Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw Defines Intersectionality
Summary
TLDRThe term 'intersectionality' was coined to address the overlapping nature of social injustices like racism and sexism, which create multiple layers of discrimination. Originating from the case of Emma DeGraaf, an African-American woman denied employment due to her race and gender, intersectionality highlights the unique challenges faced by marginalized groups. The concept emphasizes the need to recognize and address the complex interplay of various forms of discrimination to understand and solve social justice issues.
Takeaways
- 📚 Intersectionality was coined to address the overlapping nature of social injustices like racism and sexism.
- 👩💼 The term originated from the experience of Emma de Graaff, an African-American woman who faced job discrimination.
- 🚫 Emma was denied employment at a car manufacturing plant, suspecting it was due to her race and gender.
- 👩⚖️ The court dismissed Emma's case, failing to recognize the intersection of race and gender discrimination.
- 🔍 The judge's decision was based on the fact that the employer hired both African Americans and women, but not black women for the desired positions.
- 🌐 Intersectionality highlights the unique challenges faced by individuals belonging to multiple marginalized groups.
- 🚸 The court's refusal to consider Emma's case underscored the lack of legal framework to address intersectional discrimination.
- 💡 The concept of intersectionality was developed as a way to frame and address these complex layers of discrimination.
- 🌉 The analogy of an intersection was used to illustrate how different forms of discrimination can converge and exacerbate each other.
- 🌟 Intersectionality has since been applied to understand various forms of social injustice beyond race and gender, including heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, and ableism.
Q & A
What is the term used to describe the overlapping nature of social justice problems like racism and sexism?
-The term used is 'intersectionality'.
Who is Emma de Graaff and why is she significant to the concept of intersectionality?
-Emma de Graaff is an African-American woman whose experience with race and gender discrimination at a car manufacturing plant gave rise to the concept of intersectionality.
What was the judge's reasoning for dismissing Emma de Graaff's claim of discrimination?
-The judge dismissed Emma's claim because the employer hired African Americans and women, but failed to acknowledge that the jobs were segregated by race and gender.
Why was Emma de Graaff unable to combine race and gender discrimination claims in her case?
-The court believed that allowing her to combine the claims would give her preferential treatment, providing an unfair advantage over African-American men and white women.
What was the court's response to Emma de Graaff's case, and why was it considered unjust?
-The court refused to protect African-American women, tossing their case out of court, which was considered unjust because it ignored the unique discrimination they faced.
What was the 'framing problem' that the court faced in Emma de Graaff's case?
-The framing problem was that the court's perspective on gender or race discrimination was partial and distorting, failing to see the combined effects of both.
How did the concept of an intersection help in understanding Emma de Graaff's dilemma?
-The analogy of an intersection helped visualize how Emma, being both black and female, experienced the simultaneous impacts of the company's gender and race policies.
What is the significance of naming a problem like the one Emma de Graaff faced?
-Naming a problem allows it to be recognized and addressed; without a name, the problem remains invisible and unsolvable.
What are some of the other social dynamics that can create unique challenges due to intersectionality?
-Other social dynamics include heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, and ableism, which can intersect with race and gender to create unique challenges.
How does the concept of intersectionality relate to the broader experiences of marginalized people worldwide?
-Intersectionality relates to the experiences of marginalized people by acknowledging that their challenges and dilemmas often stem from multiple intersecting social dynamics.
Outlines
📚 Origin of Intersectionality
The paragraph discusses the concept of intersectionality, which addresses the overlapping nature of social justice issues like racism and sexism. The concept was developed from the author's encounter with Emma de Graaff, an African-American woman who faced discrimination based on both her race and gender when seeking employment. Despite the company hiring both African-Americans and women, the hiring practices were discriminatory as they did not hire black women for industrial jobs and white women for non-clerical positions. The judge dismissed Emma's case, failing to recognize the compound discrimination she faced. The author, as a student of anti-discrimination law and an advocate for social justice, found this case to be a clear example of 'injustice squared.' The lack of a legal framework to address this specific form of discrimination led to the coining of the term 'intersectionality' to highlight and address such issues.
🚦 Intersectionality as a Conceptual Framework
This paragraph elaborates on the concept of intersectionality as a way to understand the unique challenges faced by individuals who are subject to multiple forms of discrimination. Using the analogy of an intersection, the author explains how Emma, being both black and female, was affected by the simultaneous impacts of gender and racial discrimination, which the law failed to address. The paragraph highlights how intersectionality is not limited to race and gender but also includes other forms of social dynamics such as heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, and ableism. These forces intersect to create unique challenges for marginalized individuals, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive understanding of discrimination that goes beyond single-axis analysis.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Intersectionality
💡Social Justice
💡Discrimination
💡African-American Women
💡Race and Gender
💡Legal Opinion
💡Employment
💡Double Discrimination
💡Framing Problem
💡Prism
💡Socially Marginalized
Highlights
Introduction of the term 'intersectionality' to address overlapping social justice issues like racism and sexism.
