In the TED talk by Kimberle Crenshaw, called “The Urgency of Intersectionality”, she overall talks about what is intersectionality and why it is important. She start her speech with an exercise which purpose was to make the audience know, how people aren’t really aware of specific black females that die in hand of policemen. She says that this is because “there is no frame for us to see them”, reffering to the fact that they are not cover in the media as much as the cases of other black males that died in hand of policemen. But then I think she went a little bit of the rails when she said that as a result “policy makers don’t think about them”, because I think that’s a really big assumption to make, just from the given fact that some people in the audience don’t recall some of those women names, doesn’t mean that when the U.S. makes a law, they don’t think about black females.

Then she goes on talking about what is identity politics and introduce the audience to the term intersectionality, which she describes to be when “many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism are often overlaping creating multiple levels of social injustice”. But then another problem that I had with this TED talk was when she start talking about Emma Degraffenreid. She introduces Emma’s story as “the experience that gave rise to intersectionality”. From the TED talk what I learned from her is the following. She was an African American woman that was seeking for a job in a car company; she applied, but she didn’t got the job. But instead of accepting it and try to work in another place, she believed that she didn’t got the job because of her race and gender, she believed that she didn’t got hired because she was a black women. She sued the car company, but the judge dismissed her suit. The judge made the argument that her ciliv rights weren’t violated because the car company hired blacks, and females. Kimberle says that by the time of the lawsuit (which by the way happened in the 1970’s), all the women hired were white and all the blacks were men, therefore she was facing double discrimination. My problem with this is that we are assuming that because Emma made the claim of not being accepted because she was a black women, that what she is saying is true. We are not seeing this from both sides; what if she wasn’t prepare for it? what if she just didn’t meet the requiremets/standards for that job? why does it have to be an identity issue, and not an individual one? we lack of information to know that the reason she wasn’t accepted in that job, was because she was a black women.

Finally she goes on talking about police brutality towards black women. She goes on talking about how black women died in hands of policemen, which again ones would assume that is a clear sign on injustice and police brutality, but Kimberle doesn’t provide the audience that much context for one to make a fair conclusion of those scenerios. She goes on saying how some were “sophocated to death”, “tasered to death”, “shot to death”. She also says things like “they been killed shopping while black” and “driving while black”, like to make us think that they were killed just for being black, which again, with the lack of evidence provided, I think is not a fair assumption to make.

In the article “Moving Beyond Pain” by Bell Hooks, the author talks about Beyonce’s album “Lemonade”, the author makes the claim that “is intent; its purpose is to seduce, celebrate, and delight—to challenge the ongoing present day devaluation and dehumanization of the black female body”. This is because through the album it shows “the construction of a powerfully symbolic black female sisterhood that resists invisibility, that refuses to be silent”. The author also makes the claim that that this album even though shows an empowerment of black women in one had, it also continues with a stereotypical idea that black women is always the victim. She claims this because the album starts with “a story of pain and betrayal highlighting the trauma it produces”. The article also criticises how in the album it also present black women  as violent since in one of the songs she “boldly struts through the street with baseball bat in hand, randomly smashing cars”. which is very important because another of the author’s main point was about how “women do not and will not seize power and create self-love and self-esteem through violent acts”. Meaning that even though the song had the right motivation of showing women as free and empowered, violence is not the correct way to do it, since it defeats the whole purpose.

One of the points that confused me about this article was on the second to last paragraph, where the author talks about beyonce’s album as a fictional world. And from this assertion she start talking about how in Beyonce’s world black women get to actually have a voice, their “emotional pain can be exposed and revealed”. Which makes me wonder, if she is trying to say that black women in real life don’t get to say how they feel, or to have a voice? And that this shows that black women are going through emotional violence. Which she then says in order for this problem to be solve “men must do the work of inner and outer transformation”, which also confuses me because I got no idea of what that’s suppose to mean, and how is it going to solve anything.

