist and Afrocentric critiques. Viewing the world through a both/and conceptual lens of the simultaneity of race, class, and gender oppression and of the need for a humanist vision of community creates new possibilities for an empowering Afrocentric feminist knowledge. Many Black feminist intellectuals have long thought about the world in this way because this is the way we experience the world. Afrocentric feminist thought offers two significant contributions toward furthering our understanding of the important connections among knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. First, Black feminist thought fosters a fundamental paradigmatic shift in how we think about oppression. By embracing a paradigm of race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression, Black feminist thought reconceptualizes the social relations of domination and resistance. Second, Black feminist thought addresses ongoing epistemological debates in feminist theory and in the sociology of knowledge concerning ways of assessing truth. Offering subordinate groups new knowledge about their own experiences can be empowering. But revealing new ways of knowing that allow subordinate groups to define their own reality has far greater implications. Reconceptualizing Race, Class, and Gender as Interlocking Systems of Oppression What I really feel is radical is trying to make coalitions with people who are different from you, maintains Barbara Smith. I feel it is radical to be dealing with race and sex and class and sexual identity all at one time. I think that is really radical because it has never been done before. Black feminist thought fosters a fundamental paradigmatic shift that rejects additive approaches to oppression. Instead of starting with gender and then adding in other variables such as age, sexual orientation, race, social class, and religion, Bla ck feminist thought sees these distinctive systems of oppression as being part of one overarching structure of domination. Viewing relations of domination for Black women for any given sociohistorical context as being structured via a system of interlocking race, class, and gender oppression expands the focus of analysis from merely describing the similarities and differences distinguishing these systems of oppression and focuses greater attention on how they interconnect. Assuming that each system needs the others in order to function creates a distinct theoretical stance that stimulates the rethinking of basic social science concepts. Afrocentric feminist notions of family reflect this reconceptualization process. Black womens experiences as blood mothers, other mothers, and community other mothers reveal that the mythical norm of a heterosexual, married couple, nuclear family with a nonworking spouse and a husband earning a family wage is far from being natural, universal and preferred but instead is deeply embedded in specific race and class formations. Placing African-American women in the center of analysis not only reveals much-needed information about Black womens experiences but also questions Eurocentric masculinist perspectives on family Black womens experiences and the Afrocentric feminist thought rearticulating them also challenge prevailing definitions of community. Black womens actions in the struggle or group survival suggest a vision of community that stands in opposition to that extant in the dominant culture. The definition of community implicit in the market model sees community as arbitrary and fragile, structured fundamentally by competition and domination. In contrast, Afrocentric models of community stress connections, caring, and personal accountability. As cultural workers African-American women have rejected the generalized ideology of domination advanced by the dominant group in order to conserve Afrocentric conceptualizations of community. Denied access to the podium, Black women have been unable to spend time theorizing about alternative conceptualizations of community. Instead, through daily actions African-American women have created alternative communities that empower. This vision of community sustained by African-American women in conjunction with African-American men addresses the larger issue of reconceptualizing power. The type of Black womens power discussed here does resemble feminist theories of power which emphasize energy and community. However, in contrast to this body of literature whose celebration of womens power is often accompanied by a lack of attention to the importance of power as domination, Black womens experiences as mothers, community other mothers, educators, church leaders, labor union center-women, and community leaders seem to suggest that power as energy can be fostered by creative acts of resistance. The spheres of influence created and sustained by African-American women are not meant solely to provide a respite from oppressive situations or a retreat from their effects. Rather, these Black female spheres of influence constitute potential sanctuaries where individual Black women and men are nurtured in order to confront oppressive social institutions. Power from this perspective is a creative power used for the good of the community, whether that community is conceptualized as ones family, church community, or the next generation of the communitys children. By making the community stronger, African-American women become empowered, and that same community can serve as a source of support when Black women encounter race, gender, and class oppression. . . Approaches that assume that race, gender, and class are interconnected have immediate practical applications. For example, African-American women continue to be inadequately protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The primary purpose of the statute is to eradicate all aspects of discrimination. But judicial treatment of Black womens employment discrimination claims has encouraged Black women to identify race or sex as the so-called primary discrimination. To resolve the inequities that confront Black women, counsels Scarborough, the courts must first correctly conceptualize them as Black women, a distinct class protected by Title VII. Such a shift, from protected categories to protected classes of people whose Title VII claims might be based on more than two discriminations, would