Black Womanhood And Intersectionality : Analysis

Doetsch-Kidder’s (2016) monograph defines the important role of intersectionality as a defining sea-change in the way that women of color began to unify across racial and cultural barriers. Interviews with minority activists define the perception of the diversification of feminist ideology through the lens of intersectionality. One interview with a African-American activist named Donna illustrates the unity between women of color that evolved in the 1970s: “But overall, we are all fighting for civil rights, so there has to be some type of overlap with each one” (Doetsch-Kidder, 2016, p.103). This development defines the “overlapping’ ideology of different feminist groups, which soon began to devolve the racial and cultural barriers not only between women of color, but also with white feminist groups. In Doetsch-Kidder’s (2016) point of view, the civil rights movement laid the foundation for intersectional feminist principles to be practiced for women seeking greater representation in the workplace.

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is an African American scholar, civil rights advocate, and law professor who developed the term intersectionality (Merriam-Webster 2017; Wikipedia 2017). Intersectionality is a theory that examines the intersecting point in which oppressive institutions (like racism, sexism, and classism) and one’ social categorization (such as race, gender, and

Intersectionality is a framework that must be applied to all social justice work, a frame that recognizes the multiple aspects of identity that enrich our lives and experiences. This framework synthesizes and complicates oppressions and marginalization’s. In the article, “Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait” Kimberle Crenshaw talks about how the purpose of intersectionality has been lost. Intersectional somehow creates an environment of bullying and privilege checking. This society cannot afford to have movements that are not intersectional because all races need to be embraced and have equality.

Whiteness and racism comes from the oppression, colonization and systems of dominance over black people and their feelings. In this case, an intersectional feminist analysis matters because women who are able bodied, cis-gendered, privileged and white are only being considered whereas bell hooks argue that men, women and trans people who oppressed should be fought for. And Peggy McIntosh adds onto this but a white woman who addresses and recognizes her privilege to help other white individuals understand what they have and blacks do not.

Patriarchy’s Scapegoat: Black womanhood and femininity – A critique of racism, gender inequality, anti-blackness, and historical exploitation of black women.

In the memoir “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, Dorothy Allison recites stories from her life that ultimately depict the oppression and liberation seen in gender, sexuality, and social class. Intersectionality is a theme that can be seen throughout the book. Intersectionality is the overlapping of characteristics (such as sex, gender, race, class, and sexuality) that forms a person’s identity. Although people may have similar traits and characteristics, they are distinct from person to person. They can depict different features about different people throughout society.

As many women struggled to retain their values and traditions, there were existing male dominated conceptions of race and white dominated conceptions of gender. Kimberle Crenshaw describes the concept of intersectionality where race and gender interact in various ways to shape multiple dimensions experiences for different groups

Intersectionality is a term that describes the ways which oppressive institutions such as, sexism, homophobia, racism, classism etc interact. Categories such as gender, ethnicity, poverty and mental illness reinforce each other in ’‘Women on the Edge of Time’’ and they overdetermine a negative outcome. Piercy put Connie in positions where she came to understand sexism, working class opression and white supremacy in both her personal life and in Mattapoisett.

An intersectional approach is an approach which seeks to demonstrate how race, class, gender and sexuality make certain experiences different. Intersectionality is the overlapping of social categories such as race, class, gender and sexuality that leads to further discrimination against a certain individual or group. To take an intersectional approach to understand race, class, gender and sexuality, is to consider hardships not as a similar element for all individuals without regards to race, but instead consider where in a specific hardship different races, genders, classes and sexualities are affected different. According to Crenshaw, “many of the experiences Black women face are not subsumed within the traditional boundaries of race or gender discrimination as these boundaries are currently understood, and that the intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women’s lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the woman race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately” (Crenshaw, 357). Crenshaw explains that the personal experiences of women of color cannot be fully understood by looking at race or gender discrimination as two separate factors, but in fact can be understood if both aspects are looked at together. When race and gender are examined separately, this causes for women of color to be “erased”. Crenshaw says, “ And so, when the practices expound identity as “woman” or “person of color” as an either/or proposition, they relegate

Throughout their lives, Bessie and Sadie Delany experienced various forms of oppression for firstly, being black and secondly, for being women. The description above refers to the term ‘intersectionality’. Intersectionality is a feminist sociological theory that seeks to examine how various cultural categories such as gender, race, and class contribute to social inequality. In the article Intersectionality & Feminism, the author Anna Carastathis, brings up Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, the theorist who coined this ever inclusive term. She states how, “In the 1980s, Crenshaw was trying to understand why US anti-discrimination law was failing to protect Black women in the

Intersectionality according to Patricia Hill Collins is the “theory of the relationship between race, gender and class” (1990), also known as the “matrix of domination” (2000). This matrix shows that there is no one way to understand the complex nature of how gender, race and class inequalities within women’s lives can be separated; for they are intertwined within each other.

The structure of gender relations throughout these transitions, help us understand the sense of minority group powerlessness. Slaves in the American system were brutally repressed and exploited, but females faced greater subordination. For black female slaves, inequalities tripled and they became the most vulnerable group to sexual victimization. For example, the men of the dominant group saw their female slaves as a resource for more profit. They were often raped and used to breed more slaves for their owners to sell. Under the Jim Crow system, African American women were “free” but were relegated to domestic service or agricultural positions, and denied access to the education needed for social mobility. In the postindustrial era, structural inequality is less overt, but exclusions for opportunity abound in housing, and career mobility.

Just as Crenshaw (1989) demon-strated that Black women were too female to represent racism and too Black to represent sexism, Collins (2002) stated that due to their double marginalized identities, Black women do not have full group membership for race and women social identities due to the “whiteness for feminist thought and the maleness for Black social and political thoughts and the combination of main-stream scholarship-all negate Black women’s realities.” However, it can also be argued that Black lesbian and bisexual women also lack group membership when it comes to discourse on the experiences of Black women, which has focused primarily on the intersection of race and gender. In line with Collins’ statement, while Black women are not male enough for race discourse or White enough for feminist discourse, it appears that Black sexual minorities are not heterosexual enough to be considered in discourse on the experiences of Black women. Whilst discourse by Black feminist on the implications of the intersectionality of race and gender has raised awareness on how these two marginalized identities must be considered to inform on the experiences of Black women, the implication of intersectionality theory has not been fully ex-plored by research on the LGBTQ community (Fish, 2008). For a complete understanding of Black women’s experiences, sexual orientation should be added to the discourse on Black wom-en’s experience with

The theory of intersectionality has received a widespread of various distinct definitions and usage; it is often unclear of its designed function may be. Intersectionality is defined as “the acknowledgment that different forms of identity-based discrimination can combine to give rise to unique brands of injustice”(Lucas 8). In other words, how the classification of one’s individuality such as gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class can intertwine with each other among the social structure. The term was first coined by feminist and civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw who spoke upon the discrimination and marginalization of black women and how both institutions interconnect with one another. The significance of

Black Feminism focuses on the involvements, necessities, and yearnings of women of color (Aldridge 193). In inaugurating why Black Feminism is significant, it must be recognized that women of color have been victimized three times: by discrimination, sexism, and economic exploitation. These three unjust forces disturb women of color concurrently and correspondingly persistently (Gordon 166). The goal of Black Feminism is to generate a standard by which women of color can measure their truths, both in thought and in action (Hudson-Weems