The story of Emma de Graaff, an African-American woman facing double discrimination.
Emma's unsuccessful job application and her belief in racial and gender bias.
The judge's dismissal of Emma's case due to the employer hiring African Americans and women.
The judge's failure to recognize the specific discrimination faced by African-American women.
The court's refusal to allow Emma to combine race and gender discrimination claims.
The concept of 'injustice squared' as experienced by black women.
The lack of legal recognition for the unique discrimination faced by African-American women.
The importance of naming a problem to see and solve it.
The framing problem in anti-discrimination law and the need for an alternative narrative.
The analogy of an intersection to explain the simultaneous impacts of race and gender discrimination.
The idea that laws should address the intersection of discrimination, not just individual instances.
The term 'intersectionality' as a way to describe the complex experiences of marginalized groups.
The challenges faced by women of color and other socially marginalized people due to intersectionality.
The intersection of various social dynamics creating unique challenges.
The importance of recognizing and addressing intersectionality in social justice movements.
Transcripts
many years ago I began to use the term
intersectionality to deal with the fact
that many of our social justice problems
like racism and sexism are often
overlapping creating multiple levels of
social injustice now the experience that
gave rise to intersectionality was my
chance encounter with a woman named Emma
de Graaff and read emma de Graaff and
read was an african-american woman a
working wife and a mother I actually
read about him a story from the pages of
a legal opinion written by a judge who
had dismissed
Emma's claim of race and gender
discrimination against a local car
manufacturing plant Emma like so many
african-american women sought better
employment for her family and for others
she wanted to create a better life for
her children and for her family but she
applied for a job and she was not hired
and she believed that she was not hired
because she was a black woman now the
judge in question dismissed emma suit
and the argument for dismissing the suit
was that the employer did hire African
Americans and the employer hired women
the real problem though that the judge
was not willing to acknowledge was what
Emma was actually trying to say that the
African Americans that were hired
usually for industrial jobs maintenance
jobs were all men and the women that
were hired usually for secretarial or
our front office work we're all white
only if the court was able to see how
these policies came together would he be
able to see the double discrimination
that Emmitt DeGraaf and Reid was facing
but the court refused to allow Emma to
put two causes of action together to
tell her story because he
believe that by allowing her to do that
she would be able to have preferential
treatment she have an advantage by being
able to have two swings after that when
african-american men and white women
only had one swing at the bat but of
course neither african-american men or
white women needed to combine a race and
gender discrimination claim to tell the
story of the discrimination they were
experiencing why wasn't the real
unfairness laws refusal to protect
African American women simply because
their experiences weren't exactly the
same as white women and african-american
men rather than broadening the frame to
include African American women the court
simply tossed their case completely out
of court now as a student of
anti-discrimination law as a feminist as
an anti-racist
I was struck by this case it felt to me
like injustice squared so so first of
all black women weren't allowed to work
at the plant second of all the court
doubled down on this exclusion by making
it legally inconsequential and to boot
there was no name for this problem and
we all know that where there's no name
for a problem you can't see a problem
and when you can't see a problem you
pretty much can't solve it many years
later I'd come to recognize that the
problem that Emma was facing was a
framing problem the frame that the court
was using to see gender discrimination
or to see race discrimination was
partial and it was distorting for me the
challenge that I faced was trying to
figure out whether there was an
alternative narrative a prism that would
allow us to
see Emma's dilemma a prism that would
allow us to rescue her from the cracks
in the law that would allow judges to
see her story so it occurred to me maybe
a simple analogy to an intersection
might allow judges to better see Emma's
dilemma so if we think about this
intersection the roads to the
intersection would be the way that the
workforce was structured by race and by
gender and then the traffic in those
roads would be the hiring policies and
and the other practices that ran through
those roads now because emma was both
black and female she was positioned
precisely where those roads overlapped
experiencing the simultaneous impacts of
the companies gender and race traffic
the law the law was like that ambulance
that shows up and is ready to treat Emma
only if it can be shown that she was
harmed on the race road or on the gender
road but not where those roads
intersected so what do you call being
impacted by multiple forces and then
abandon to fend for yourself
intersectionality seem to do it for me I
would go on to learn that
african-american women like other women
of color like other socially
marginalized people all over the world
we're facing all kinds of dilemmas and
challenges as a consequence of
intersectionality intersections of race
and and gender of heterosexism
transphobia xenophobia ableism all of
these social dynamics come together and
create challenges that are sometimes
quite unique
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