User:Snazzysugarplum/Violence and intersectionality (2)

Kimberlé Crenshaw 2018

IntersectionalityTheory is the examination of the interconnection of race, class, and gender during instances of discrimination and/or bias. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a feminist scholar, is widely known for developing the theory of intersectionality in her 1989 essay "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.Crenshaw's analogy of intersectionality to the flow of traffic explains, "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, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the "intersection", her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination."

Black women have been victims of violence and abuse since their African decedents first arrived on the shores of North America in 1619, as kidnapped human chattel, in the Transatlantic slave trade. The intersection of gender among enslaved Black women was an imperative factor of the different treatment they experienced compared to enslaved Black males. In the 1960s, during the beginning of second-wave feminism finally addressed the voice of Black women and women of color in contrast to the first wave, where it initially focused on the struggles of white middle class women.

Violence and intersectionality of Black women in the U.S.

Gender and violence

Race and gender have historically played a role in how Black women have experienced violence. One of the earliest events in history in which this violence began was during the transatlantic slave trade and during their enslavement in the United States. During their enslavement Black women, along with Black men, were kidnapped from African countries and brought to the United States for the purpose of producing lucrative products for the newly forming American economy. Some of these products included the production of tobacco and the production of cotton.

While enslaved, Black men and women had no rights. By law, they were considered property and their white slave masters treated them as such. White slave masters bought and sold slaves as commodity items, ripping families apart in the process. An example of the treatment the abuse and violence that enslaved Black men and women in America experienced, were repeated beatings, and torture. Violence was used, in order for slave masters to maintain power and control. Violence was used as a form of social control and also served to create white supremacy. The violence that enslaved females experienced differed from enslaved males.

Enslaved Black women were the targets of gendered abuse such as non consensual contact or rape by their white enslavers African women were depicted as "oversexed by comparison with white women or as possessing excessively sexual bodies", a stereotype drawn on to justify the enslavement and abuse of Black women. Black women's abuse during slavery also brought about the social and political relationship between the enslaved the enslavers and the enslaver's wife An example of this relationship can be accounted from the well known narrative of Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and her experience as an enslaved Black woman Jacobs was not only the subject of abuse by her abusive and abhorrent enslaver she was also the subject of abuse by her enslavers wife due to jealousy and blame that her enslavers wife attributed to her. Jacobs' account of her abuse offers one of the earliest instances of a Black woman's epistemology; it also indicates early histories of how Black women's lives revealed the makings of intersectionality theory.

White women were not passive participants in the enslavement of Black women. Black women were subjected to violence in the form of non-consensual contact from their white male enslavers, and also other forms of violent punishment from their white female enslavers. In They Were Her Property, by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, the intersectionality of white women as enslavers, and enslaved Black women, considered property at that time, is examined in detail.

Black Women and the Impact of Second Wave Feminism

Second Wave Feminism 1970

In the 1960s and 1970s, during the second wave feminist movement, Black women and women of color were beginning to organize and discuss the ways in which they would be able to bring their concerns into the forefront of feminism Previously, issues that white women in the nineteenth century first wave feminism addressed were issues that only white middle class women faced. This placed white women in the feminist movement, at the forefront of the movement in comparison to other women who were lower and/or working class Black, and other women of color.

During the twentieth century, Black American feminist scholars Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells-Barnett began to engage in a discussion how white feminists excluded the plight of African-Americans Ida B. Wells-Barnett who lead an anti-lynching campaign that had taken her all the way to The White House, began to integrate race, class, and gender into the main discourse of feminism. Their analyses included confronting race and class differences in a way that had not been done before. It served as a calling to other feminists to take up the plight of all marginalized groups Intersectional theories were created with the intention of integrating oppressed and marginalized identities, which would lead to expanding the feminist movement.

Intersectional Theories

Intersectional theories are a lens through which race, class, sexuality and gender inform discourse of feminism and feminist thought. "Rather than viewing separate oppressions as distinct categories, 'intersectionality describes a more fluid, mutually constrictive process' whereby every social act is imbricated by gender, race, class, and sexuality."

Feminist scholars Kimberlé Crenshaw, Audre Lorde, and Claudia Rankine, analyze violence experienced by African American women from a theoretical stand point in order, to understand why Black women are more likely to be abused. The goal of this analysis to find solutions as to how Black women can be better protected when instances of violence and abuse occur Through intersectional theory, feminist theorists to introduce new theoretical frameworks in order to analyze how violence perpetrated upon Black women, is caused and experienced by the intersection of their marginalized identities within society.

