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RTW Assignment: Summary of Crenshaw

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RTW assignment: Summary of Crenshaw

The debate, going on about discrimination and liberty has come a long way from when it all started. The movements of anti-racism and feminism have contributed a lot in the social and political culture of the twenty first century. People have become much more tolerant and, in many cases, enlightened by the premise of equality. People have begun to accept each other as equals, and due to this the elaborate forms of discrimination have been eradicated from the society. Nowadays, only subtle cases of racism and sexism are being seen and fought against by the activists as well as the state. This paper will give a detailed discussion on an article written by Kimberley Crenshaw who is the executive director of the African American Policy Forum and a professor of law at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, Law Schools ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"oBo1ex7w","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Crenshaw, n.d.)","plainCitation":"(Crenshaw, n.d.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":253,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/DTmO0ro3/items/RCPG2C8N"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/DTmO0ro3/items/RCPG2C8N"],"itemData":{"id":253,"type":"webpage","abstract":"Three decades after putting a name to the concept, there is still much work to be done.","container-title":"Washington Post","language":"en","title":"Opinion | Why intersectionality can’t wait","URL":"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/","author":[{"family":"Crenshaw","given":"Kimberlé"}],"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2020",1,25]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Crenshaw, n.d.). The article discusses a new concept known as inter-sectionality in detail and provides a detailed discussion on the issue at hand.

The three most important ideas form the article are seen below,

The concept of inter-sectionality.

The lack of legislation of the issue.

The understanding of privilege and politics.

The concept of inter-sectionality

The term, intersectionality refers to the concept of multi-layered discrimination. This concept can be fully understood by the use of an example. A good example can be seen when considering the situation where an organization introduces a system which does not give an equal opportunity to, let’s say black women. Now, we can see that from a feminist perspective, women are being hired so there is no problem. On the same wavelength, from a racism perspective, we can say that black men are also being hired, so the legislation that is there to enforce equality of opportunity does not recognize the discrimination taking place.

Lack of legislation

The legislation on the issue is not very robust. This concept is a new one for many individuals in the United States of America. Europe has never been faced with such a situation due to the lack of diversity. The working class of the United States of America needs to come out in harmony to encourage discussion for this issue so that this multi-dimensional form of discrimination is recognized and the houses of power can pass robust legislation regarding it. A case study can be used to understand the sensitivity of this issue. Some time ago, General motors was sued by several black women stating that the company discriminated in the hiring process as well as during employment on the basis of race and color. This case fell through the cracks because of the weak legislation done on the issue.

The understanding of privilege and politics

The basic understanding of privilege varies throughout the political spectrum of the United States of America. The conservatives, most of them, do not even care to recognize the issue and call people talking about the issue as obsessed with identity politics. The democrats, though have a much more progressive attitude towards the issue and are willing to listen to the voices that rise for the solution of such legislative issues.

Conclusion

The issue of inter-sectionality is not as new as the term. The term is probably a few years old but the issue has been an overwhelming reality for ages. The layered sort of racism that an organization may show or make part of its policy is included in the conceptualization of the term. Targeted discrimination, for example against black women can be used as an example of layered discrimination. Robust legislation needs to be done to address this issue.

Works Cited:

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Crenshaw, K. (n.d.). Opinion | Why intersectionality can’t wait. Washington Post. Retrieved January 25, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/