Anahi Tejeda – Response to “Kimberle Crenshaw: The Urgency of Intersectionality”
“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.
Comment ( 1 )