Ruben Genao – Response to “The Urgency of Intersectionality” by Kimberlé Crenshaw

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.

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Ali Husain
    You did a good job in explaining some key points that were discussed in the video. This allowed me to easily understand the overall message of the video. I also think that Kimberlé Crenshaw did a good job in using pathos to intrigue the reader when talking about her cause. I felt like the images that she used for the say her name movement really drove the point home because it gave the viewers even more incinte into what is happening to those females.
  2. Christopher Collaguazo
    I like how you went in depth in explaining what intersectionality is. I found it really interesting when you mention on the way Kimberle starts her speech when she asks her audience to stand or sit when she mentions the names of male and female victims. Surprisingly, only 4 people remained standing which depicts how many people have no idea the issues many African American women go through. The reason behind her doing this is as you said, to gain support from her audience for this cause through their realization of how important this issue is.

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