work to alter the entire basis of current antidiscrimination efforts. Reconceptualizing phenomena such as the rapid growth of female-headed households in African-American communities would also benefit from a race-, class-, and gender-inclusive analysis. Case studies of Black women heading households must be attentive to racially segmented local labor markets and community patterns, to changes in local political economies specific to a given city or region, and to established racial and gender ideology for a given location. This approach would go far to deconstruct Eurocentric, masculinist analyses that implicitly rely on controlling images of the matriarch or the welfare mother as guiding conceptual premises. . . Black feminist thought that rearticulates experiences such as these fosters an enhanced theoretical understanding of how race, gender, and class oppression are part of a single, historically created system. The Matrix of Domination Additive models of oppression are firmly rooted in the either/or dichotomous thinking of Eurocentric, masculinist thought. One must be either Black or white in such thought systemspersons of ambiguous racial and ethnic identity constantly battle with questions such as what are your, anyway? This emphasis on quantification and categorization occurs in conjunction with the belief that either/or categories must be ranked. The search for certainty of this sort requires that one side of a dichotomy be privileged while its other is denigrated. Privilege becomes defined in relation to its other. Replacing additive models of oppression with interlocking ones creates possibilities for new paradigms. The significance of seeing race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression is that such an approach fosters a paradigmatic shift of thinking inclusively about other oppressions, such as age, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity. Race, class, and gender represent the three systems of oppression that most heavily affect African-American women. But these systems and the economic, political, and ideological conditions that support them may not be the most fundamental oppressions, and they certainly affect many more groups than Black women. Other people of color, Jews, the poor white women, and gays and lesbians have all had similar ideological justifications offered for their subordination. All categories of humans labeled Others have been equated to one another, to animals, and to nature. Placing African-American women and other excluded groups in the center of analysis opens up possibilities for a both/and conceptual stance, one in which all groups possess varying amounts of penalty and privilege in one historically created system. In this system, for example, white women are penalized by their gender but privileged by their race. Depending on the context, an individual may be an oppressor, a member of an oppressed group, or simultaneously oppressor and oppressed. Adhering to a both/and conceptual stance does not mean that race, class, and gender oppression are interchangeable. For example, whereas race, class, and gender oppression operate on the social structural level of institutions, gender oppression seems better able to annex the basic power of the erotic and intrude in personal relationships via family dynamics and within individual consciousness. This may be because racial oppression has fostered historically concrete communities among African-Americans and other racial/ethnic groups. These communities have stimulated cultures of resistance. While these communities segregate Blacks from whites, they simultaneously provide counter-institutional buffers that subordinate groups such as African-Americans use to resist the ideas and institutions of dominant groups. Social class may be similarly structured. Traditionally conceptualized as a relationship of individual employees to their employers, social class might be better viewed as a relationship of communities to capitalist political economies. Moreover, significant overlap exists between racial and social class oppression when viewing them through the collective lens of family and community. Existing community structures provide a primary line of resistance against racial and class oppression. But because gender cross-cuts these structures, it finds fewer comparable institutional bases to foster resistance. Embracing a both/and conceptual stance moves us from additive, separate systems approaches to oppression and toward what I now see as the more fundamental issue of the social relations of domination. Race, class, and gender constitute axes of oppression that characterize Black womens experiences within a more generalized matrix of domination. Other groups may encounter different dimensions of the matrix, such as sexual orientation, religion, and age, but the overarching relationship is one of domination and the types of activism it generates. Bell Hooks labels this matrix a politic of domination and describes how it operates along interlocking axes of race, class, and gender oppression. This politic of domination refers to the ideological ground that they share, which is a belief in domination, and a belief in the notions of superior and inferior, which are components of all of those systems. For me its like a house, they share the foundation, but the foundation is the ideological beliefs around which notions of domination are constructed. Johnella Butler claims that new methodologies growing from this new paradigm would be non-hierarchical and would refuse primacy to either race, class, gender, or ethnicity, demanding instead a recognition of their matrix-like interaction. Race, class, and gender may not be the most fundamental or important systems of oppression, but they have most profoundly affected African-American women. One significant dimension of Black feminist thought is its potential to reveal insights about the social relations of domination organized along other axes such as religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age. Investigating Black womens particular experiences thus promises to reveal much about the more universal process of domination. Multiple Levels of Domination In addition to being structured along axes such as race, gender, and social class, the matrix of domination is structured on several