One of Lebron’s main points from his criticism about the Marvel movie “Black Panter”, was that is racist to portray the main villian as a black man. He states that “They (the movie) safeguard virtue and goodness against the threat not of white Americans or Europeans, but a black American man, the most dangerous person in the world.”, showing his dissapointment towards the fact that the villain in this movie, wasn’t a white, but in fact that having a “black man whose father was murdered by his own family and who is left by family and nation to languish in poverty. That’s racist”. This shows how not only he doesn’t like the main villain to be a black man, but to also for him to have such a tragic background story, is “racist”. In addition he claims that the movie shows that “black lives doesn’t matter”. He says this because other “villains—even those far more destructive than Killmonger—die infrequently”, then he adds on by putting Loki as an example of how he “gets multiple, unearned chances to redeem himself no matter what damage he has done”. Which is true since he have done things like almost kill his brother, causing the apocalypse in his homeland, almost killing his brother multiple times, and causing a massacre in NY. So with this Lebron, goes on saying that his “claim that Killmonger’s black life does not matter is not hyperbole.” Since not only other villians get second chances, but also because in the scene where Killmonger dies “Black Panther does not flinch. There is no reconciliation”.

One of the major things that confuses me, is that I don’t know if he realizes or not the fact that when he talks about Killmonger wanting to “liberate” black men around the world by using WEAPONS, he understands that is going to lead to the mass murder of white people around the world. Another thing that confused me was the fact that he doesn’t like the idea of the main villian to be a black man, where after all the movie is based on an African country where ALL habitants are black. And one last thing that also confused me was that in Lebron’s last paragraph he says that “Why not take the case to the United Nations and charge the United States with crimes against humanity……?”, So I would like to know why would he make such a ramdom question like that?, I would like to know what are such “crimes against humanities” that the US have committed?

In “If Black English Isn’t a language, Then Tell Me, What is”, by James Baldwin talks about the importance of language. And he goes aheads and says that “People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate” (Baldwin 2). Meaning that people create languages depending on their their circumstances and reality. Which leds to groups creating “different languages”, accents, or slangs for the same language, since every group and nation have different experiences. Balwin adds on to this idea on the third paragraph when he talks about places like Quebec, Marseilles and Martinique, and even though they all talk french, “as it turns out, they are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things”.

He adds on to the importance of language by saying that “language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power”. He talks about how with language you connect (or disconnect) with people, giving you the power to communicate with groups, communities or the public in general. Then he jumps on talking about how back then how dangerous language was since, since it said alot about you. He brings up examples like how back then by revealing your language “You have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future.” (Baldwin 4).

He talks about how the importance of language is related to “Black English” and how it should some how be respected by white people since “Black English is the creation of the black diaspora.” (Baldwin 7). Meaning that the “Black English” was created from black history on America, and attributed to the fact that Blacks had to in part assimilate and create a new language, since they were being brought as slaves from different tribes, and they had to figure out a way for them to understand each other.

But one thing I found “interesting” about this article, was the fact that Baldwin said “The brutal truth is that the bulk of white people in American never had any interest in educating black people, except as this could serve white purposes.” (Baldwin 11). Since even though it is true that alot of white people back then were racist because of the jim crow laws, and civil rights movement, other groups of white people helped on helping for the equality of races in America.

What I gather from reading “The Rhetorical Situation”, by Lloyd Bitzer, was that a rhetorical situation is basically when a specific situation is in need of a solution. This was made clear to me when he stated that “……rhetorical because it is a response to a situation of a certain kind.”(page 3), which explains the idea of in order for it to be a rhetorical situation it must have a response of some sort. In this essay he also talks about the fact that “there are three constituents of any rhetorical situation”(page 6):

• Exigence: Which is like the purpose for what the rhetorical situation is being made(“an imperfection marked by urgency”page 6). It is any problem that can be change through an action, and that the rhetorical situation can address. Ex: if you were to be having a speech about racism, and how it is wrong, then racism would be the exigence.
• Audience: This is an easy concept since it refers to the group of people who are capable of acting on the exigence stated, “consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” (page 8), in other words just the people that the discourse is being directed to. Ex: if you were making a speech on a college campus, about a topic such abortion, then your audience would be the women on that campus.
• Constrains: This one is in my opinion the trickiest one, since is not as simple as the other 2.  According to Bitzer, constrains is a “persons, events, objects, and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence”(page 8). In other words is anything that limits the audience from acting on the exigence. Ex: if any controversial figure were to have a speech, its reputation and and the audience thoughts and view on that person, could be consider a constrain.