"And it reeked of white male privilege"

    The title of my post is a line from Kristina Gray's, I Sold My Soul to Rock and Roll, and it highlights a theme that I think is constant throughout many of the readings we do. I saw it in Ladies Only and Bring Us Back into the Dance as well. The theme is the idea that certain parts of society are systematically put aside for privileged people, driven by "social law" and stigmatization.
    How does this work exactly? Well, it works by having certain actions and roles labeled to be representative of certain people. Gray talked about how she was constantly surrounded by "white" music as she grew up, like the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun album. She was completely unable to relate to these artists, but still found comfort and excitement in their music. However, Gray had to confine herself to her room to enjoy the music, because she feared that to be open about her desires would put her social standing in extreme jeopardy. This is what I am talking about when I say that certain parts of society are systematically put aside for the privileged. This music was labeled as a privileged group of people's music, and for that reason, Gray was not socially allowed to take part in it. Of course there were no laws saying she couldn't do this, but in some ways social law is as powerful, if not far more powerful than judicial law.
    These associations between actions and certain groups of people are heavily ingrained in our societies, but Horn-Miller's piece about the War Dance offered an example of when those associations can be breached and corrected. Men listened to women in a civil and understanding way, and saw why it was that they wanted to participate in the War Dance. That said, the perspective of the older members of the community concerning anti-westernization was a new perspective for me. I was so caught up in the sexist aspect of not allowing the women to dance that I didn't realize that to breach this may be crime of identity theft unto their society. So, while I fully am in favor of the women being able to participate in the dance, I can at least see where the opposed parties are coming from.
    Both of these pieces served to show differing outcomes for this kind of situation, one in which the oppressors passively reject inclusion of the oppressed (Rock and Roll) and one in which the oppressors listen to reason and change their ways to accommodate the oppressed (War Dance). It is the latter that must be applied to our society and indeed to every society, as change is very much dependent on the oppressed seeing the error of their ways and changing themselves accordingly.