Throughout Kimberlé Crenshaw’s speech, “The Urgency of Intersectionality,” she addresses an idea called intersectionality by giving an example to her audience. Kimberlé Crenshaw starts her example by asking her audience to stand up and each time they heard a name they did not recognize, to sit back down onto their chairs. Crenshaw started of naming, “Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, Aura Rosser, Meagan Hockaday.” Once the first four names were called,about half the audience was seated; once the other four names were called, about 4 people were still standing, everyone else was seated. The only difference between the first four names and the last four names is the gender. All these names that were called were African- Americans who have died due to police brutality. Only African- Americans that were categorized as males were mostly recognized, females not as much. Intersectionality is social justice problems, race and sexism, that overlap to create various levels of injustice, discrimination. Kimberlé Crenshaw talks about how African- American women experience intersectionality when it comes to this issue of police brutality and how their story is told to the public audience.

Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the example of Emma DeGraffenreid to support the idea of intersectionality. Emma DeGraffenreid was an African- American who was a working wife and a mother. In one of her interviews for a job, she experience intersectionality towards her race and her gender. When she viewed the work area, DeGraffenreid noticed that African- American men did the maintance jobs and White women did the secretary and related jobs. When presenting her case at court, it was dismissed because there is no frame that views discrimination of both, race and gender. The judge did not notice the difference in this job, when there was only white women, not other race women and there was only African- American men, not other race men. The judge just payed attention to how there was some form of employment that was African- American and some for of employment that was women. In the society we live in, these frames should expand and become greater because there are various issues ignored due to there being no understanding towards those issues.

When watching this video, I was impressed by the situation African- American women have experienced and were not recognized due to intersectionality. There should have been more publicity about these women on articles and on the news to make everyone aware of this issue. These women don’t deserve being unmentioned, they deserve being known for the police brutality and the violence against them. In addition, in the video, I noticed Kimberlé Crenshaw form of speaking towards her audience. She does not stutter or flinch, she keeps her eyes on her audience, she engages them into her topic, and when she has your attention, she doesn’t let it go. Kimberlé Crenshaw seems to be a great public speaker.

Throughout the article, “Moving Beyond Pain” by Bell Hook, the author states a contrast of good intentions and of various issues throughout Beyonce’s album. For example, in Beyonce’s Lemonade video she demonstrates black women in a new perspective that the world has not interpreted. In this video, she shows that black women’s bodies are supposed to be seen as royalty so she purposefully puts these women as the center of attention in her video. Beyonce tries demonstrating that black women should be seen as they are, through a new perspective and a new interpretations. As states in the article, “… its purpose is to seduce, celebrate, and delight—to challenge the ongoing present day devaluation and dehumanization of the black female body.”

Furthermore, Bell Hook addresses several issues with Beyonce’s album Lemonade. For instance, it states, “And even though the father in the song ‘Daddy’s Lessons’ gives her a rifle warning her about men, she does not shoot her man. She dons a magnificently designed golden yellow gown, boldly struts through the street with baseball bat in hand, randomly smashing cars.” Beyonce decides to use violence throughout her album to demonstrate that when women are being lied to and betrayed they should use violence to act onto the issue. Some women might actually view her video with this interpretation and might go an extra mile even if Beyonce herself did not physically hit someone. As Hook said “Violence does not create positive change.” I agree with her statement because the more violence there are the more chaos and issues can come.

Throughout Christopher Lebron’s article, “‘Black Panther’ Is Not the Movie We Deserve,” he demonstrates a new point of view towards a recent Marvel movie. For children, tenagers,and even some adults,they could ave viewed this movie as a good movie as if it did what it was supposed to do. However, Christopher lebron shows that the image people recieve was incorrect. The movie was basically about racism and the different circumstances the writer and the director, Ryan Coogler, portrayed the topic. For example, in the article, it states that “The abundant evidence of his efficacy does not establish Killmonger as a hero or villain so much as a receptacle for tropes of inner-city gangsterism.” The movie, “Black Panther,” traces previous history and uses it as an example of how the movie is supposed to be. Throughput history, slavery, racism, and discrimination has came across in the lives of African Americans. Killmonger could not be demonstrated as a hero or a villain in the eyes of other white supremacy. In addition, Christopher Lebron uses the example of “The ultimate evil in the show’s first and only season is Willis Stryker (Eric Laray Harvey), another black man whom Luke Cage must defeat,” to illustrate the image various people have about White Americans towards African Americans. Luke Cage is a white man who is portrayed as the hero, while Willis Stryker is a black man who is portrayed as the villain. Even if racism is not as visible as before, it still exists, especially on popular films that most people have an interest in viewing.

Throughout the article, Christopher Lebron’s point of view actually surprised me because I specifically have not seen the movie but, most of my friends did. They viewed it as a great movie as if there was no issue to be addressed, when in reality there is. Racism should not be demonstrated as often as it typically is especially throughout movies, shows, and our president’s actions/ words. Most people watch these sort of things and might even receive the idea that if they were to be racist, it would not be addressed. Donald Trump has shown implication of this topic. He has used snaky comments on other races, and has supported racism in some occasions (even if he “doesn’t notice” it). While I was reading this article, I agreed with Christopher Lebron’s point of view towards this issue.

Throughout the reading, “The Rhetorical Situation,” by Lloyd Bitzer, I learned that a rhetorical situation is when persons, events, objects, and relations have a demand that can remove a topic by introducing the situation it can limit people’s decisions and actions to finding a solution to the demand. In addition, there are three types of rhetorical situations: exigence, audience, and constraint.

A rhetorical exigence is “. . . a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done . . .” (pg. 6). Rhetorical exigence is basically the reasoning towards why the rhetorical situation was being made. However, a rhetorical exigence is when there’s an action that can be made to change the situation and that addresses the rhetorical situation. In the essay, Bitzer uses the example of pollution to demonstrate what a rhetorical exigence is; pollution can be reduced by having awareness and taking action of the situation.

An rhetorical audience “. . . consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” (pg. 8). Only the people that the rhetorical exigence is affecting or are interested in would be the rhetorical audience. For example, if someone gave a speech of elimination of animal cruelty, only the attention of people were interested about animals well being would be drawn by those actions. Those people would be categorized as the audience of specific topic.

A rhetorical constraint is “. . . made up of 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” (pg. 8). A rhetorical constraint is when anything or anyone has the power to restrict the people from letting the demand occur. For example, there could be two sides of a situation if one side is well supported with arguments and evidence by a well known figure compared to the other side, people would mostly be restricted.

Something that catched my attention was how Lloyd Bitzer refers to what a rhetorical response is. In the essay, Bitzer states, “(7) Finally, the situation controls the rhetorical response in the same sense that the question controls the answer and the problem controls the solution” (pg. 6). Bitzer refers to different situation have different solution which is called rhetorical discourse and to find one people usually develop thoughts and actions. People develop thoughts and actions to figure out the different solutions to different situations, everything is determined by the other. In the essay, Bitzer uses the example of the fishermen fishing, he describes the fishermen’s actions before and after one of them almost catches a fish, the situation of obtaining the fish, and the solutions being shouted out to have the fish. This is an example of rhetorical discourse.