In Kimberle Crenshaw's definition of intersectionality there are three different aspects that make up the term, separated as followed: Structural, Political, and Representational. In this essay, I will first explain Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality. I will then explain how intersectionality contributes to Critical Race Theory in furthering the critical understanding of law, mainly by using her examples of violence against women of color. I will also provide my own examples of intersectionality, which is the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster as it supports Crenshaw's understanding and the notion of identity politics she addressed. Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality suggests we take into account the intergroup and intra-group differences …show more content…
It attempts to bridge a connection of the classification of women of color presented by the cultural imagery in western society. The controversy of June 1990, with the 2 Live Crew scandal illustrates the sort influence pop-culture imagery has on identity. In the case members of the black and male rap group was arrested and charged under Florida Obscenity Statue (Crenshaw 1283). With the rap's group sexual explicit lyrics, “Nasty” a debate over the controversy of rap groups being sexist and racists unfolded (Crenshaw 1283). An analysis of representational intersectionality revealed the images within popular culture contributed to a misogynistic view by men, but at the same time physically sexualized women of color (Crenshaw 1285). But to avoid intragroup complications that dealt with the issues such as misogyny, racism, and sexism as multiple intersectionality, the issue was taken out of context in the judge's decision and the issue was never addressed (Crenshaw 1288-89). This is problematic as the separation of these contexts, allow for issues such as violence of women to be made light in the legal system - as it contributes to the overly sexualized and objectification of women of color by men. Therefore, a …show more content…
In respects to US governmental officials such as the Bush administration at the time this debate would be safer classified as a class issue due to assumed charge tension of bringing up the race card. However contrary to their beliefs, New Orleans is home to an abundance of both Black and poor Americans than any other racial groups living there, in which nonetheless classified this debate as an intersectionality of the two variables - but I will elucidate this point further by explaining how this event can be classified as a race and gender though the experiences of women of color during the crisis. On Sunday August 8th, 2005 instead of sending aid to evacuate those who could not make it in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster the people were provided insufficient help and left stranded on rooftops (Willinger 1-2). The relief efforts carried out by the Bush administration in the Katrina disaster was nothing, but pitiful as it revealed the failures of the U.S. government - where it lacked the funds and means to evacuate groups living in deprived and affected areas of New Orleans - many who were women of color left in disadvantaged position in prior and aftermath. In addition, it revealed the social facts already known in the discriminatory history of New Orleans with linkage of race and gender (Willinger
Ranikine’s addresses the light upon the failed judicial systems, micro aggressions, pain and agony faced by the black people, white privilege, and all the racial and institutional discrimination as well as the police brutality and injustice against the blacks; The book exposes that, even after the abolition of slavery, how the racism still existed and felt by the colored community in the form of recently emerged ‘Micro aggressions in this modern world’. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen explores the daily life situations between blacks and whites and reveals how little offensive denigrating conversations in the form of micro-aggressions were intentionally conveyed to the black people by the whites and how these racial comments fuel the frustrations and anger among the blacks. She gathered the various incidents, where the black people suffered this pain. This shows the white’s extraordinary powers to oppress the black community and the failure of the legal system Rankine also shares the horrible tragedy of Hurricane Katrina experienced by the black community, where they struggled for their survival before and post the hurricane catastrophes.