levels. People experience and resist oppression on three levels: the level of personal biography; the group or community level of the cultural context created by race, class, and gender; and the systemic level of social institutions. Black feminist thought emphasizes all three levels as sites of domination and as potential sites of resistance. Each individual has a unique personal biography made up of concrete experiences, values, motivations, and emotions. No two individuals occupy the same social space; thus no two biographies are identical. Human ties can be freeing and empowering, as is the case with Black womens heterosexual love relationships or in the power of motherhood in African-American families and communities. Human ties can also be confining and oppressive. Situations of domestic violence and abuse or cases in which controlling images foster Black womens internalized oppression represent domination on the personal level. The same situation can look quite different depending on the consciousness one brings to interpret it. This level of individual consciousness is a fundamental area where new knowledge can generate change. Traditional accounts assume that power as domination operates from the top down by forcing and controlling unwilling victims to bend to the will of more powerful superiors. But these accounts fail to account for questions concerning why, for example, women stay with abusive men even with ample opportunity to leave or why slaves did not kill their owners more often. The willingness of the victim to collude in her or his own victimization becomes lost. They also fail to account for sustained resistance by victims, even when chances for victory appear remote. By emphasizing the power of self-definition and the necessity of a free mind, Black feminist thought speaks to the importance African-American women thinkers place on consciousness as a sphere of freedom. Black women intellectuals realize that domination operates not only by structuring power from the top down but by simultaneously annexing the power as energy of those on the bottom for its own ends. In their efforts to rearticulate the standpoint of African-American women as a group, Black feminist thinkers offer individual African-American women the conceptual tools to resist oppression. The cultural context formed by those experiences and ideas that are shared with other members of a group or community which give meaning to individual biographies constitutes a second level at which domination is experienced and resisted. Each individual biography is rooted in several overlapping cultural contextsfor example, groups defined by race, social class, age, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. The cultural component contributes, among other things, the concepts used in thinking and acting, group validation of an individuals interpretation of concepts, the thought models used in the acquisition of knowledge, and standards used to evaluate individual thought and behavior. The most cohesive cultural contexts are those with identifiable histories, geographic locations, and social institutions. For Black women African-American communities have provided the location for an Afrocentric group perspective to endure. Subjugated knowledges, such as a Black womens culture of resistance, develop in cultural contexts controlled by oppressed groups. Dominant groups aim to replace subjugated knowledge with their own specialized thought because they realize that gaining control over this dimension of subordinate groups lives simplifies control. While efforts to nfluence this dimension of an oppressed groups experiences can be partially successful, this level is more difficult to control than dominant groups would have us believe. For example, adhering to externally derived standards of beauty leads many African-American women to dislike their skin color or hair texture. Similarly, internalizing Eurocentric gender ideology leads some Black men to abuse Black women. These are cases of the successful infusion of the dominant groups specialized thought into the everyday cultural context of African-Americans. But the long-standing existence of a Black womens culture of resistance as expressed through Black womens relationships with one another, the Black womens blues tradition, and the voices of contemporary African-American women writers all attest to the difficulty of eliminating the cultural context as a fundamental site of resistance. Domination is also experienced and resisted on the third level of social institutions controlled by the dominant group: namely, schools, churches, the media, and other formal organizations. These institutions expose individuals to the specialized thought representing the dominant groups standpoint and interests. While such institutions offer the promise of both literacy and other skills that can be used for individual empowerment and social transformation, they simultaneously require docility and passivity. Such institutions would have us believe that the theorizing of elites constitutes the whole of theory. The existence of African-American women thinkers such as Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, and Fannie Lou Hamer who, though excluded from and/or marginalized within such institutions, continued to produce theory effectively opposes this hegemonic view. Moreover, the more recent resurgence of Black feminist thought within these institutions, the case of the outpouring of contemporary Black feminist thought in history and literature, directly challenges the Eurocentric masculinist thought pervading these institutions. Resisting the Matrix of Domination Domination operates by seducing, pressuring, or forcing African-American women and members of subordinated groups to replace individual and cultural ways of knowing with the dominant groups specialized thought. As a result, suggests Audre Lorde, the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us. Or as Toni Cade Bambara succinctly states, revolution begins with the self, in the self. Lorde and Bambaras suppositions raise an important issue for Black feminist intellectuals and for all scholars and activists working for social change. Although most individuals have little difficulty identifying their own victimization within some major system of oppressionwhether it