Brief Introduction to Intersectionality in the field

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Kimberlé Crenshaw is a professor at Columbia Law School, directs the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies and is a co-founder of the African American Policy Forum. Through her writings, Crenshaw analyzes the ways in which Black women and women of color experience violence and abuse. Crenshaw argues that race, class and gender need to be part of feminist discourse, especially when talking about violence experienced by Black women. Crenshaw argues that failure to do this will continue to reinforce systems of oppression and violence.

"The failure of feminism to integrate race means that the resistance strategies of feminism will often replicate and reinforce the subordination of people of color, and the failure of antiracism interrogate patriarchy means that antiracism will frequently reproduce the subordination of women. These mutual elisions present a particularly difficult political dilemma for women of color. Adopting either analysis constitutes a denial of a fundamental dimension of our subordination and precluded the development of a political discourse that more fully empowers women of color".

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde is an African American writer, feminist, lesbian, and activist, who speaks and writes about inequalities and injustice that women of color experience. In one of her most notable works, entitled The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Mater's House, Lorde discusses the importance of intersectional theory in feminism. She argues that the exclusion of other stories that intersect with race, class, and gender, will continue to oppress and silence, especially when instances of violence occur. Lorde states that the "Master's tools", or systemic oppression of and white supremacy in America, has been created for the benefit of white people. Without the application of intersectional theory in feminism, Lorde theorizes that white women will not identify with racism that Black women experience.

"Poor women and women of color know there is a difference between the daily manifestation of marital slavery and prostitution...if white American feminist theory not deal with the differences between us and the resulting differences between our oppressions...What is the theory behind racist feminism?"

Lorde argues the importance of Black women to have the space necessary for them to participate in a feminist movement that does not further marginalize them.

Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican poet, writer and essayist who is the author of many important works pertinent to racism and feminism. In one of her most recent books entitled, "Citizen", Rankine uses the lyric essay as a way to describe an example of the Black female experience in America.

"Because of your elite status from a year's worth of travel, you have already settled into your window seat on United Airlines, when the girl and her mother arrive at your row. The girl, looking over at you, tell her mother, these are our seats, but this is not what I expected. The mother's response is barely audible – I see, she says. I'll sit in the middle".

Rankine's account of this encounter is an example of how the Black experience can be used to inform intersectional theory and feminist discourse

Intersectional Theories in Relation to Violence Against Black Women

Since Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term intersectionality in 1989, violence against Black women has been used as a way to look at how race, class and gender all impact the experience of the Black woman. This was one of the ways in which intersectionality has been used by theorists and activists to engage in the anti-violence movement against women. Women such as Crenshaw and Angela Davis critique how the anti-violence movement against women of focused on "the kind of gendered violence that white, middle class women predominately face, the experience of 'otherwise -privileged members of the group'.

This critique was formed in three ways:

1. Violence that women of color experience becomes significantly worse due to race and class difference.

The lack of access to resources that Black women have that may help remove them from dangerous situations. These resources include, financial stability, child care, employment, and food sovereignty. This is systemic racism that Black women experience, which leads to further marginalization.

2. Women of color also disproportionally experience violence reinforced by government officials which are supposed to serve and protect the public.

Black women face higher rates of physical violence in the criminal justice system. In the corrections system, Black women are incarcerated at a much higher rate than women of any other ethnic group, due to over policing.They experience higher rates of violence and abuse within the prison system. Examples of abuse include, strip body searches, sexual abuse from guards and managers, and abuse from inmates.

3. Black women have been placed outside the protection of the law, when it comes to instances of violence and abuse.

Black Women and Violence Today

Current statistics

The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American community reports: that within the last twenty years, domestic violence has remained a prevalent issue that many women of African American women faced within their communities. Black American Women aged 25-44 violence at disproportionate rates, when compared to their white counterparts In a study conducted by Columbia University, analyzing data from the Center for Disease Control as a part of a epidemiological study: "using a Epidemiologic Research system. We included data for women aged 25–44 years between 1999 and 2020 among 30 states in the USA. Homicide death was classified using underlying cause and multiple cause of death codes; mortality rates were calculated per 100 000 based on US Census Bureau population sizes".

