Intersectionality: Social Inequalities In Our Society

Prior to starting Social Inequalities in January, intersectionality was a term that I did not even know existed. I had never taken a sociology course before, and I honestly did not have much interest in learning about it. Throughout the course though, my eyes were opened to so many of the inequalities in our society, and also, the oppression that comes along with being different in any way from the majority. As I started to discover so many things about oppression, privilege and discrimination, I also began to understand how many different things can make up one single person. Often, when we look at a stranger, we see one particular characteristic, such as race, and define them based on that. I now am able to understand how harmful this can be to a person, and also how harmful our own ignorance can be to ourselves. Choosing only a single characteristic and defining anyone with it is so inaccurate; we know this because we would never do it to ourselves. As I started to understand that these intersecting identities are actually called intersectionalities, I was fascinated with just …show more content…
In order to be able to correctly explain intersectionality in a way that people could understand, I had to take what I had learned in Sociology and put it in everyday terms. This was not an easy task and I found myself struggling to try and explain exactly what intersectionality was. With some thought, as well as listening to other students describe what intersectionality was in their eyes, I was able to think of my own definition for it that other people could understand. By doing this, I was able to better understand it personally. Explaining it to others, and putting it into simpler words made it more clear to me, and ensured that I would never forget what it