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