Reflections

on

the Outsider Within

Patricia Hill Collins

University of Cincinnati

It has been some time now since I wrote &dquo;Learning From the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist
Thought.&dquo; That article emerged from my need to find appropriate language that analyzed my own personal alienation in school and workplace settings. Nothing in the literature that I consulted in the 1980s
really fit. Talk of insiders, outsiders, and marginal men came close,
but something was missing. Eventually, I chose the term outsider
within because it seemed to be an apt description of individuals like
myself who found ourselves caught between groups of unequal power.
Whether the differences in power stemmed from hierarchies of race,
or class, or gender, or, in my case, the interaction among the three,
the social location of being on the edge mattered. Over time, what
began initially as a personal search to come to terms with my own
indiuidual experiences of disempowerment within intersecting power
relations of race, gender, and social class led me to wonder whether
African American women as a group occupied a comparable collective
social location.
Much has happened since I drafted my initial arguments. On the
one hand, I have been astounded by how much the idea of the outsider within has been so well-received in areas seemingly far removed
from African American women. Thats the good news. However, on
the other hand, I now see two important challenges that currently
affect this constructs continued usefulness.
The first challenge concerns the changing meanings of the term
outsider within itself. My initial use of the term described how a social groups placement in specific, historical context of race, gender,
and class inequality might influence its point of view on the world. In
Address correspondence to Patricia Hill Collins, African American Studies, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0370.
Journal of Career Development, Vol. 26(l),

Fall 1999

85

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often redefine the term outsider within as a

on individual identity can
redirect attention away from the social hierarchies of race, class, and
gender that create outsider-within social locations in the first place.
In a climate where competitive individualism runs rampant, and
where the personal confessional parades across American television
screens via an endless stream crying women on talk shows, reducing
outsider-within relationships to questions of individual identity reso-

contrast,

current

uses

personal identity category. This emphasis

nates with

distinctly American beliefs that all social problems can be

solved by working on oneself. Taking this decontextualization of the
term outsider within to its logical conclusion means that everyone can
now claim &dquo;outsider within&dquo; identity. In this situation where universalization begets trivialization, we can now all become equals.
One way that I have aimed to address this particular challenge has
been to stress the connections among specific group histories, the diverse experiences that individuals encounter within those groups,
and any subsequent knowledge that emerges in defense of the groups
search for justice (Collins, 1998). I now use the term outsider-within
to describe social locations or border spaces occupied by groups of unequal power. Individuals claim identities as &dquo;outsiders within&dquo; by
their placement in these social locations. Thus, outsider-within identities are situational identities that are attached to specific histories
of social injustice-they are not a decontextualized identity category
divorced from historical social inequalities that can be assumed by
anyone at will. What I aim to do with this shift is refocus attention
back on the unequal power relations of race, class, and gender that
produce social locations characterized by injustice. While questions of
how individuals experience social inequality is an important topic for
investigation, it is important not to lose sight of the social structures
that generate these locations.
Refocusing attention on the power relations that create outsiderwithin locations reveals several troublesome themes. For one theme,
people in outsider-within locations do not all arrive there via the
same mechanisms. African American women, Asian Indian women,
Japanese American women, and White American women may all be
considered &dquo;outsiders within&dquo; in a given corporation, but quite different group histories got them there. When looking at &dquo;outsiders
within&dquo; whose status derives from cross-cutting systems of power,
some &dquo;outsiders within&dquo; are clearly better off than others. Hierarchy
easily reestablishes itself within a category that itself had oppositional intent on its inception. Theoretically at least, all &dquo;minorities&dquo; or

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college classrooms or corporate boardoutsider-within

locations.
However, not all &dquo;minorities&dquo;
occupy
traveled the same path en route to these new rooms, nor are &dquo;people
of color&dquo; interchangeable when they get there.
My efforts to examine outsider-within power relations reveals a
troubling pattern in how many individuals use the construct of outsider within in everyday conversation. Many assume an equivalency
of oppression, where claiming the identity of an &dquo;outsider within&dquo; and
invoking its initial oppositional intent becomes a shortcut through all

&dquo;people

of color&dquo; who arrive in

rooms

of the difficulties of building coalitions under such adverse conditions.

It has been an amazing thing to observe-the very category that I
created to name and thereby empower African American women can
now be used to erase the specificity of U.S. Black womens experiences. These changing meanings also install a new theoretical category that gives the illusion of inclusion, yet allows old-fashioned
power relations to reorganize themselves within the space of &dquo;outsider within&dquo; identity.
A second important challenge confronting the continued usefulness
of the outsider within construct is how these changing meanings of
the term work with current marketplace ideologies. It should come as
no surprise that, for all sorts of reasons, people who find themselves
in outsider-within locations do not necessarily produce knowledge
dedicated to fostering social justice. This is because people in outsider-within locations have varying ways of claiming &dquo;outsider
within&dquo; identities. In my writings on U.S. Black womens collective,
historical use of domestic service as an outsider-within location, I explore the progressive possibilities of outsider-within locations. The existence of a collective wisdom shared by African American women
workers, however, does not negate the heterogeneous responses by
individual U.S. Black women who found themselves doing domestic
work. Within the group, many individual responses emerged.
Given this individual variability, it becomes especially important to
stress the collective nature of outsider-within positionality, especially
in our times when marketplace ideologies have become so prominent.
Marketplace ideologies increasingly affect all aspects of life, including
actual people and ideas about people in outsider-within locations.
Outsider-within locations themselves expand and shrink not just in
relation to political advocacy by African American women and other
similarly disadvantaged groups, but in response to perceived marketplace needs. Within this context, people who claim &dquo;outsider
within&dquo; identities can become hot commodities in social institutions

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that want the illusion of difference without the difficult effort needed
to change actual power relations. Sadly, far too often organizations
opt for cosmetic change where retrofitting and marketing handpicked individuals as authentic &dquo;outsiders within&dquo; substitutes for substantive, organizational change. In these settings, it does not matter
which &dquo;outsider within&dquo; you get. What matters is that someone convincingly play the part.
These two challenges-the changing meanings of the term outsider
within coupled with the demands of marketplace ideologies-generate new opportunities and constraints for African American women
and others who now desegregate schools and workplaces. On the one
hand, the commodification of outsider-within status whereby African
American womens value to an organization lies solely in their ability
to market a seemingly permanent marginal status can operate to suppress Black womens empowerment. Permanently claiming an &dquo;outsider within&dquo; identity rarely results in real power because the category, by definition, requires marginality. On the other hand, using the
insights gained via outsider-within status can be a stimulus to creativity that helps both African American women and their new organizational homes. Organizations should aim to eliminate outsiderwithin locations, not by excluding the individual Black women who
raise hard questions, but by including them in new ways. More importantly, for those African American women who have gained access
to places denied their mothers, new ways of inclusion, outsider-within
and otherwise, provide new opportunities for fostering social justice.

Reference
Collins, P. H. (1998). Fighting words: Black women and the search for justice. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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