be by race, social class, religion, physical ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age or genderthey typically fail to see how their thoughts and actions uphold someone elses subordination. Thus white feminists routinely point with confidence to their oppression as women but resist seeing how much their white skin privileges them. African-Americans who possess eloquent analyses of racism often persist in viewing poor white women as symbols of white power. The radical left fares little better. If only people of color and women could see their true class interests, they argue, class solidarity would eliminate racism and sexism. In essence, each group identifies the oppression with which it feels most comfortable as being fundamental and classifies all others as being of lesser importance. Oppression is filled with such contradictions because these approaches fail to recognize that a matrix of domination contains few pure victims or oppressors. Each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression which frame everyones lives. A broader focus stresses the interlocking nature of oppressions that are structured on multiple levels, from the individual to the social structural, and which are part of a larger matrix of domination. Adhering to this inclusive model provides the conceptual space needed for each individual to see that she or he is both a member of multiple dominant groups and a member of multiple subordinate groups. Shifting the analysis to investigating how the matrix of domination is structured along certain axesrace, gender, and class being the axes of investigation for AfricanAmerican womenreveals that different systems of oppression may rely in varying degrees on systemic versus interpersonal mechanisms of domination. Empowerment involves rejecting the dimensions of knowledge, whether personal, cultural, or institutional, that perpetuate objectification and dehumanization. African-American women and other individuals in subordinate groups become empowered when we understand and use those dimensions of our individual, group, and disciplinary ways of knowing that foster our humanity as fully human subjects. This is the case when Black women value our self-definitions, participate in a Black womens activist tradition, invoke an Afrocentric feminist epistemology as central to our worldview, and view the skills gained in schools as part of a focused education for Black community development. C. Wright Mills identifies this holistic epistemology as the sociological imagination and identifies its task and its promise as a way of knowing that enables individuals to grasp the relations between history and biography within society. Using ones standpoint to engage the sociological imagination can empower the individual. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me, Audre Lorde maintains, only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition. Black Women as Agents of Knowledge Living life as an African-American woman is a necessary prerequisite for producing Black feminist thought because within Black womens communities thought is validated and produced with reference to a particular set of historical, material, and epistemological conditions. African-American women who adhere to the idea that claims about Black women must be substantiated by Black womens sense of our own experiences and who anchor our knowledge claims in an Afrocentric feminist epistemology have produced a rich tradition of Black feminist thought. Traditionally such women were blues singers, poets, autobiographers, storytellers, and orators validated by everyday Black women as experts on a Black womens standpoint. Only a few unusual African-American feminist scholars have been able to defy Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies and explicitly embrace an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Consider Alice Walkers description of Zora Neal Hurston: In my mind, Zora Neale Hurston, Billie Holiday, and Bessie Smith form a sort of unholy trinity. Zora belongs in the tradition of black women singers, rather than among the literati. . . . Like Billie and Jessie she followed her own road, believed in her own gods pursued her own dreams, and refused to separate herself from common people. Zora Neal Hurston is an exception for prior to 1950, few African-American women earned advanced degrees and most of those who did complied with Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies. Although these women worked on behalf of Black women, they did so within the confines of pervasive race and gender oppression. Black women scholars were in a position to see the exclusion of African-American women from scholarly discourse, and the thematic content of their work often reflected their interest in examining a Black womens standpoint. However, their tenuous status in academic institutions led them to adhere to Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies so that their work would be accepted as scholarly. As a result, while they produced Black feminist thought, those African-American women most likely to gain academic credentials were often least likely to produce Black feminist thought that used an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. An ongoing tension exists for Black women as agents of knowledge, a tension rooted in the sometimes conflicting demands of Afrocentricity and feminism. Those Black women who are feminists are critical of how Black culture and many of its traditions oppress women. For example, the strong pronatal beliefs in African-American communities that foster early motherhood among adolescent girls, the lack of self-actualization that can accompany the double-day of paid employment and work in the home, and the emotional and physical abuse that many Black women experience from their fathers, lovers, and husbands all reflect practices opposed by African-American women who are feminists. But these same women may have a parallel desire as members of an oppressed racial group to affirm the value of that same culture and traditions. Thus strong Black mothers appear in Black womens literature, Black womens economic contributions to families is lauded, and a curious silence exists concerning domestic abuse. As more African-American women earn advanced degrees, the range of Black feminist