• "Black women are 10% of the population, but 59% of homicides, when IPV is factored in and when a firearm is involved"
• "Black women are murdered at younger ages and higher rates, As of 2020, Black women are not only nearly 3 times more likely to be murdered than White and Native American women, they are killed 6 years younger than the national average age of 35 years".
• Black women aged 25–44 years were 20 times more likely to die by homicide than White women.
• "State-by-state analysis revealed substantial heterogeneity in the magnitude and trend in relative and absolute inequities with homicide rates disproportionately higher for Black versus White women. In terms of relative inequities, among the 30 states included in the analysis, there were no US states where there was not a significantly higher homicide rate among Black women than White women in any time period"
• "US states with the greatest racial inequities in homicide rates correlate with areas of the country where there are substantial structural inequities delineated along wealth markers, namely educational attainment, employment type and status, and extreme poverty. Importantly, a structural analysis was outside of the scope of this inquiry. These areas also correspond with populations that have enduring histories of slavery and lynching"

Past Statistics

The Women of Color Facts and Stat reports:

• "For every African American/ Black woman that reports her rape, at least 15 African American/ Black woman do not report theirs".
• "Approximately 40% of Black women report coercive contact of a sexual nature by age 18".
• "The National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWAS) found that 18.8% of African American women reported rape in their lifetime".

The Center of Disease Control MMWR reports:

• Approximately 8.8% of non-Hispanic Black women from a national sample sustained a rape by an intimate partner at least one time in their life.
• Approximately 17.4% of non-Hispanic Black women from a national sample encountered other forms of sexual violence by an intimate partner at least one time in their life.
• Approximately 41.2% of non-Hispanic Black women from a national sample were met with physical violence by an intimate partner at least one time in their life.
• Approximately 9.5% of non-Hispanic Black women from a national sample were stalked by an intimate partner at least one time in their life.

Stereotypes as a Justification For Violence

Black women are the subject of stereotypes within American society that increase the likelihood of violent victimization. For example, genres of music such as Hip-Hop, Rap, and R&B, which dominate American culture and is imitated internationally. Some subgenre's of hip hop, rock, or any type of music, talk about women in derogatory ways and while using violent language. However, the stereotypes that are the cause for violence against Black American women are rooted in the times of their ancestors enslavement. The stereotypes of the sexless Mammy who's only purpose is for raising white children, or the stereotype of the oversexed Mulatto women, or of Sarah Bartmann, who's natural body shape was imitated in hoop skirts by white women during the Victorian era. The above mentioned stereotypes are where the dehumanization of Black women and Black women's bodies are historically rooted.

Violence Against Transgendered Women

Laverne Cox LA Families Belong Together March June

Transgendered women experience violence at rates that are disproportionate when compared to cis gendered women. As of May 2023, transgendered women are murdered at 30 times higher the rate of cis gendered women. When race and being transgender intersect, for example being Black and transgender, the risk of experiencing violence has reached epidemic levels. Laws prohibiting violence, and discrimination against transgendered women are, new, and as of 2021, only 21 out of 50 states of them. Transgendered women experience higher rates of violence, unemployment, poverty, houselessness and these factors can lead to underreporting of incidents of victimization.

Black Women, Violence and the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment)

One of the most the most important amendments to The Constitution for the advancement of women's rights that has been brought before Congress for ratification, is The Equal Rights Amendment, which was originally drafted by Alice Paul in 1923. It reads as follows:

• Section 1. "Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex.
• Section 2. The congress shall have the power to enforce the provisions of the amendment.
• Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after its ratification."

The ERA was brought to Congress in 1972, where it was passed under condition that within seven years, three-fourths of the states needed to vote in order for it to be ratified into the Constitution. In 1982, after a three-year extension, the ERA was not passed, just falling short of only three votes needed.

Black women, who have been disproportionate targets of violence throughout history, have been among the strongest advocates for the ratification of an ERA amendment. Intersectional theory, or the lens through which dual oppressions impact how individuals within society experience power, clarifies why this is applicable. As feminist, scholar and lawyer Pauli Murray states:

"[Black women have] suffered more than the mere addition of sex discrimination to race discrimination. She has suffered the conjunction of these twin immoralities... The conjunction of race and sex discrimination directed toward a [Black] woman has a special quality of virulence which becomes almost unbearable...My personal experience and observation lead me to believe that when the dominant white male is afflicted by racism and sexism, albeit unconscious, his hostility toward the [Black] female who asserts her rights as a person is unbounded".