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ethnic marginalisation. Racism, as Katie Canon tells us, is applied
by those “who possess power to define rights, duties, and liberties;
to legitimize ideologies…assign myths to various members of
human families, which in turn, invariably divide human ontology
between persons and non-persons.” Racism, like gender does not
distribute power equally between people of different colors, ethnic
groups, nations, regions and religions. Class discrimination is when
power in the society is not distributed equally on the basis of
material (and sometimes birth/nobility) ownership. The society and
nations are thus divided into what is known as low, middle and high
class or first, second and third world. Age is also socially used to
empower or disempower people. In some societies elderly people
are given power, while young people are denied leadership, decision
making and property ownership. In other societies, young
people or youthfulness is highly honored while age can legitimize
social discrimination.
These social factors highlight the complexity of our social identity
as human beings. Ideologies of gender, class, age, and race
converge in our lives to either empower or disempower us—to
allow us to speak and be heard or not heard; to enable us to either
make decisions and carry them out or fail to do so. This also
means that we are never quite powerless or always powerful in all
circumstances. Rather certain categories of our identity may give
us power in some places and circumstances, while others
disempower us (Tolbert 1995:305-317). Some people, however,
have many categories of social empowerment on their side, while
others have more disempowering categories in their identity. For
example, a woman who is from a high class, white race and respected
nation is much better than a woman who is from a low
class, despised ethnic group and color.
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How then is gender visible in the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar,
Ishmael and Isaac? How does gender work with other social categories
of oppression, such as racism?
In this story, we meet Sarah, who is identified with her gender role
as the wife of Abraham. She is agitated by her incapacity to fulfill
one of her major gender roles—namely mothering. She thus