Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class in Jane Addams’s Political Friendships

Abstract

Abstract Jane Addams insisted that “propinquity” to the poor and oppressed—meaning living and working with them to address their needs—inform the goals and ethics of pragmatist political friendships she developed with immigrant groups around Chicago’s Hull House (1895). The importance she attributed to propinquity to the poor points to cross-class relations as the framework that underlies her diverse political friendships, which also crossed lines of race, ethnicity, and gender. However, propinquity to the poor is not always visible in Addams’s political friendships—not in her political friendships with either African American leaders and organizations or activists in the women’s international peace movement. Were cross-class relations and propinquity to the poor less important in friendships where race or gender was more visible? Or, were they not as important generally as Addams thought? To consider these questions, this chapter compares Addams’s political friendships with immigrants at Hull House, with African American leaders and organizations, and with women peace activists, asking in each case about the extent to which collaborations included communities of poor people. The comparison illuminates different ways in which class hierarchy intersects and overlaps with hierarchies of ethnicity, race, and gender in different contexts. In addition, it suggests why weaving ties with the poor into political friendships with a largely racial, ethnic, or gender base remains important, and how such ties can be developed and maintained when propinquity to the poor does not seem possible.