“Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray,  Tanisha Anderson, Megan Hockaday, Aura Rosser and Michelle Cusseaux.”  These are all police brutality victims, yet we only seem to know of the first four, the men, the people who are actually mentioned, the woman being clearly overshadowed and overlooked. What distinguishes the African American men from the African American woman? Some would say nothing, but this is not true. As Crenshaw referred to in the video, “when facts do not fit with the available frames, people have a difficult time incorporating new facts into their way of thinking about a problem.” African American woman do not fit within the this “frame” they get filed away as just another black person so the issue at hand is never addressed.

Crenshaw delivered a speech in this video clearly discussing the often overlooked issue of the division between racism and sexism, which in reality coincide with one another. She goes into the issue that often racism and sexism are seen as two separate issues and are missed or not addressed when it is a combination of both. African American woman have to face this dual discrimination which is not recognized by the rest of the world. For example, she touched base on how a woman was denied a position at a job under the pretense that she was African American. However, her case was dismissed due to the fact this job hired African American men and white woman, so how were they discriminating against her if they hired both “women and men.” She had just experienced dual discrimination racism toward her being African American and sexism because of her sex/gender.

One thing I found truly intriguing was how powerful this video was due to the way Crenshaw delivered her speech. She spoke directly to the audience interacting them within every aspect of her speech beginning through conducting a survey with the audience to directly asking rhetorical and direct questions. Through these tactics she was able to build and go into depths about the dual discrimination that African American woman endure. This allowed me to come to the conclusion that to resolve/address this issue we as a society need to broaden the “frame” we need to realize there is more than what meets the eye. We, as a society need to progress and evolve into being more open minded and susceptible to realizing the different levels and depths of discrimination.

In the powerful video, “The Urgency of Intersectionality,” Kimberle Crenshaw talks about the term “intersectionality” and how rather than simply race, people are often disadvantaged and hindered by multiple sources of oppression. The term is seen as different forms of social stratification such as race, age, religion, gender, social class, etc that overlap and often result in multiple levels of social injustice. At a point in the video she addresses a variety of names and the audience would either have stay standing or sit down if they recognized the names being addressed. Mostly everyone remained standing when the names of African American men were mentioned, however, when the names of African American women were mentioned only four people remained standing. She uses the term to describe the bias and violence women of color suffer. Kimberle Crenshaw considers the experiences of African-American women to be the target of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism. Kimberle Crenshaw also talks about framing which is a process of embedding events and topics in grids of interpretation and it shows us the problems that this can cause. As a solution, she points out the importance of an intersectional approach, she talks about the origin of this term. Her very powerful and emotional talk focuses on the challenges that discriminated people face as a consequence of their identities including their age, race, gender, etc.

Kimberle talks about the intersection of racism and sexism and how this leads to the discrimination of women. In her TED talk she stated, “As a consequence reporters don’t lead with them, policymakers don’t think about them, and politicians aren’t encouraged or demanded that they speak to them.” She is saying how whenever a man dies, it is all over the news and it is made public. However, when I woman dies by the cops, politicians don’t make it public and are discriminated against. She later states that this problem is caused by social justices and how they don’t pay attention to the problems women are facing. In addition, she states, “Without frames that allow us to see how social problems impact all the members of a targeted group, many will fall through the cracks of our movements, left to suffer virtual isolation.” By saying she thought of a term called intersectionality and how the problems of sexism and racism are overlapping and they create multiple levels of social injustice. In addition, she states, “The real problem, though, that the judge was not willing to acknowledge was what Emma was actually trying to say, that the African-American that were hired, usually for industrial jobs, maintenance jobs, were all men. And the women that were hired, usually for secretarial or front-office work, were all white. Only if the court was able to see how these policies came together would he be able to see the double discrimination that Emma DeGraffenreid was facing.” Emma was being discriminated because she wasn’t a man or a white woman and couldn’t get the job.