scholarship is expanding. Increasing numbers of African-American women scholars are explicitly choosing to ground their work in Black womens experiences, and, by doing so, they implicitly adhere to an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Rather than being restrained by their both/and status of marginality, these women make creative use of their outsider-within status and produce innovative Afrocentric feminist thought. The difficulties these women face lie less in demonstrating that they have mastered white male epistemologies than in resisting the hegemonic nature of these patterns of thought in order to see, value, and use existing alternative Afrocentric feminist ways of knowing. In establishing the legitimacy of their knowledge claims, Black women scholars who want to develop Afrocentric feminist thought may encounter the often conflicting standards of three key groups. First, Black feminist thought must be validated by ordinary Atrican-American women who, in the words of Hannah Nelson, grow to womanhood in a world where the saner you are, the madder you are made to appear. To be credible in the eyes of this group, scholars must be personal advocates for their material, be accountable for the consequences of their work, have lived or experienced their material in some fashion, and be willing to engage in dialogues about their findings with ordinary, everyday people. Second, Black feminist thought also must be accepted by the community of Black women scholars. These scholars place varying amounts of importance on rearticulating a Black womens standpoint using an Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Third, Afrocentric feminist thought within academia must be prepared to confront Eurocentric masculinist political and epistemological requirements. The dilemma facing Black women scholars engaged in creating Black feminist thought is that a knowledge claim that meets the criteria of adequacy for one group and thus is judged to be an acceptable knowledge claim may not be translatable into the terms of a different group. Using the example of Black English, June Jordan illustrates the difficulty of moving among epistemologies: You cannot translate instances of Standard English preoccupied with abstraction or with nothing/nobody evidently alive into Black English. That would warp the language into uses antithetical to the guiding perspective of its community of users. Rather you must first change those Standard English sentences, themselves, into ideas consistent with the person-centered assumptions of Black English. Although both worldviews share a common vocabulary, the ideas themselves defy direct translation. For Black women who are agents of knowledge, the marginality that accompanies outsider-within status can be the source of both frustration and creativity. In an attempt to minimize the differences between the cultural context of African-American communities and the expectations of social institutions, some women dichotomize their behavior and become two different people. Over time, the strain of doing this can be enormous. Others reject their cultural context and work against their own best interests by enforcing the dominant groups specialized thought. Still others manage to inhabit both contexts but do so critically, using their outsider-within perspectives as a source of insights and ideas. But while outsiders within can make substantial personal cost. Eventually it comes to you, observes Lorraine Hansberry, the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely. Once Black feminist scholars face the notion that, on certain dimensions of a Black womens standpoint, it may be fruitless to try and translate ideas from an Afrocentric feminist epistemology into a Eurocentric masculinist framework, then other choices emerge. Rather than trying to uncover universal knowledge claims that can withstand the translation from one epistemology to another (initially, at least), Black women intellectuals might find efforts to rearticulate a Black womens standpoi nt especially fruitful. Rearticulating a Black womens standpoint refashions the concrete and reveals the more universal human dimensions of Black womens everyday lives. I date all my work, notes Nikki Giovanni, because I think poetry, or any writing, is but a reflection of the moment. The universal comes from the particular. Bell Hooks maintains, my goal as a feminist thinker and theorist is to take that abstraction and articulate it in a language that renders it accessiblenot less complex or rigorousbut simply more accessible. The complexity exists; interpreting it remains the unfulfilled challenge for Black women intellectuals. Situated Knowledge, Subjugated Knowledge, and Partial Perspectives My life seems to be an increasing revelation of the intimate trace of universal struggle, claims June Jordan: You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next you open your eyes to what you call your people and that leads you into land reform into Black English into Angola leads you back to your own bed where you lie by yourself; wondering if you deserve to be peaceful, or trusted or desired or left to the freedom of your own unfaltering heart. And the scale shrinks to the use of a skull: your own interior cage. Lorraine Hansberry expresses a similar idea: I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from the truthful identity of what is. Jordan and Hansberrys insights that universal struggle and truth may wear a particularistic, intimate face suggest a new epistemological stance concerning how we negotiate competing knowledge claims and identify truth. The context in which African-American womens ideas are nurtured or suppressed matters. Understanding the content and epistemology of Black womens ideas as specialized knowledge requires attending to the context from which those ideas emerge. While produced by individuals, Black feminist thought as situated knowledge is embedded in the communities in which African-American women find ourselves. A Black womens standpoint and those of other oppressed groups is not only embedded in a context but exists in a situation characterized by domination. Because Black womens ideas have been suppressed, this suppression has stimulated African-American women to create knowledge that empowers people to resist domination. Thus