Legacy Of Slavery

Utilizing the lens of intersectionality allows for analytical analysis of social identity structures such as gender, race, class, and sexuality. It invites study on a multidimensional level, providing complexity and context to researching social categories. Conceptually providing a greater understanding of advantages and disadvantages, differences and similarities, within social constructs resulting from identification with multiple categories. Discussing the readings “The Legacy of Slavery, by Angela Davis, “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender by Judith Lorber, and “Columbus, The Indians & Human Progress” From: Peoples History of the United States – 1492 – Present, by Howard Zinn, I will examine how subjugated knowledge and binary thinking contributed to historical misrepresentation, marginalization, and oppression of people based on gender, race, and culture. Additionally, I will explore how the discourse of gender, race, and culture in these articles expands when analyzing these institutions from the viewpoint of intersectional oppression. Using the framework of an intersectional approach furthers an understanding of how race, gender, and culture can be experienced simultaneously within an individual, which is of …show more content…
In “The Legacy of Slavery”, Davis refutes the stereotypical depictions of these women as either the Black mammy, or Aunt Jemima, and delineates the realities of life as female Black slave, which are in stark contrast to the image of a house servant, in full control of domestic management, friend and advisor. In terms of physical labor women and men faced identical oppression, when it was profitable they were treated as genderless. However, women suffered in additional ways, specific to them as women. Sexual abuse, and treatment as “breeders” were specific methods of punishment and repression applied to slave