The Urgency of Intersectionslity
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.