Curry's article is an excellent choice to set the tone for following conversations in the book. It goes directly to points of contention between race and gender issues, and exposes shortcomings associated with fragmented solutions to problems that are really quite pervasive. In continuing Curry's discussion, Bernita Berry offers some empirical comfirmation for many of her insights. Extraporlating from her teaching experiences of one class being predominately black and the other being predominately white, Berry confirmed Curry's position on privilege and she went on to add that an identification with the plight of the racially oppressed provides a contentment for the guilt that attends the privilege of white women. Linda Bell offers something of a rejoinder to Curry by noting that the temptation to sucumb to privilege is as luring for white females as it is for non-white males.
Race is merely one mode of privilege.
The situation with class is no different. In a sense, according to Bell, privilege may make one destined to a permanent condition of privilege. That is, even the act to give up privilege validates that one is in possession of it. Consequently, abandoning privilege is always proforma. Part of what the shift reveals is that the clarity achieved in defining problems asociated with the politics and sociology of race, is lost in the abstractions of ontology and metaphysics.