Afrocentric feminist thought represents a subjugated knowledge. A Black womens standpoint may provide a preferred stance from which to view the matrix of domination because, in principle, Black feminist thought as specialized thought is less likely than the specialized knowledge produced by dominant groups to deny the connection between ideas and the vested interests of their creators. However, Black feminist thought as subjugated knowledge is not exempt from critical analysis, because subjugation is not grounds for an epistemology. Despite African-American womens potential power to reveal new insights about the matrix of domination, a Black womens standpoint is only one angle of vision. Thus Black feminist thought represents a partial perspective. The overarching matrix of domination houses multiple groups, each with varying experiences with penalty and privilege that produce corresponding partial perspectives, situated knowledges, and, for clearly identifiable subordinate groups, subjugated knowledges. No one group has a clear angle of vision. No one group possesses the theory or methodology that allows it to discover the absolute truth or, worse yet, proclaim its theories and methodologies as the universal norm evaluating other groups experiences. Given that groups are unequal in power in making themselves heard, dominant groups have a vested interest in suppressing the knowledge produced by subordinate groups. Given the existence of multiple and competing knowledge claims to truth produced by groups with partial perspectives, what epistemological approach offers the most promise? Dialogue and Empathy Western social and political thought contains two alternative approaches to ascertaining truth. The first, reflected in positivist science, has long claimed that absolute truths exist and that the task of scholarship is to develop objective, unbiased tools of science to measure these truths. . . . Relativism, the second approach, has been forwarded as the antithesis of and inevitable outcome of rejecting a positivist science. From a relativist perspective all groups produce specialized thought and each groups thought is equally valid. No group can claim to have a better interpretation of the truth than another. In a sense, relativism represents the opposite of scientific ideologies of objectivity. As epistemological stances, both positivist science and relativism minimize the importance of specific location in influencing a groups knowledge claims, the power inequities among groups that produce subjugated knowledges, and the strengths and limitations of partial perspective. The existence of Black feminist thought suggests another alternative to the ostensibly objective norms of science and to relativisms claims that groups with competing knowledge claims are equal. . . This approach to Afrocentric feminist thought allows African-American women to bring a Black womens standpoint to larger epistemological dialogues concerning the nature of the matrix of domination. Eventually such dialogues may get us to a point at which, claims Elsa Barkley Brown, all people can learn to center in another experience, validate it, and judge it by its own standards without need of comparison or need to adopt t hat framework as their own. In such dialogues, one has no need to decenter anyone in order to center someone else; one has only to constantly, appropriately, pivot the center. Those ideas that are validated as true by African-American women, African-American men, Latina lesbians, Asian-American women, Puerto Rican men, and other groups with distinctive standpoints, with each group using the epistemological approaches growing from its unique standpoint, thus become the most objective truths. Each group speaks from its own standpoint and shares its own partial, situated knowledge. But because each group perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished. Each group becomes better able to consider other groups standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of its own standpoint or suppressing other groups partial perspectives. What is always needed in the appreciation of art, or life, maintains Alice Walker, is the larger perspective. Connections made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the straining to encompass in ones glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying theme through immense diversity. Partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard; individuals and groups forwarding knowledge claims without owning their position are deemed less credible than those who do. Dialogue is critical to the success of this epistemological approach, the type of dialogue long extant in the Afrocentric call-and-response tradition whereby power dynamics are fluid, everyone has a voice, but everyone must listen and res pond to other voices in order to be allowed to remain in the community. Sharing a common cause fosters dialogue and encourages groups to transcend their differences. . . . African-American women have been victimized by race, gender, and class oppression. But portraying Black women solely as passive, unfortunate recipients of racial and sexual abuse stifles notions that Black women can actively work to change our circumstances and bring about changes in our lives. Similarly, presenting African-American women solely as heroic figures who easily engage in resisting oppression on all fronts minimizes the very real costs of oppression and can foster the perception that Black women need no help because we can take it. Black feminist thoughts emphasis on the ongoing interplay between Black womens oppression and Black womens activism presents the matrix of domination as responsive to human agency. Such thought views the world as a dynamic place where the goal is not merely to survive or to fit in or to cope; rather, it becomes a place where we feel ownership and accountability. The existence of Afrocentric feminist thought suggests that there is always choice, and power to act, no matter how bleak the situation may appear to be. Viewing the world as one in the making raises the issue of individual responsibility for bringing about change. It also shows that while individual empowerment is key, only collective action can effectively generate lasting social transformation of political and economic institutions.