Abstract
The Grind by Alexis McCurn is the compilation of 2 years of ethnographic research highlighting the lived experiences of poor black women living in East Oakland, CA. Through field observations, as well as formal and informal interviews, McCurn carefully examines the firsthand accounts of 75 women and their daily efforts to negotiate their survival in a neighborhood where their race, gender, and class make them both hypervisible and invisible. At the heart of this dichotomy is what McCurn calls “the grind,” which is the exhausting task of using physical and emotional labor to navigate daily life in formal and informal economies. By exploring the collective and intersectional experiences of poor black women, McCurn emphasizes the need for a more informed understanding of the complexities that affect the lives of individuals with intersecting marginalized identities who reside in distressed neighborhoods. McCurn also advocates for the development of specialized approaches that promote social and economic development opportunities to empower residents and uplift the community.
The Grind begins with the story of Mecca, a black woman in her early 20s who is the mother of two small children. Unable to afford a home of her own, Mecca and her children share an apartment with her mother. Like many other black women in East Oakland, Mecca works to navigate the systemic structure of social and economic oppression in her neighborhood daily and must also traverse varying degrees of social and emotional injury. For example, Mecca experiences profiling while grocery shopping and is followed while perusing the aisles. She is later treated with disrespect at the cashier’s station while trying to make a purchase. When Mecca tries to protest the unfair treatment, she is further degraded and her efforts to be heard are unsuccessful. Defeated, Mecca leaves the store without groceries. Using the stories of women like Mecca, McCurn introduces a key concept called “microintentional assaults” that is experienced by poor black women, particularly in neighborhoods like East Oakland.
Alexis McCurn defines “microintentional assaults” as public encounters that inflict social and psychological injuries through repeated instances of degradation and humiliation. These encounters serve to attack one’s group identities and to reinforce social, economic, and gender-based power dynamics. These assaults can be hostile or subtle and can manifest as hypersurveillance in business establishments or as threats of sexual violence in street-based encounters. At their root, these acts are based upon stereotypical assumptions and biases against marginalized groups, and they often occur at the intersection of one’s various marginalized identities. McCurn also notes the ways in which these assaults, when perpetrated by black men against black women, reinforce disempowering patriarchal ideals that are also disseminated by wider society. By focusing on the intersectional nature of microintentional assaults toward poor black women, McCurn emphasizes the importance of including women in discussions on racism, anti-blackness, and gender-based violence.
All in all, The Grind is an exploration of struggle and survival that provides a critical examination of the ways in which biographical racism, racialized poverty, and gendered inequality have perpetuated cycles of discrimination and other forms of social and emotional injury that have largely been overlooked and unaddressed. In The Grind, Alexis McCurn lays bare the true cost of poor black women’s reliance on survival-based strategies to contradict and resist the negative and harmful assumptions that further complicate their daily lives. McCurn addresses the negative stereotypes often attributed to poor black women and also makes visible the often invisible struggles they face. Additionally, when poor black women endanger themselves by relying on underground and illegal networks to meet their economic needs in the absence of economic capital, the implications go far beyond their arrest or conviction. Without opportunities for upward mobility, poverty remains intergenerational. Furthermore, the physical and emotional stress of maintaining “the grind” aggravates already disparate community health outcomes, which are consequences of poverty as well as marginalization in black communities. To address these issues, we must not simply advocate but also invest in initiatives that lead to the development of key social determinants of health.
