As we have learned throughout the course, intersectionality affects our experiences within our social category. Intersectionality can either give us privilege or reduce privilege depending on which categories we fall into. Each individual’s personal experience in a situation will differ due to intersectionality. In Heather Kuttai’s “Maternity Rolls”, we see how her experience with disability is shaped by her gender, and vice-versa.…
The American professor and critical theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the word intersectionality as a term to use for many types of discrimination. She offered a definition to gender oppression, inequality in work places and society in the lives of black women; particularly in the US, a defined word that many can identify and relate to in the world today. To explain how she defined such multi categorized pattern of bias activity she used the idea of a traffic intersection. “an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another (…)…
Black feminism, a term not recognized by many, is a form of feminism that fights to include African-American women in the conversation of women equality and explain how our race, gender, class and other identity markers shapes our experience with societal institutions. Patricia Collins, an African-American woman who encourages intersectionality, discusses suppression of black feminism, and believes social change can only occur through uniting women, and men, of all walks of life to work towards one common goal. We will examine two pieces of literature and put it into conversation with Collins perspective of symbolic and institutional dimensions of oppression. Hip Hop, a genre of music with the stigma of being a male dominated industry that…
In reading Kimberlé Crenshaw’s article, she passionately writes about intersectionality, a call for racial injustice awareness, and a vision for social equality that is inclusive of all overlapping identities. Intersectionality is a label that is being used to define an individual’s layered identity in society. Subsequently, this term exists because intersectionality should “highlight the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppression were experienced.” (Crenshaw, 2015 para. 4) As a law professor, Ms. Crenshaw encompasses the word “intersectionality” to address anti-discrimination problems affecting black women.…
The concept of intersectionality has made significant contribution to feminist theories. Intersectionality allows for feminist theories to account for the differences between women. This political theory allows implications for feminist theory and practice. As a result of the diversity that intersectionality has, it can be embraced by various strands of feminist theory, providing a means of cooperation between scholars who have different political views. The use of these terms shows how it is impossible to theorize about women’s lives by looking at one part of a person’s complex and multidimensional identity.…
Intersectionality is the multiple factors, which complement and compound each other to successfully suppress. Karen McCormack examines the intersectionality embedded within the term “welfare mother” in Stratified Reproduction and Poor Women’s Resistance. This simple two word term, is full of preconceived notions and intersectionality.…
Crenshaw’s intersectionality is the idea that there are many forces or attributes that intersect and determine how powerful you are in the world. Being a woman is one attribute that automatically lowers how much power you hold, however, being an African American woman lowers your power indefinitely. African American Women hold the least amount of power given that the have two minority attributes that intersect. Being a man means you hold the most power possible, however if you are an African American man you have less power than a white man - which is the same for women. Within the film all the men - including the baseball players were away at war, and in order to keep people entertained with sports, women were given the job to join the league.…
Intersectionality is an outline that recognizes the interlocked nature of social identities and systems of oppression. It recognizes that individuals hold multiple identities and that these identities intersect to shape their experiences of privilege and oppression within society. Intersectionality highlights someone's experience of discrimination or privilege that isn't solely determined by one aspect of their identity but is influenced by the combination of various social factors such as race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and more. An example of intersectionality can be seen in the experiences of a black woman in the workplace. We may face discrimination not only based on our gender, but also due to our race.…
Research Proposal 1. Kimberle Crenshaw’s article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” is an essay that exposes the reality of being a colored woman today. It compares the unfair treatment of colored women to the treatment of white women in various scenarios. Colored women not only face discrimination due to sexism but they also experience racism. Facing both make it a hard intersection for many colored women.…
Intersectionality is recognizing the different aspects of a human being. It is not just your gender, but your race and your social class. Our gender is not just one lone aspect about us a humans, but it intersects other ways in which we identify. In the reading “Why Race, Class, and Gender Still Matter” it talks about the importance of understanding how big a part intersectionality plays in our lives, and it isn’t about focusing on one social aspect of one another, but all of them together. It talks about changing our perception of white experiences.…
Intersectionality-Race and Gender Relations In order to understand race, class, gender, and sexuality we must understand these ideas as individuals, and how they work as a collective. Intersectionality is using these components to discriminate against a group of people in more than one way. It’s important because it shows how a person can be discriminated against because of different factors, for example, Black women face both racism, and sexism. Understanding how intersectionality works is important because with that approach we understand different struggles.…
Understanding intersectionality is something that is important in the practice of social work. One must be able to understand and deal with one’s clients and their specific positions in life and understand how all of their different identities and places in society interact with each other. However, before one can understand intersectionality in others, one must examine the different areas of one’s own life and how they interact to form a unique identity. I will examine my specific roles in life and how they interact with each other going forward, specifically regarding gender, ethnicity and nationality, race, sexual orientation, abilities and disabilities, class, and religion.…
I will be analyzing an article entitled “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color” by Kimberlé Crenshaw. Kimberlé Crenshaw is a legal scholar from Columbia University and has pioneered the term intersectionality to describe the overlapping and intersecting social identities that affect individuals' experiences of discrimination and privilege. This work examines how race and gender impact experiences of women of color in the context of violence. She argues that the already existing legal frameworks fail to account for the complexity of challenges faced by women of color. Additionally, she mentions that this research often becomes focused on white…
Introduction Traditional theories are important to understand as they are the foundation alternative theories come from and are the groundwork of many social work beliefs and constructions. Traditional theories were developed in a time that cultural diversity was not common, women were not seen as equals, and socioeconomic status was not considered among many other elements overlooked at impacting a person’s development. However, what traditional theories lack in is what led to the development of alternative theories.…
Black feminist thought can be thought of as an understanding behind the intersectionality of race and sex. The assumption that race and sex can be divorced and examined separately prevents many people from grasping the concept of black feminist thought. African-American women are a part of a minority race and minority sex, which they must live with on a daily basis. Therefore, examining race and sex separately is a distorted, biased, and inaccurate view on African-American women in society. As a member of the two of the lowest castes in American society, being a woman and being black, African-American women are often marginalized.…