2.2 Partie II, Chapitre II
Note47: Smith: Black legal scholar
Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term « intersectionality» in her
insightful 1989 essay, « Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex:
A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and
Antiracist Politics.» The concept of intersectionality is not an abstract
notion but a description of the way multiple oppressions are experienced.
Indeed, Crenshaw uses the following analogy, referring to a traffic
intersection, or crossroad, to concretize the concept: Consider an analogy to
traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions.
Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one
direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an
intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions
and,
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sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is
harmed because she is in an intersection, her injury could result from sex
discrimination or race discrimination. . . . But it is not always easy to
reconstruct an accident: Sometimes the skid marks and the injuries simply
indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to determine
which driver caused the harm. Crenshaw argues that Black women are
discriminated against in ways that often do not fit neatly within the legal
categories of either « racism» or « sexism»--but as a
combination of both racism and sexism. Yet the legal system has generally
defined sexism as based upon an unspoken reference to the injustices confronted
by all (including white) women, while defining racism to refer to those faced
by all (including male) Blacks and other people of color. This framework
frequently renders Black women legally « invisible» and without legal
recourse. Since the times of slavery, Black women have eloquently described the
multiple oppressions of race, class, and gender--referring to this concept as
« interlocking oppressions,» « simultaneous oppressions,»
« double jeopardy,» « triple jeopardy» or any number of
descriptive terms. Like most other Black feminists, Crenshaw emphasizes the
importance of Sojourner Truth's famous « Ain't I a Woman?» speech
delivered to the 1851 Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio: That man over there
says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and
to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over
mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look
at my arm! I could have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no
man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as
a man-- when I could get it--and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I
have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and
when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a
woman? Crenshaw draws a parallel between Truth's experience with the white
suffrage movement and Black women's experience with modern feminism, arguing,
« When feminist theory and politics that claim to reflect women's
experiences and women's aspirations do not include or speak to Black women,
Black women must ask, « Ain't we women?» Crenshaw's political aims
reach further than addressing flaws in the legal system. She argues that Black
women are frequently absent from analyses of either gender oppression or
racism, since the former focuses primarily on the experiences of white women
and the latter on Black men. She seeks to challenge both feminist and
antiracist theory and practice that neglect to « accurately reflect the
interaction of race and gender,» arguing that « because the
intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any
analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently
address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.»
Crenshaw argues that a key aspect
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of intersectionality lies in its recognition that multiple
oppressions are not each suffered separately but rather as a single,
synthesized experience. This has enormous significance at the very practical
level of movement building. While all women are oppressed as women, no movement
can claim to speak for all women unless it speaks for women who also face the
consequences of racism--which place women of color disproportionately in the
ranks of the working class and the poor. Race and class therefore must be
central to the project of women's liberation if it is to be meaningful to those
women who are most oppressed by the system. The widely accepted narrative of
the modern feminist movement is that it initially involved white women
beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, who were later joined by women of
color following in their footsteps. But this narrative is factually incorrect.
Decades before the rise of the modern women's liberation movement, Black women
were organizing against their systematic rape at the hands of white racist men.
Women civil rights activists, including Rosa Parks, were part of a vocal
grassroots movement to defend Black women subject to racist sexual assaults--in
an intersection of oppression unique to Black women historically in the United
States.
Note 48: Garza: When you design an event /
campaign / et cetera based on the work of queer Black women, don't invite them
to participate in shaping it, but ask them to provide materials and ideas for
next steps for said event, that is racism in practice. It's also
hetero-patriarchal. Straight men, unintentionally or intentionally, have taken
the work of queer Black women and erased our contributions. Perhaps if we were
the charismatic Black men many are rallying around these days, it would have
been a different story, but being Black queer women in this society (and
apparently within these movements) tends to equal invisibility and non-
relevancy. Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond
extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. It goes beyond
the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black communities,
which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black,
keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters,
queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at
all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks,
disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all
Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been
marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the
Black liberation movement. When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about
the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and
dignity. It is an acknowledgement Black poverty and genocide is state violence.
It is an acknowledgment that 1 million Black people are locked in cages in this
country-one half of all people in prisons or
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jails-is an act of state violence. It is an acknowledgment
that Black women continue to bear the burden of a relentless assault on our
children and our families and that assault is an act of state violence. Black
queer and trans folks bearing a unique burden in a hetero-patriarchal society
that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits
off of us is state violence; the fact that 500,000 Black people in the US are
undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows is state violence;.the
fact that Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict
and war is state violence; Black folks living with disabilities and different
abilities bear the burden of state-sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt
to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by White supremacy is state
violence. And the fact is that the lives of Black people--not ALL people--exist
within these conditions is consequence of state violence.» In 2014,
hetero-patriarchy and anti-Black racism within our movement is real and felt.
It's killing us and it's killing our potential to build power for
transformative social change. When you adopt the work of queer women of color,
don't name or recognize it, and promote it as if it has no history of its own
such actions are problematic. When I use Assata's powerful demand in my
organizing work, I always begin by sharing where it comes from, sharing about
Assata's significance to the Black Liberation Movement, what it's political
purpose and message is, and why it's important in our context.»
