The urgency of intersectionality

I'd like to try something new.

Those of you who are able,

please stand up.

Okay, so I'm going to name some names.

When you hear a name
that you don't recognize,

you can't tell me anything about them,

I'd like you to take a seat,

and stay seated.

The last person standing,
we're going to see what they know.

Okay?

(Laughter)

All right.

Eric Garner.

Mike Brown.

Tamir Rice.

Freddie Gray.

So those of you who are still standing,

I'd like you to turn around
and take a look.

I'd say half to most of the people
are still standing.

So let's continue.

Michelle Cusseaux.

Tanisha Anderson.

Ara Russer.

Meagan Hockaday.

So if we look around again, there are
about four people still standing,

and actually I'm not going
to put you on the spot.

I just say that to encourage transparency,

so you can be seated.

(Laughter)

So those of you who recognized
the first group of names know

that these were African-Americans
who have been killed by the police

over the last two and a half years.

What you may not know is that
the other list is also

African-Americans who have been killed
within the last two years.

Only one thing distinguishes
the names that you know

from the names that you don't know:

gender.

So let me first let you know
that there's nothing at all distinct

about this audience

that explains the patterns of recognition
that we've just seen.

I've done this exercise
dozens of times around the country.

I've done it to women's
rights organizations.

I've done it with civil rights groups.

I've done it with professors.
I've done it with students.

I've done it with psychologists.
I've done it with sociologists.

I've done it even with
progressive members of Congress.

And everywhere, the awareness
of the level of police violence

that black women experience

is exceedingly low.

Now, it is surprising, isn't it,
that this would be the case.

I mean, there are two issues
involved here.

There's police violence
against African-Americans,

and there's violence against women,

two issues that have been
talked about a lot lately.

But when we think about
who is implicated by these problems,

when we think about who is
victimized by these problems,

the names of these black women
never come to mind.

Now, communications experts tell us

that when facts do not fit
with the available frames,

people have a difficult time
incorporating new facts

into their way of thinking
about a problem.

These women's names have
slipped through our consciousness

because there are no frames
for us to see them,

no frames for us to remember them,

no frames for us to hold them.

As a consequence,

reporters don't lead with them,

policymakers don't think about them,

and politicians aren't encouraged
or demanded that they speak to them.

Now you might ask,

why does a frame matter?

I mean, after all,

an issue that affects black people
and an issue that affects women,

wouldn't that necessarily include
black people who are women

and women who are black people?

Well, the simple answer is
that this is a trickle-down approach

to social justice, and many times

it just doesn't work.

Without frames that allow us to see
how social problems impact

all the members of a targeted group,

many will fall through the cracks
of our movements,

meant to suffer in virtual isolation.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

Many years ago, I began to use
the term "intersectionality"

to deal with the fact that many
of our social justice problems

like racism and sexism

are often overlapping,

creating multiple levels
of social injustice.

Now, the experience that gave rise

to intersectionality
was my chance encounter

with a woman named Emma Degraffenreed.

Emma Degraffenreed was an
African-American woman,

a working wife, and a mother.

I actually read about Emma's story

from the pages of a legal opinion

written by a judge who had
dismissed Emma's claim

of race and gender discrimination

against a local car manufacturing plant.

Emma, like so many African-American women,

sought better employment
for her family and for others.

She wanted to create a better life
for her children and for her family.

But she applied for a job,

and she was not hired,

and she believed that she was not hired
because she was a black woman.

Now, the judge in question
dismissed Emma's suit,

and the argument
for dismissing the suit was

that the employer did hire
African-Americans

and the employer hired women.

The real problem, though, that the judge
was not willing to acknowledge

was what Emma was actually trying to say,

that the African-Americans
that were hired,

usually for industrial jobs,
maintenance jobs, were all men,

and the women that were hired, usually
for secretarial or front office work,

were all white.

Only if the court was able to see
how these policies came together

would he be able to see
the double discrimination

that Emma Degraffenreed was facing.

But the court refused to allow Emma

to put two causes of action together

to tell her story

because he believed that,
by allowing her to do that,

she would be able to have
preferential treatment.

She would have an advantage
by having two swings at the bat,

when African-American men and white women
only had one swing at the bat.

But of course, neither
African-American men or white women

needed to combine a race
and gender discrimination claim

to tell the story of the discrimination
they were experiencing.

Why wasn't the real unfairness

laws refusal to protect
African-American women

simply because their experiences
weren't exactly the same

as white women
and African-American men?

Rather than broadening the frame
to include African-American women,

the court simply tossed their case
completely out of court.

Now, as a student
of anti-discrimination law,

as a feminist,

as an anti-racist,

I was struck by this case.

It felt to me like injustice squared.