Tragedy has the ability to simultaneously bring people together and push them apart. Judith Cofer, the writer of “American History,” explores the theme of tragedy when she dwells upon the day when tragedy struck the lives of many. In her essay, she remembers the day former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Numerous people in her community are devastated by JFK’s unexpected death because they can relate to the fact that he stood for equality of culture, race, and gender. However, Cofer lacks the understanding of JFK’s goal, so her mother tries to expose the truth of her identity to her. Although Cofer’s mother wants to protect her, evidence from the text proves that unraveling the truth of racial prejudice is agonizing and
However, intersectionality originates separately from its current application. As a development from Black feminist thought, intersectionality originates from Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a Black feminist legal scholar (Carastathis 2014, p 304-305). Yet, the notion of multiple oppressions was not created with intersectionality or even third-wave feminism but in the 1970’s as Frances Beal’s “double jeopardy” as well as several other iterations of the concept through Black feminist thought, as explained by Carastathis (2014, p 305). The application of intersectionality in cases of age, sexuality, and class is an extrapolation of “double jeopardy” which was originally created to address the experiences of black women. In current scholarship, intersectionality is utilized as a theory, methodology, or tool to discuss how identities are never independent, monolithic experiences (Carastathis 2014, p 307). Rebecca Ann Lind writes in an introduction for Race/Gender/Media: “The variety of social groups noted above raises an important issue: Each of us is a product of a combination of experiences and identities, rooted in a variety of socially constructed classifications” (2004, 5). Applying double jeopardy and intersectional concepts to the protagonists of Grace and Frankie without acknowledging its origins to measure race exhibits poor scholarship and erasure of Black
Some people decided not to evacuate prior to being told of the disaster heading their way. Other Americans chose to leave as early as a month in advance. Thousands of people had to be evacuated. You could see on the news reports of people on top of their rooftops, being swept away in the flooding of waters, sitting and waiting on help from responders or those that could help evacuate. Thousands of evacuees where African Americans who chose to hold on to faith beliefs, or riding out the storm, because they survived other hurricanes before. With these particular issues, some of the responses to Hurricane Katrina started to become racially motivated.The media focused on African-Americans and people in poverty. One proof that news medias were biased against African-Americans—one image showed a black person carrying supplies labelled as ‘looting’, while a white person in an identical situation was labelled as ‘finding’ supplies (Wiley & Sons 2007).
Long before the storm hit New Orleans there was already a divide in the city. The city seemed to be divided by race with affluent whites living in the cities nicer neighborhoods which unsurprisingly just happened to be located at higher altitudes. While less affluent African Americans tended to reside in neighborhoods at lower altitudes. According to a report titled Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Return Migration to New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina, the segregation in the city had been historically low compared to the rest of the country however “by 2000, the standard index of black–white segregation showed New Orleans to have reached, and even gone a bit beyond, the national average” (Fussell, Elizabeth) When the storm hit 2005 the effect that this seemingly unnoticed difference was magnified as it became apparent that the difference in altitudes would lead to extremely different outcomes for the residents in the different neighborhoods. Acco...
Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating tragedies to ever hit North America. It claimed the lives of over 900 people from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Unfortunately, that is not why a majority of people in America remember. As many know, these three states in the heart of the Deep South represent some of the poorest in the country. After the storm, the government was disgracefully slow to respond to the cause. Health care was in an overwhelming shortage. Depending on where people lived, determined their chances for survival. Race and class are believed to be the main factors in determined who was put at the top of the priority list. The purpose of this essay to explain how these factors contributed to the pitiful response
The novel challenges heteronormative ideology by demonstrating intersectionality and how each aspect of Krissy is vital to who she is. Intersectionality is incredibly prominent in the novel, as Krissy has a multitude of aspects that inform her identity. Heteronormative ideology is about looking at heterosexuality as the norm, and the un-questioned ‘given’. Intersectionality in this novel is key to Krissy’s identity, and her identity is unique because she is not binaried. Krissy’s gender identity, biological sex, her athletic career, title as Homecoming Queen, her mother passing away, her boyfriend dumping her, and her experiences with public rejection and her classmates actions, are all a part of who she is. At one doctors appointment, Krissy
The book, There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster, edited by Chester Hartman and Gregory D. Squires, is a compilation of essays that discuss various elements of the Hurricane Katrina disaster that relate to class and race. While each essay focuses on a different topic within the scope of the disaster, they all embody a singular set of ethics that encompass a belief in equality among all citizens regardless of race and class. The majority of the authors assign the persistent and systemic income and racial inequality as the root cause of the suffering dealt to the citizens of the Gulf coast region in the wake of the hurricane. They further charge the local, state and federal governments with a range of culpability ranging from mere inefficiency
Even though it is the responsibility of the federal and state governments to aid citizens during times of disaster, the people devastated by Hurricane Katrina were not effectively facilitated as according to their rights as citizens of the United States. The government’s failures to deliver assistance to citizens stem from inadequate protection systems in place before the storm even struck. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security were the two largest incumbents in the wake of the storm. The failure of these agencies rests on the shoulders of those chosen to head the agency. These directors, appointed by then president George W. Bush, were not capable of leading large government agencies through a crisis, let alone a disaster the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina. Along with the federal government, the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans did not do enough to lesseb the damage caused by the storm, and forced thousands of poorer citizens to remain in cramped and unsanitary conditions for extended periods of time. The culmination of federal, state, and local government’s failures in suppressing and repairing the damage of Hurricane Katrina to a level acceptable for citizens of the United States is a denial of the rights citizens of the United States hold.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) comes from the scholarship of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) which has observed the continuing domination and power of some groups such males and whites over some other groups and it has argued that political and social change was necessary (Taylor, 2009). Derrick A. Bell, an African American, was the first who had tried to establish an agenda in which colonialism, race, and racism would have an important role in intellectual legal...