In the video “The Urgency of Intersectionality,” the orator Kimberle Crenshaw talks about the different amount of social problems many African American women go through. The cause for this is as Kimberle referred it to “intersectionality,” in which African American women are subjected to experience an overlap of race and gender. She discusses about this urgent issue and provides a real life scenario in which an African American women Emma DeGraffenreid whose claim was dismissed by a judge. Emma believed she was facing race and gender discrimination against the local car manufacturing plant. She was not hired because of her skin color and her gender, the judge who dismissed her claim did it purely because it is not completely true. However, it is known that most African Americans that were hired were men and the women that were hired was mostly white. Kimberle Crenshaw goes on by mentioning the main problem of this issue which is the “framing problem.” She explains how many people in our society fail to see race or gender discrimination which is as she explains “partial and distorting.”

Something that really caught my eye was when she started her speech with an exercise that involved her audience to stand up. She mentioned a variety of different names and the audience would either sit back down or stay standing if they recognized these names. Mostly everyone stayed standing when male African American names were mentioned, as soon as female names were mentioned only 4 people remained standing. By, doing this exercise her audience will realize how serious this issue is and how there should a change to this. As she said “if we can’t see a problem, then we can’t fix a problem.”

In the video “The Urgency of Intersectionality,” Kimberle Crenshaw discusses the importance of Intersectionality and why it’s important. At the start of her talk, she called the names of multiple black men who fell victim to police brutality such as Eric Garner while asking the audience to remain standing if they knew the names and most people remained standing, when asked about female black women who suffered the same fate all but four people sat down. The concept she explains in her talk is Intersectionality, an idea that identifies how social and political discrimination overlaps with gender, sexual orientation etc. To bring across her point she mentioned the case of Emma DeGraffenreid, an African-American woman who sued a manufacturing company for not hiring her on the basis of race and gender. The judge dismissed her case since the particular company had black people in the company all of which were men, and women all of which were white. She then goes into depth on how this case relates to intersectionality and what we should do about it. After this point, her talk gets rather emotional as she talks about the say her name movement while showing pictures of women who all fell victim to police brutality, and in this way, she demonstrated the range of the problem. She finally shows a video of various women while encouraging the listeners to say their names in support of the movement. Overall I think Crenshaw did a good job of implementing a mixture of pathos and ethos into her speech in a way to gain support for the cause.

In the video  “The Urgency of Intersectionality” by Kimberlé Crenshaw is talking about the way discrimination is deeper than just race. Which allows it to go even further into the sex of the person as well. Through her speech she is trying to show the intensity and impacts that this might have. She starts this off with an exercise that transitions her into the points that she is trying to make. In that exercise the names of police brutality victims are read allowed. They start from most to least heard about African American male police brutality victims to the African American female police brutality victims of which only four people have heard about. As Kimberlé Crenshaw stated, this exercise was done all over the country to all types of people and yet the response was the same. (Only a small number of people know about this issue.) This is showing that the racism and sexisum issues are overlapping and we need to show people importance of it.

To further enhance her point Kimberlé Crenshaw added the case of Emma DeGraffenried. Emma DeGraffenried was an African American women. Who applied to work at a local car manufacturing plant,but was rejected because of her race and gender. When she went to court to fight to be able to work at the plant, but the judge dismissed her case. The judge claimed that the plant had African American workers and female workers. The judge did not look at the fact that the plant had no female African American workers.

One area that intrigued me was when Kimberlé Crenshaw said that discrimination is deeper than race. Upon doing some research I found that with in certain ethnicities, there is also further discrimination between themselves. Weather it is between the males or females, or the north or south, and even if someone in the same race is darker than the other (as seen in some West African countries). All of these things are not right. People should not discriminate one another but instead coincide with each other and treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s “The Urgency of Intersectionality” demonstrates the problem stemming from an idea she defined as “intersectionality.”  Intersectionality is the meeting point of two forms of discrimination that is overlooked and dismissed by society. In her TED Talk, Crenshaw when in depth on how black women are the primary victims of intersectionality, particularly in regards to police brutality and how their stories are told the least.

