Intersectionality Essay

Intersectionality is “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage” (Dictionary.com). Throughout this course so far, we’ve read various essays from a number of authors, each offering different viewpoints of intersectionality experienced by various groups of people and using that in order to get their points across. Of course, you cannot have an analytical discussion without having relevant evidence to back up your arguments. In order for their essays to be considered reliable, they had to obtain their information from heterogeneous sources, which built up their arguments

Marlese Durr and Adia M. Harvey Wingfield chose to address this topic by collecting data from two sources. “One involved using direct participant observation from 2005 to 2007 while in conversation with 20 African American women over occupational mobility issues” (Durr, Wingfield, 195). They had a specific criteria for the women they chose for this set of data, with them all being college graduates between 30 to 55 years of age who were employed in professional or managerial positions “that contained less than 10 black employees throughout the levels of administration or management, and required working effectively in workgroups” (Durr, Wingfield, 196). The second set of data they obtained was a little different from the first; Durr and Wingfield obtained a larger sample of 25 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with African American professionals (196). The respondents were found due to a snowball sample, and they were “employed in various professional posts in work environments where they estimated African Americans constituted 10 percent or fewer of professional employees” (Durr, Wingfield, 196). Both of these sources aided in their research to discover the experiences women of color deal with on a daily basis in a professional setting and acted as a guide to answer the specific questions they posed