Often identity is only thought of as a collection of individual characteristics that are independent such as sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, etc. Intersectionality is when these characteristics are transformed by one another and “tend to collapse into one another in the context of everyday life”. Dorothy Allison wrote Two of Three Things I Know for Sure where she explains aspects of her life through chronological stories revealing details and providing the reader with lessons she learned throughout her experiences. This book can be read with an intersectionality lens focusing on the moments or stories where gendered poverty shapes people’s experience of sex and sexuality as well as how gender, sexuality, and class transforms whiteness into a stigmatizing attribute rather than it’s usual power given attribute. Allison’s scene with her Aunt Maudy and the scene with her girlfriend both show intersectionality in different aspects and times of Allison’s life.
Print culture utilized rape announcements to perpetuate and add to the wedge between the races, and further promote the superiority of the white race. Through print culture, rape was represented as a “black-on-white” crime, with any reported “white” rapes being an anomaly (200). When a white man was convicted of rape, his race was typically left out of the description of the crime (201). White men for both their purity and their immorality used white women; when a black man raped a white woman, she was pure and innocent, but when a white woman charged a white man with rape, her character was tarnished and she was portrayed as unchaste (206).
In relation to the Critical Race Theory, the idea of the “gap between law, politics, economics, and sociological reality of racialized lives” (Critical Race Theory slides). The critical race theory gives us a guide to analyze privileges and hardships that comes across different races and gender. For example, analyzing how and why a “black” or “indigenous” woman may experience more hardships versus not only a “white” man, but a “white”
Spelman College, a black liberal arts college for women, has taken a stand against the patriarchy in hip-hop, starting with black rapper Nelly (Holsendolph, 2005, p. 1). Feminists within the college, upon watching the rapper’s music video, entitled “Tip Drill,” held protests against allowing him to “present his plan to promote his bone marrow education program” at the school (Holsendolph, 2005, p. 1). When Nelly decided to cancel his presentation, protesters took a major step in the fight against misogyny, which fueled the idea that with enough effort, other misogynistic rappers would realize the harm they were doing to the black female population (Holsendolph, 2005, p. 1). The college has since joined with Essence magazine to sponsor “Take Back the Music” (Holsendolph, 2005, p. 1). This initiative lasted one whole week, and focused on “the controversy over hip-hop images” (Holsendolph, 2005, p. 2). Moya Bailey, a student and leader of the Spelman movement against the controversy of rap, has stated that the battle for a more appropriate representation of black women in hip-hop was formed on a “personal” level (Holsendolph, 2005, p. 2). She has been quoted to believe, along with many other students attending Spelman, that “out of the many issues [hip-hop raises with respect to black women] is the question of
N.W.A, Ice T, and 2 Live Crew changed the fabric of hip-hop by commercializing suggestive themes and portraying women as objects. Joan Smith defines misogyny as a hatred or disdain towards women. It is the belief that diminishes women to objects for men’s ownership, use, or abuse. (Smith, 1991) According to Joan, misogyny assumes many characteristics, it reveals itself in forms that are dictated by race, education, social class, religion and wealth. The primal characteristic of misogyny is its pervasiveness. In the article Women, Pop Music, and Pornography Meredith Levande, identifies how misogyny became pervasive, she tells us that “paper-view-television and the internet removed the final barriers between consumer and product” (Levande, 296) As soon as these obstacles were removed, images of women in popular media became increasingly suggestive and mirrored pornographic behaviors, attitudes and body language. Another issue was cross-ownership. There was a time when the government didn’t allow one company to own several TV stations, local newspapers, or radio stations, but after 2003 the law was revised, the power was put back in the hands of large corporations. This allowed cross-ownership of new & old media to become limitless. Fast forward to 2015 and we can see the affects of cross-ownership, large