Essay: Do We Support Black Causes Or Women Causes?

n 1619 a Dutch ship brought 20 slaves to America and it took nearly 240 years for slavery to end in 1865. In the absence of rights or freedom, my ancestors were put to work growing anything from cotton to tobacco. For centuries, my people fought for equality. Although we are “free” the fight has still remain. As a black women raised in America, I was hit with some harsh realities at a very young age.

The death of a young African American male in 1955 haunted the south and the African American society. Images of Emmett Till hanging in a tree were plastered on television and in newspapers for Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, and David Richmond to see while attending North Carolina A & T College in 1960. These four African American men would soon become known as the Greensboro Four after instigating a sit-in at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their courage and determination ignited a movement to end segregation not only in their state but across the nation. History was being made that day as the young men sat at the counter, customers inside watching as the events unfolded, and the impact of this incident permeating across American’s eyes.

The Tulsa Riot of 1921 was a tragic racial riot that resulted in the periodic destruction of Greenwood, a neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nicknamed “Little Africa”, Greenwood was described as a vibrant community, and was built up by African Americans. This community, however, was completely destroyed by a massive mob of white men, whose anger stemmed from rape allegations of an African American man. Before and after the Tulsa Riot occurred, African Americans of the Greenwood community faced social issues due to the prevalence of racism among white men across the nation.

The Tulsa Race Riot is an event that is quite possibly the most unknown and misconstrued piece of history in the United States of America. When and if it is discussed, it’s taken as a single event that happened in Tulsa and was deadly and very destructive. The many theories of what occurred and how it came to the extreme mob like violence taken on Tulsa’s own civilians. The evidence found suggest there were alternative motives in Tulsa for acquiring land that the black civilians held.

After the emergence of this “new racism”, the lack of comfortability and control is displaying itself today in examples of racially motivated violence that mirror several racist events in pre-Civil Rights history. In August of 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who arrived in rural Mississippi to unknowingly change the dynamic of racism in America, at least he did then. The story goes that while he was in a store, he whistled at a white woman, the wife of storeowner Roy Bryant, who was not present. The woman, Carolyn Bryant, testified later under oath that Emmett asked her for a date, made crude gestures, and then some resulting in Emmett being chased out of the store. A few days later, Emmett was tracked down by Roy Bryant, was

Let’s examine the reality of violence during the Reconstruction Era. In the document, “Southern Horrors- Lynch Laws in All its Phases, by Ida B. Wells-Barnett we see countless examples of the continued violence in the south against African-Americans. The slogan “This is white man’s country and the

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was the culmination of racial tensions both endemic in American society as a whole in the period, and certain tensions peculiar to Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1921, Greenwood and its African American population became the outlet for these often violent tensions seething among Tulsa’s white population. The following paper seeks to shed some further understanding on what motivated and pushed the whites of Tulsa, Oklahoma to such a violent, extreme reaction during the riot.

I liked one definition of intersectionality which I would like to put here. “Intersectionality seeks to provide a tool for analyzing the ways in which gender, race, class and all other forms of identity and distinction, in different contexts, produce situations in which women and men become vulnerable to abuse and discrimination.”(1). When we try to study how the intersection of race, gender, social class, effects humans and how are they connected then it means we are using intersectionality theory. For example what are the problems of white, young, female and what are the problems of black, young female. What will happen if we remove young from the equation and replace it with old? Inequality of gender is clearly defined but inequality of same sex is complicated. If we want to know the problems of women and man then we might just find some sex related issues. But when we talk about just men or women then it’s a different story. I heard that all men are created equal but people use different lens to see it. For example, some time man is called black man or white man, Muslim man or Christian man. They are all men but their gender intersects with other identities and makes them different from one another. When somebody is discriminated on the basis of color, we know this exist. Intersectionality tells us about other kind of discrimination. For example black man with different religion. It means same gender, same color, same language but different religion.

The Ku Klux Klan’s involvement in the Birmingham Church Bombing publicized the need for social change across America, building widespread support for the civil rights cause and rebutting the KKK attempts at repression and violence. The Birmingham church bombings, listed in the Appendix 2, highlight the segregationist repression in the South at the time. The savage attack and the deaths of the girls opened the eyes of the nation in a raw and unpleasant way to the extremes in which inequality had become. International attention to the desperate struggle for civil rights in Birmingham and across the nation was drawn in the aftermath of the event, outraging both whites and blacks. Services and condolences were offered by shocked white Americans following the

Currently in the United States of America, there is a wave a patriotism sweeping across this great land: a feeling of pride in being an American and in being able to call this nation home. The United States is the land of the free and the home of the brave; however, for the African-American citizens of the United States, from the inception of this country to midway through the twentieth century, there was no such thing as freedom, especially in the Deep South. Nowhere is that more evident than in Stories of Scottsboro, an account of the Scottsboro trials of 1931-1937, where nine African-American teenage boys were falsely accused of raping two

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.

Why do Black Lives Matter? What does it mean to me and my community? Black Lives mean a lot and people tend to look over it and not treat it like it should be. What does Black Lives Matter mean to me? Well as a Black Young Adult in America It means a lot to me, because some of those things could have happened to me.

Intersectionality is the study of intersections between different disenfranchised groups or groups of minorities. The theory of intersectionality stems from various socially and culturally constructed categorical groups, who are discriminated against based on their race, class, gender or other social inequalities. Historically, these groups have interacted on multiple levels and are simultaneously oppressed, stigmatized, marginalized through many means, such as indentured servitude, mass incarceration, collateral consequences, etc. Additionally, the issues racism and sexism are intertwined on many levels, and cannot be abolished individually. Therefore, in order to eliminate these different types of oppressions, the system (body of government, society) should be made more

In today's society, sexual assault has not been decreasing but rising due to the fact that caucasian male perpetrators as “white supremacy” (Meadows, 2014) are not getting charged with equal rights versus a colored male perpetrator. A white supremacy label caucasians as the high ranking social class group comparing to a colored ethnicity. So, a caucasian male rapist mindset by all mean is going to repeatedly do sexual assaults to a woman and having no consequences on his actions. Additionally, Meadows (2014) issues different style of arapitsas on hurting the victim by sexual intimacy without having permission from the victim. Since, the victim had sexual being harassed without her will, she will most likely not call in the police and will

The reasons Black women suffer excessively from mistreatment are multifaceted. Racism and sexism are two of the prevalent problems that Black women in America encounter. But because many Black women and men believe racism is a bigger issue than sexism, Black women have a habit of feeling obligated to put race matters ahead of sex-based matters. Even when black women do speak up or pursue support, they habitually experience criticism from people of their communities who believe we are airing out dirty laundry and making ourselves look bad in front of White people.