P.2

COFFEE HOUSES (cont. from p.1)

These are the descriptions of the roles which Summer of Support is asking women to fulfill. The roles are traditional, passive and, in the case of the latter, degrading. They come out of the chauvinist movement which, if allowed, apparently would not be ashamed to have its counterpart to Johnson's fleet of sexual conscripts for the Saigon and American troops in Vietnam.
That the movement is chauvinist, that it is oblivious to the oppressive roles it forces on women, and that it is so unabashed as to list women as a commodity in its literature is not all that new in the movement. The question at (cont. on p. 8)

by Kathy Kearny
Working class women on the Northwest side of Chicago were the subject of a recent Daily New's article. They were mothers involved in the anti-busing movement, and their remarks quoted in the article revealed the way their status as women had influenced and formed their racism.
The women discussed how they believed most of their tax money was being misused to support A. D. C, mothers . "I hear those women have a different guy every night and we pay for it."' one snapped. ''Yeah, " another sighed and added with a giggle, "while we sit home."
While this illustrates misinformation of tax expenditures and the welfare system, it also reveals the results of exploitation and the second class role of women in this society.
White America is imbued with racist, supremacist attitudes; white people are both beneficiaries and victims of their racism. To be white in America means that one benefits from better schools, enjoys the fruits of job discrimination against other races, and has the psychological advantage of thinking oneself superior. As a victimizing process, racism, reflects the need for one exploited group to feel superior- the most efficient means of maintaining a ''divided house" and a secure domain for the ruling class. Recent history provides adequate examples of how white workers lost their battles because their racism was stronger or more valuable to them than was their workers' movement.
And the racism of these white working class women is characterized not only by their class attitudes, but also by the additional oppression of their sex, as illustrated in the article.
Their backgrounds showed a clear picture of the society's exploitation of them as women (i. e. , they quit school to marry, worked at poorly-paying jobs to pay for their homes, etc.). Their own opinions of their lives? They describe them as dull, drab, nothing but work.