Reading Miller’s piece, the distinction she made between the two types of inequality was something I hadn’t thought about before. Temporary inequality as she called it is something that to me seems like you can grow out of – you eventually graduate from school and no longer have teachers telling you what to do, you get older and either have kids of your own and assume the role of parent or you just reach the age where you are no longer subject to your parents’ every wish, etc. As Miller aptly names it, this inequality is temporary. However, the true problem Miller states is in permanent inequality where “your birth defines you” (224). While with temporary inequality the goal is to eventually end the inequality between the two parties, the opposite is true for permanent inequality.
The thinking of the dominant group in permanent inequality that Miller describes reminded me of our class discussion about groupthink. The tendency in groupthink is to label the other group as weak or stupid or evil, and dominant groups do the same thing. That is apparent in the examples Miller gives on 225 when she discusses the commonly held perceptions of black people being less intelligent or women being ruled by emotion. The dominant group in each of those cases label the subordinate groups as bad or in some way inferior as a method of preserving their power. This paper begs the question of how the subordinate group can defy the dominant group and change those expectations and perceptions.
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