Concept list 3: Kimberle Crenshaw on intersectionality

weeks 7–8

Concept list from: Adewunmi, B. (2 April, 2014). Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality. The New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/04/kimberl-crenshaw-intersectionality-i-wanted-come-everyday-metaphor-anyone-could

This article is about an interview done with Kimberle Crenshaw, a well known feminist and activist, where she talks about her intersectionality theory.

-Intersectionality is when race, gender, class, and other social characteristics overlap. This term is used for people who have been affected by discrimination and disadvantages because of their overlapping identities. For example: A black female faces discrimination at work.

A lot of people do not understand or agree with the concept of intersectionality.

· Not everyone experiences the kinds of discrimination that black females experience, which makes it hard for others to understand it.

· However, it is important that white feminists and activists support the black feminists in this fight.

Black women specifically are struggling with overlapping discrimination, and the law is not doing much about it.

· Courts argue that “black women can’t prove gender discrimination because not all women were discriminated against, and they couldn’t prove race discrimination because not all black people were discriminated against”

The concept of intersectionality was a way for courts to see what they neglect, especially when they see compound discrimination suits as giving special treatments for certain people.

Coalition: coming together to achieve a goal.

· According to Crenshaw, women, and feminists critiquing those in power make them feel disempowered, and women are described to have created a sort of coalition to do so. Crenshaw says that a coalition must then happen and those in power need to be held accountable for the actions they take.

Collective forgetting: selectively remember, misremember, or disremember something to silence the counter views.

· Crenshaw used this term to describe how black women neglect how their sexual violence cases were never properly addressed and handled in courts because of racist sexism.

The fight against discrimination is not done, and it is important to keep the conversation going on the social history and the movements that activists like Crenshaw have executed, fighting for their rights.