We Can Not Deny Society 's Progression Of Social Equality Essay

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.

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.

Equality is something Americans strive to provide and maintain. It has become an integral and necessary part of our mosaic culture. Even now to the point that when people think of America, they naturally think of freedom and equality. People of many different races, disabilities and creeds have come to the United States seeking the impartiality upon which this country was founded. The institutions of this country have relied upon it, just as it was the created by the events in the laying of moral foundations. The expression of America's citizens plays an extremely significant role in the history of equality in American society. In the pursuit of equality and the "American Dream," people have authored inspiring

Racism in the United States has not remained the same over time since its creation. Racism has shifted, changed, and shaped into unrecognizable ways that fit into the fabric of the American society to render it nearly invisible to the majority of Americans. Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness shatters this dominantly held belief. The New Jim Crow makes a reader profoundly question whether the high rates of incarceration in the United States is an attempt to maintain blacks as an underclass. Michelle Alexander makes the assertion that “[w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” using the criminal justice system and colorblind rhetoric. (Alexander 2). The result is a population of Black and Latino men who face barriers and deprivation of rights as did Blacks during the Jim Crow era. Therefore, mass incarceration has become the new Jim Crow.

Chapter#2 discusses the meaning of intersectionality. It also discusses ways to apply intersectional analysis to research on racism. This chapter also informs its readers on how to design a research on perceived racism.

From our text, Race, Class, and Gender, we read Unit III E: The Structure of Social Institutions; The State and Violence: Policing the National Body: Sex, Race, and Criminalization; The Color of Justice; Rape, racism, and the Law; and Interpreting and Experiencing Anti-Queer Violence : Race, Class, and Gender Differences among LGBT Hate Crime Victims. We also encountered and excerpt from Social Work Practice With a Difference; The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. The first four reading from our text explore the association of the manner in which state power organizes race, class, and gender. We also get a view of how the intersectional approach of race, class, and gender may help us to understand some forms

“Oppression, you seek population control, Oppression, to divide and conquer is your goal, Oppression, I swear hatred is your home, Oppression, you mean me only harm.” (Harper). Oppression is a serious issue in our society today. Although it may be less serious than the past it is still a matter of importance, having to deal with sexism, religion and most importantly racial issues. Throughout the decades we have seen various ethnicities deal with racial oppressions. Many of the problems of the past still exist, and they may push the victims of the oppression beyond the emotional point of no return. A Hispanic male such as myself, can be the victim of several types of oppressions, including racial oppression.

The following piece of work will discuss racism within the criminal justice system by viewing the Black Lives Matter movement, the roles of law enforcement and how that effects citizens, and potential solutions to the problems in the system. Within our criminal justice system, it is evident that there is a problem by the ratio of blacks in prison, and the number of police brutality cases in the country.

Intersectionality is seen as the basis for understanding how topics such as race, gender, class and more all come together to define an individual and their societal patterns. An example of intersectionality at work can be explored through “Leith Mullings: Intersectionality among “Race,” Gender, and Class” as mentioned in “Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age by Kenneth J, Guest, (p. 405).” In the 1990s, Mullings conducted a study called the Harlem Birth Right Project. It overviewed the effect of class, race and gender on women and the infant mortality rate. The study focused on Harlem, a poor, primarily African-American sector of New York city. Mullings and her team found that poor living standards, pollution, and many other factors

In Punished: policing the lives of Black and Latino by Victor Rios Oakland boys are studied in an ethnography. The purpose of the ethnography was to examine the how the boys interacted with themselves, the education system and the justice system. The purpose of this essay is to review what Rios has witnessed and recorded, in his book, and look through the lens of different sociological theories and theorists. These Theories and theorists Rios himself used when describing the behavior.

Taking into consideration my early childhood, youth and adolescence, I could say that I was surrounded by people, who were friendly and shared common cultural values. However, with the hindsight at my whole life, I could say why the sense of institutional racism touches me so deeply. I was raised by my mother and my grandmother, both of whom could not read and write. Thus, for the illiterate people there were no chances to have higher status in the society. The only way to survive for them was hard physical work. Institutional racism, as a form of oppression, is more consequential and involves policies and acts that affect a large number of people. Life of my family is only one example of its impact. Even though, a lot of time has passed since then, the most recent incidents with Rodney King, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmer, illustrate how a black man continues to be viewed as a menace to society in America (Blumenfeld, 2010).

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

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.

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

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