Intersectionality And Social Analysis

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.

I will try to explain intersectionality. First of all you need to know what intersectionality is. Intersectionality is a theoretical framework which explains violence or discrimination against humans. Now I will give you an example and then try to connect it to intersectionality. I will use an example of spider web to explain this theory. This example will give you some idea about intersectionality. Think about a spider web. A Point in the centre and all threads connected to each other. If we remove one thread from the spider web, it will fall apart. Now consider yourself. You have some identities and these identities are connected just like spider web and we cannot remove any identity from you. If we remove any identity from you, then

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

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

My theoretical framework is a synthesis of intersectionality theory and institutional ethnography. Intersectionality, vastly simplified, outlines the ways in which individuals’ multiple social positions are transformative rather than additive, and how those who are marginalized by class, race, gender and sexuality experience those structures in combination. Such research also seeks to challenge inequity (Nuñez 2014). Multiple scholars have taken up this concept that comes out of black lesbian feminist thought and use it to understand how social structures create unique subject positions that are often characterized by simultaneous privileged and marginalized identities, now expanded to include categories such as disability as well as studies of privilege. Institutional ethnography considers institutional organization as it is constituted through the textual as well as constitutive of individual lived experience, emphasizing the discursive nature of organizational practices. The social construction of subjects by institutions (such as Smith College), found in its memos and bureaucratic measures, precedes and makes possible the interaction between the two (Smith 2002). Inequalities among groups of students, then, are reproduced and created by the college. Nuñez (2014) seeks to advance a model of intersectional education research that, like institutional ethnography, seeks to study the relationships between identity or the individual and other levels of

I would like to learn more about what else could be done to ensure a safe work environment for transgender individuals. I also would like to learn more about protective factors that these people have and what resources could be used as protective factors for young and middle adulthood transgender people. This project helps to increase awareness of oppression because, the cruel and prolong unjust treatment of individuals has been going on for a very long time and with understanding the trans community and the difficulties they face that I was unaware of we see how oppression very much still occurs today. This project also helped to relate intersectionality to oppression. As quoted in the power point by Audre Lord “There is no such thing as a

Within the community the problem of intersectionality takes place because there are black girls who experience more problems in their delinquent years. Many young black girls are “affected by social problems” (1507) that are presented to them by the communities. 70 percent of these black girls have been “exposed to some form of trauma” (1529). Most of the girls “are more likely to receive harsher punishment than boys for similar offenses” because of their inability to act like ladies. Juveniles are often treated like adult criminals but they cannot afford “the same due process rights as adult criminals” (1514). Whenever black girls are presented to the judge they have a hard time making a first impression because they are do not act like

Race has a lot to do with intersectionality. It helps to understand the problem and the solution in domestic violence. It helps to understand the culture behind the violence and the routine a couple go through in their lives. There is other perspectives of intersectionality for example, economic and social class. These perspectives are factors in domestic violence like the poor, who statistically show a high rate of domestic violence, because of the amount of pressures a poor couple face.

According to Kimberlé Crenshaw, the concept of intersectionality refers to the way multiple oppressions particularly among the women are expressed. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses a scenario of traffic flow to describe intersectionality. She argues that many times black women find themselves in an intersection as a result of race discrimination and sex discrimination (Kimberlé 139). They suffer in many ways that may not be placed easily in legal categories of sexism or racism. The injustices they experience are a combination of both sexism and racism and they are “invisible” in the legal framework. An example of such injustices is employment discrimination that these women experience because they are women and black at the same time. A company like

Intersectionality is a relevant theory for some gay, lesbian or bisexual individuals. Intersectionality studies "the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations" (McCall, 2005). The theory argues, pursues and considers how gender, race, sexual orientation and other categories of identity interact on many and often concurring levels of social relationships, therefore allowing discrimination and social inequity. Intersectionality explains how the notion of social injustice, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and belief-based bigotry such as religion are not independent of one another; instead, they are interconnected, and thereby reflect “intersectionality” in regards to social

I am applying intersectionality and the sociological imagination to my intersecting identities: class, gender, and ethnicity. By employing intersectionality and the sociological imagination, I am analyzing how my positionality affected my personal experiences while connecting those events with society. I also included five peer-reviewed articles as supporting evidence.

The idea of intersectionality is that all of our identities overlap and are also constantly affecting our privileges and oppressions. People do not always think about their interactions despite them playing a pivotal role in our human experience. This is what causes some writers to feel the need to put them into words so that maybe more people will look at themselves and do some thinking about their own intersections. Some of the authors that I believe have done this well are Patricia Collins in her work titled Black Feminist Thought. Another work that discussed intersectionality well is titled “A Black Feminist Statement” which is powerful in the way it discusses how race interacts with womanhood. The final piece I feel as though needs discussed is Women, Race, and Class which is a piece written by Angela Davis that discusses the intersections that can be seen in

Intersectionality has truly opened my eyes in cases where there is a possibility where two systems of oppression can be working together to make life a struggle for a certain group or race. In the political world when someone feels that they are being mistreated or being taken advantage of they make their voice heard. They search for the correct people to help them in their situation and once in court and they feel that they have been mistreated for example racially and gender discrimination the question now becomes well which one is it? Gender or race? It cannot be both. Well, why can’t we choose both options each is a brick in the wall of oppression that everyone has faced at least once in their life. Not to generalize the fact that people face more walls in their life than others based on certain privileges from the type of skin, class, or the global power of wealth and how much it is used for ill intentions. Intersectionality creates lenses in seeing the “bricks” of the wall, seeing what each one stands for and what it does to us. However, it also shows us where it is weak and way for us as scholars to find the weak points and change our groups future where we will no longer fear to speak about the injustices we see every day and will be able to fight and give knowledge to our “enemy” as well for they could see their error as well.

Ferree (2009) argues that while intersectionality “can do justice to the actual complexity of political power and social inequality” (p. 87) it also has the potential to result in identity politics, or what Martinez (1993) refers to as the “oppression Olympics”. Ferree (2009) and Prins (2006) also advocate for a “constructionist rather than structural understanding of intersectionality” (Ferree, 2009, p. 87). This is the main criticism that I have throughout the course of preparing for this exam is the apparent contradiction that exists within intersectionality. As I have shown, intersectionality theorists posit that we have various identities, which differentiate us from those without the same identities. If the ultimate goal is the abolition of inequalities on the basis of gender, race, or class (class itself would be eliminated), I argue that the focus should be on the reeducation of identity politics, not the proliferation of them.