Note 49:Esposito: « Police in the United
States kill far more people than do police in other advanced industrial
democracies (13). While a sub- stantial body of evidence shows that people of
color, especially African Americans, are at greater risk for experiencing crim-
inal justice contact and police-involved harm than are whites (14-19), we lack
basic estimates of the prevalence of police- involved deaths, largely due to
the absence of definitive official data. Among all groups, black men and boys
face the highest life- time risk of being killed by police. Our models predict
that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys will be killed by police over the life
course (96 [77, 120] per 100,000). Women's lifetime risk of being killed by
police is about 20 times lower than men's risk. Among women and girls, black
women's and American Indian/Alaska Native women's risk is highest; we expect
between 2.4 and 5.4 black women and girls to be killed by police over the life
course per 100,000 at current rates.
Between the ages of 25 y and 29 y, black men are killed by
police at a rate between 2.8 and 4.1 per 100,000. Women's risk of being killed
by police use of force is about an order of magnitude lower than men's risk at
all ages, as shown in Fig. 4. Between the ages of 25 y and 29 y, we estimate a
median mortality risk of 0.12 per 100,000 for black women. Our analysis shows
that the risk of being killed by police is jointly patterned by one's race,
gender, and age. Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men, and
young men of color face an
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exceptionally high risk of being killed by police.
Inequalities in risk are pronounced throughout the life course. This study
reinforces calls to treat police violence as a public health issue (1, 4).Rates
of death have increased by as much as 50% since 2008. Also note that while
black people remain dispropor- tionately more likely than white people to be
killed by police, the share of white deaths has been increasing in recent
years, The meaning of race, age, and gender for police vio- lence emerges in
the interactions between how officers perceive an individual's identity and the
salience of these classifications for perceptions of criminality, belonging,
and dangerousness (1, 10, 25, 39). Future work should closely consider how
place, race, gender, age, social class, and disability intersectionality
structure exposure to violence (26).»
Note 50:Jackson: Black rebellion and protest,
though, have historically never been coupled with allegiance to American
democracy. Today, peaceful demonstrations and violent riots alike have erupted
across the country in response to police brutality and the killings of George
Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. Yet the language used to refer to
protesters has included looters, thugs, and even claims that they are
un-American. The philosophy of force and violence to obtain freedom has long
been employed by white people and explicitly denied to black Americans. The
numerous slave rebellions led by Gabriel Prosser, Charles Deslondes, and Nat
Turner were all attempts to gain freedom with force. Throughout the 20th
century, black Americans armed themselves in the face of white mobs and
organized protection for their freedom marches. Accordingly, when George Floyd,
Breonna Taylor, and so many others were killed by police, black people and
their allies chose to rise up. Americans like to harken back to the
civil-rights era as a moment of nonviolence and civil disobedience. But that
movement was an orchestrated response to violence. Violence at the voting
booth. Violence at the lunch counter. Violence that bombed a church with four
little black girls inside. Violence that left a bloated black boy in an open
casket. Violence that left a black husband and father murdered in his driveway.
The movement ended with the violent death of Martin Luther King Jr. And his
death ignited riots in more than 100 cities.
Note 51: Buchanan: Four recent polls --
including one released this week by Civis Analytics, a data science firm that
works with businesses and Democratic campaigns -- suggest that about 15 million
to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations
over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks. Black Lives Matter
has been around since 2013, but there's been a big shift in public opinion
about the movement as well as broader support for recent protests. A deluge of
public support from organizations like the N.F.L. and NASCAR for Black Lives
Matter may have also encouraged supporters who typically would sit on the
sidelines to get involved. The protests may also be benefitting from a country
that is
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more conditioned to protesting. The adversarial stance that
the Trump administration has taken on issues like guns, climate change and
immigration has led to more protests than under any other presidency since the
Cold War. According to a poll from The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family
Foundation, one in five Americans said that they had participated in a protest
since the start of the Trump administration, and 19 percent said they were new
to protesting. More than 40 percent of counties in the United States -- at
least 1,360 -- have had a protest. Unlike with past Black Lives Matter
protests, nearly 95 percent of counties that had a protest recently are
majority white, and nearly three-quarters of the counties are more than 75
percent white. According to the Civis Analytics poll, the movement appears to
have attracted protesters who are younger and wealthier. The age group with the
largest share of protesters was people under 35 and the income group with the
largest share of protesters was those earning more than $150,000. Half of those
who said they protested said that this was their first time getting involved
with a form of activism or demonstration. A majority said that they watched a
video of police violence toward protesters or the Black community within the
last year. And of those people, half said that it made them more supportive of
the Black Lives Matter movement.The protests are colliding with another
watershed moment: the country's most devastating pandemic in modern history.
« With being home and not being able to do as much, that might be
amplifying something that is already sort of critical, something that's already
a powerful catalyst, and that is the video,» said Daniel Q. Gillion, a
professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has written several books on
protests and politics. « If you aren't moved by the George Floyd video,
you have nothing in you,» he said. « And that catalyst can now be
amplified by the fact that individuals probably have more time to engage in
protest activity.
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