Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference Summary and Analysis

Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference was presented at the Copeland Coloquium at Amherst College in April 1980. Audre Lorde begins the essay by restating some themes common in her works: that America is a society based around profit rather than human need; that, in this society, the oppressed person is expected to explain him or herself to the oppressor; that the refusal to recognize difference, rather than difference itself, is what separates people. These ideas are unified in this essay. Lorde writes that in a profit-based society, outsiders are like "surplus people" (p. 115). Because of this, differences are considered best either ignored, copied if deemed useful, or, if useless, destroyed. Differences are misnamed because of fear, often in a pattern of false opposition (good/bad...