The Grind: Black Women and Survival in the Inner City

Abstract

The Grind by Alexis S. McCurn is an account of the inventive survival strategies utilized by black women in East Oakland, California to navigate daily microinteractional assaults (MIAs) in the context of gendered and racialized poverty. Although McCurn’s research focuses on face-to-face microaggressions, her work also provides an analysis of the structural forces that shape the daily encounters that occur within impoverished urban communities. McCurn systematically examines how women raised in a neighborhood shaped by poverty and violence negotiate hostile exchanges that occur in local businesses and on the streets. These interactional exchanges are shaped by socially structured raced and gendered power dynamics that are often accompanied by the threat of sexual violence. As a result, black women in East Oakland engage in what they call the grind, an array of physical and emotional labor necessary to negotiate daily life in inner-city urban America. Ultimately, grinding refers to the never-ending slog of managing daily life within the context of institutional racism, sexism, and poverty.