So first of all,

black women weren't allowed
to work at the plant.

Second of all, the court
doubled down on this exclusion

by making it legally inconsequential.

And to boot, there was
no name for this problem.

And we all know that,
where there's no name for a problem,

you can't see a problem,
and when you can't see a problem,

you pretty much can't solve it.

Many years later, I had come to recognize
that the problem that Emma was facing

was a framing problem.

The frame that the court was using
to see gender discrimination

or to see race discrimination was partial

and it was distorting.

For me, the challenge that I faced was

trying to figure out whether there was
an alternative narrative,

a prism that would allow us to see
Emma's dilemma,

a prism that would allow us
to rescue her from the cracks in the law,

that would allow judges to see her story.

So it occurred to me, maybe
a simple analogy to an intersection

might allow judges to better see
Emma's dilemma.

So if we think about this intersection,
the roads to the intersection would be

the way that the work force
was structured by race and by gender,

and then the traffic in those roads
would be the hiring policies

and the other practices
that ran through those roads.

Now, because Emma was
both black and female,

she was positioned precisely
where those roads overlapped,

experiencing the simultaneous impact

of the company's gender
and race traffic.

The law, the law is like
that ambulance that shows up

and is ready to treat Emma
only if it can be shown

that she was harmed
on the race road or the gender road

but not where those roads intersected.

So what do you call being impacted
by multiple forces

and then abandoned to fend for yourself?

Intersectionality seemed to do it for me.

I would go on to learn that
African-American women,

like other women of color,

like other socially marginalized people
all over the world,

were facing all kinds
of dilemmas and challenges

as a consequence of intersectionality,

intersections of race and gender,

of heterosexism, transphobia,
xenophobia, ablism,

all of these social dynamics come together

and create challenges

that are sometimes quite unique.

But in the same way

that intersectionality

raised our awareness to the way
that black women live their lives,

it also exposes the tragic circumstances

under which African-American women die.

Police violence against black women

is very real.

The level of violence
that black women face

is such that it's not surprising

that some of them do not survive
their encounters with police.

Black girls as young as seven,

great grandmothers as old as 95,

have been killed by the police.

They've been killed in their living rooms,

in their bedrooms.

They've been killed in their cars.

They've been killed on the street.

They've been killed
in front of their parents

and they've been killed
in front of their children.

They have been shot to death.

They have bene stomped to death.

They have been suffocated to death.

They have been manhandled to death.

They have been tasered to death.

They've been killed when they've
called for help.

They've been killed when they
were alone,

and they've been killed
when they were with others.

They've been killed shopping while black,

driving while black,

having a mental disability while black,

having a domestic disturbance while black.

They've even been killed
being homeless while black.

They've been killed
talking on the cell phone,

laughing with friends,

sitting in a car reported as stolen,

and making a u-turn
in front of a White House

with an infant strapped
in the back seat of the car.

Why don't we know these stories?

Why is it that their lost lives

don't generate the same amount
of media attention and communal outcry

as the lost lives
of their fallen brothers?

It's time for a change.

So what can we do?

In 2014, the African-American
Policy Forum began to demand

that we "say her name"

at rallies, at protests,

at conferences, at meetings,

anywhere and everywhere

that state violence against black bodies
is being discussed.

But saying her name is not enough.

We have to be willing to do more.

We have to be willing to bear witness,

to bear witness to the often
painful realities

that we would just rather not confront,

the everyday violence and humiliation

that many black women have had to face,

black women across color,

age, gender expression,

sexuality, and ability.

So we have the opportunity right now,

bearing in mind that some of the images
that I'm about to share with you

may be triggering for some,

to collectively bear witness

to some of this violence.

We're going to hear the voice

of the phenomenal Abby Dobson,

and as we sit with these women,

some who have experienced violence
and some who have not survived them,

we have an opportunity to reverse what
happened at the beginning of this talk,

when we could not stand for these women

because we did not know their names.

So at the end of this clip,
there's going to be a roll call.

Several black women's names will come up.

I'd like those of you who are able
to join us in saying these names

as loud as you can,

randomly, disorderly.

Let's create a cacophony of sound

to represent our intention

to hold these women up,

to sit with them,

to bear witness to them,

to bring them into the light.

Abby Dobson: Say, say her name.

Say

Say her name

Oh

Say her name

Say, say

Say her name

Say her name

All the names I'll never know

Say her name

Say her name

Kimberlé Crenshaw: So I said
at the beginning,

if we can't see a problem,

we can't fix a problem.

Together, we've come together
to bear witness

to these women's lost lives,

but the time now is to move

from mourning and grief

to action and transformation.

This is something that we can do.

It's up to us.

Thank you for joining us.

(Applause)