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

and furthered their points. I’ve chosen a few of my favorite essays I’ve read thus far and plan on discussing the sources of information used in each piece, then analyze what questions they are trying to answer, and finish with discussing how the authors have used gender, race and class as categories of analysis.
“Keep Your “N” in Check”
“Keep Your “N” in Check”, a phrase said by a black professional named Kenya, was written to address the experiences of women of color in a professional work environment.

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

beforehand.
Durr and Wingfield posed many questions in relation to the way women of color experience the professional workforce. Their questions “centered on whether and when respondents had to control emotions at work, in response to what occurrences, the frequency of this practice, and the nature of the emotions being controlled” (Durr, Wingfield, 196). In shorter words, they wanted to find out what specific changes women of color made towards their themselves in order to not be labeled as the stereotypical angry black women, something that their white coworkers don’t have to experience. Based on the data they received, they were very useful in terms of answering the questions they posed. They discovered that many of the women felt as though they had to play a certain role while at work, and often felt isolated and tended to withhold back a lot when it came to addressing their true feelings towards a topic.
In terms of their essay, Durr and Wingfield used gender and race as the main categories of their analysis. Gender already plays as an issue within the workforce, with women being expected to act, look, speak and do things a certain way. “For women of color, especially those in professional posts, these disadvantages are further complicated by race” (Durr, Wingfield, 194). Both gender and race were used in order to showcase how women of color have double disadvantage when it comes to their professional careers.