I was shocked to see people beginning to sit after hearing Tamir Rice’s and Freddie Gray’s names.  These young men have been significant cases of police brutality in our nation and it is a shame to see that their stories are still unheard of.  However, as Kimberlé Crenshaw continued to list the names of victims of police brutality, I found myself not recognizing names like Aura Rosser, and Meagan Hockaday.  Not knowing these names disappoints and shocks me as their lives and stories deserve to be recognized. The idea that the stories of black women who have been victims of police violence are untold even though they are equally as important is unacceptable.  In American society, black women are often and undeservingly overlooked. Their issues are unheard by the public. Despite several attempts to support black women such as solutions to black issues or women’s issues, none are tailored specifically to black women.  This lack of specificity sentences black women to become less than worthy to be heard and supported. The overlap of racial and gender discrimination has been a prominent issue in American society for decades. Unfortunately, not much has been done to resolve this.

This “intersectionality” proposed by Crenshaw, as she points out, not only impacts black women, but those who are apart of any minority group.  “As a consequence of intersectionality, intersections of race and gender, of heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, all of these social dynamics come together and create challenges that are sometimes quite unique.”  Black women, for decades have been prominent receivers of hatred and discrimination yet other versions of intersectionality exist that target other underrepresented groups. It is imperative that in an era where social consciousness is expanding, we recognize the detriment that comes from intersectionality.  As young leaders, it is our job to push our biases aside in our to create a fair and inclusive community, which will ultimately lead to our growth as a nation.

The video “The Urgency of Intersectionality” by Kimberlé Crenshaw talks about the phenomenon when someone is caught in the middle of multiple types of discrimination. She talks about the effects and the lack of justice that befalls those who find themselves in the middle of these issues. She says that this is a big problem and that this could have massive side effects. The first exercise that she does in the beginning, in my opinion, has a big impact on the viewer, as it helps to demonstrate just how extreme the effects of this phenomenon are. The exercise consists of people standing up and sitting back down when the name of the person is unknown to them. She starts out by naming the male victims of police brutality. After that, most of the crowd is still standing and then she moves on to the female victims and when she finishes, all but 4 people are still standing. When I saw this it made me realize what a huge problem this was, as I couldn’t name them either.
Next, she talks about why this issue is relevant and what causes this. She argues that the reason this type of phenomenon happens is because there lacks a frame of reference for these types of cases as they are prone to getting dismissed and forgotten. For this, she points to an example of this phenomenon when someone she knew didn’t get hired and that woman blamed it on race. However, the judge dismissed it because the company both employed women and black people and that based on this, she had no basis for the case. Furthermore, Crenshaw argues that while the company did hire black people and women, that the women that were hired were usually white and the black people that were usually hired were males and that the combination of these discriminations were very powerful in that decision.

In the video “The Urgency of Intersectionality,” Kimberle Crenshaw discusses the intersection of racism and sexism which often overlap in order to create different levels of social problems. She presents a speech where she describes the urgency of this issue. African American women are discriminated on a basis of race and sex. In order to solve this problem, we must recognize this issue. We must broaden the frame of discrimination to include women as Crenshaw describes this as a “framing issue.”

An interesting example she presents is the case of Emma DeGraffenried. She was double discriminated on a basis of race and sex when she was rejected by a local car manufacturing plant. The court quickly dismissed her case as they claim the plant hired both African Americans and women. However, the court failed to recognize how all African Americans working in the plant were men and all the women working in the plant were white. DeGraffenreid was quickly rejected because of the fact that she is both a women and an African American. In order to solve this issue, American society must recognize this issue and broaden its frame of discrimination to include African American women.

While delivering her speech Crenshaw uses slides to show images of African American women that have been victims of police brutality. This was a really effective action. By doing this, she indicates the relevance of this topic. Women are being murdered by police because they are being discriminated by race and sex. It shows the inhumanity of this issue. African American women are being killed and injured over the cruel actions of police and it is a shame that American society fails to have any knowledge about this issue and these women. In her presentation she makes eye contact with her audience, hand gestures, and has facial and vocal expression which all enhance her communication skills and effectiveness of her delivery.

Finally, she also interacts with her audience by conducting a survey in order to have an understanding of her audience’ knowledge of these women that are being murdered by the police. She also shows a video that includes some of the many women that were killed by the police and clips of police brutality against women in which she asked her audience to yell out the names of these women. She did this in order to bear witness to them, to let their names be heard and to being them to the light. SAY HER NAME!