Essay On Intersectionality

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Recommended: History of racism in America

Piercing Presumptions: Is It Possible? Even when life is done right, there is always something there waiting to prove it was done wrong. How does one do everything right? A 1921 community of black people in Tulsa, Oklahoma thought they knew. For the residents of the Tulsa’s Greenwood community, doing everything right meant going to school for an education, owning property, building a successful life for themselves and their families, and creating community in which they could feel safe. Sadly, this was not the case. On May 31st, 1921, whites started a riot in their community, destroying it, leaving many of the residents dead, injured, or with nothing to their names. May 31st, 1921 was the day the residents of the Tulsa’s Greenwood community …show more content…

This is true of both then and now. Intersectionality is the simultaneous existence of multiple parts of one’s identity – race, gender, class, age, occupations, and even location. If intersectionality had not played a part in the Greenwood community’s outcome, it may have yielded a better result. If the residents had only been seen as a single, predominate part of their identity, black, they may have not been essentially exterminated. Kimberle Crenshaw uses the concept of intersectionality to analyze the experiences of different kinds of people based on a multidimensional platform, so a wealthy black woman experiences life differently than a poor white man. Tulsa’s Greenwood community was looked at from an intersectional viewpoint, thus putting them above many other black people across the country. Whites saw it not only as a black community, but also successful and wealthy, which was a threat to their white …show more content…

By choosing to attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), this generation also makes the choice of going to a school where they are not just a statistic. They are in a nurturing environment which gives them a sense of safety. Learning in an environment in which they do not feel threatened, but equipped to combat a society in which they are unwanted. Investing in an HBCU education is not an investment made in order to self-segregate, but rather one made to prepare students to live in a society in which they are, like Tulsa’s Greenwood community, not tolerated. This resistance of expectations and openness to preparation allows this generation to withstand such a society, and possibly

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