Ian Haney Lopez, a Professor at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley primarily works in the areas of racial justice and American law. Lopez is also the author of White by Law, The Legal Construction of Race, which presents a critical look at how race has been recognized by law and it’s legal actors such as judges and policy makers throughout history. The author mainly focuses on analyzing prerequisite cases that in affect, have changed the way that race is perceived today. The book particularly focuses on the legal and social construction of whiteness.…
Roxanne Gay, in her Op-Ed piece “On the Death of Sandra Bland and Our Vulnerable Bodies” that featured in The New York Times, takes a stand position regarding the treatment of Black women, or black people in general, in America. However, the injustice illustrated by Gay is not the one from one civilian to another but rather from the justice systems originally designed to keep all Americans safe notwithstanding their skin color nor racial affiliation. According to Gay’s piece, the crimes that the so-called justice systems perpetrate range from unlawful harassment, incarceration, and even extra-judicial slayings. Gay takes her viewpoint in the piece by offering many instances of when and where the justice systems have treated Black people awful…
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…
The author, Ta-nehisi Coates who wrote the essay “The Case for Reparation” is a senior editor of the Atlantic magazine. In his essay, he brings forwards a powerful message about racism, white supremacy and the heritage that comes along with it. White supremacy is defined by Coates as a system that holds a group of people by their ancestors on a level above other groups. The word “white” has been adjusted over time to assimilate groups and make part of. At one time, the Irish, Italians, and Jewish weren't considered white in this country but in time, took part of.…
We live in a time where unfortunately, racism is still an issue that many people across many races deal with. In America, it is mainly African-Americans, Hispanics, and Middle Eastern people that deal with the pain and hatred that takes shape in many different forms. In “Understanding White Privilege” by Frances Kendall, Ph.D., the author explores the concept of white privilege with an informative, yet critical tone in order to persuade readers to think differently. Kendall starts off by explaining the purpose of her article, which is to “to become clear about the basics of white privilege what it is and how it works” (2).…
Essay two For long years, it has been very notable how African-Americans are struggling to conquer equal treatment as white Americans, and how most of them feel victims of injustice. Even though there were civil activists that fought for equality in America, it did not happen because many whites in America still believing that is necessary to make a distinction between whites and people from other races, especially white Americans. Until now, 2015 has been a very controversy year, and it has been mostly marked by protests and political revolutions around the globe.…
Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics are examined. Throughout the analysis of the works and in comparing the goals of each movement, the most significant seemed to be the goal of being heard. While both movements had goals where they wanted their ideas to be heard, the way in which black and non-white feminism were able to assert their voice, had significantly less audiences and power to do so in comparison with their mainstream feminism…
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.…
This piece discusses what liberation may look like for a group of lesbian-identified, working-class, women of color. They state, “We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously,” (“A Black Feminist Statement,” 213). This statement is a rather straight-forward reasoning of intersectionality that is experienced in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. Furthermore, the women in this text discuss their awareness of “the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men,” (“A Black Feminist Statement,” 211). An obvious trend is visible here with discrimination based off the combination of race, class, gender, and sexuality.…
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.…
IV. Continuing the Fight for Civil Rights After the Civil Right Movement, there was huge backlash from opposers of policies and norms that were set it. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan took advantage of his inherent hate by introducing legislation the war on crime/drugs in order to appease the opposing side. Over the following decades, while the Civil Rights Act protected communities of color from invidious discrimination, the fight for civil rights was not over.…
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.…
CHIRON’S STORY: RACE, CLASS, LOCATION AND GENDER PERFORMANCE In the film, Moonlight, a young man deals with his dysfunctional home life and while finding himself during the "War on Drugs" era in the Southern United States, Miami, Florida. This widely acclaimed biopic, directed by Barry Jenkins, with a story by Tarell Alvin McCraney is broken into three chapters that share the narrative of Chiron tracing from childhood to adulthood. As he 's a young boy, he 's known as “Little” and when he 's with his first love and only childhood friend-…
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.…