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The urgency of intersectionality | Kimberlé Crenshaw | TED — Transcript

by TED · 2,048 words · 293 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:12I'd like to try something new.
0:15Those of you who are able,
0:16please stand up.
0:20OK, so I'm going to name some names.
0:24When you hear a name that you don't recognize,
0:26you can't tell me anything about them,
0:28I'd like you to take a seat
0:30and stay seated.
0:32The last person standing, we're going to see what they know. OK?
0:35(Laughter)
0:37All right.
0:39Eric Garner.
0:42Mike Brown.
0:47Tamir Rice.
0:51Freddie Gray.
0:56So those of you who are still standing,
0:58I'd like you to turn around and take a look.
1:00I'd say half to most of the people are still standing.
1:04So let's continue.
1:07Michelle Cusseaux.
1:15Tanisha Anderson.
1:22Aura Rosser.
1:27Meagan Hockaday.
1:30So if we look around again,
1:32there are about four people still standing,
1:35and actually I'm not going to put you on the spot.
1:38I just say that to encourage transparency, so you can be seated.
1:41(Laughter)
1:44So those of you who recognized the first group of names know
1:47that these were African-Americans who have been killed by the police
1:51over the last two and a half years.
1:55What you may not know
1:56is that the other list is also African-Americans
2:01who have been killed within the last two years.
2:07Only one thing distinguishes the names that you know
2:11from the names that you don't know:
2:14gender.
2:16So let me first let you know that there's nothing at all distinct
2:22about this audience
2:24that explains the pattern of recognition that we've just seen.
2:28I've done this exercise dozens of times around the country.
2:32I've done it to women's rights organizations.
2:35I've done it with civil rights groups.
2:37I've done it with professors. I've done it with students.
2:40I've done it with psychologists. I've done it with sociologists.
2:44I've done it even with progressive members of Congress.
2:48And everywhere, the awareness of the level of police violence
2:52that black women experience
2:54is exceedingly low.
2:57Now, it is surprising, isn't it, that this would be the case.
3:01I mean, there are two issues involved here.
3:03There's police violence against African-Americans,
3:06and there's violence against women,
3:08two issues that have been talked about a lot lately.
3:12But when we think about who is implicated by these problems,
3:18when we think about who is victimized by these problems,
3:21the names of these black women never come to mind.
3:25Now, communications experts tell us
3:28that when facts do not fit with the available frames,
3:32people have a difficult time incorporating new facts
3:36into their way of thinking about a problem.
3:41These women's names have slipped through our consciousness
3:44because there are no frames for us to see them,
3:47no frames for us to remember them,
3:50no frames for us to hold them.
3:53As a consequence,
3:55reporters don't lead with them,
3:58policymakers don't think about them,
4:01and politicians aren't encouraged or demanded that they speak to them.
4:07Now, you might ask,
4:09why does a frame matter?
4:11I mean, after all,
4:12an issue that affects black people and an issue that affects women,
4:18wouldn't that necessarily include black people who are women
4:22and women who are black people?
4:25Well, the simple answer is that this is a trickle-down approach to social justice,
4:30and many times it just doesn't work.
4:34Without frames that allow us to see
4:36how social problems impact all the members of a targeted group,
4:41many will fall through the cracks of our movements,
4:44left to suffer in virtual isolation.
4:49But it doesn't have to be this way.
4:54Many years ago, I began to use the term "intersectionality"
4:59to deal with the fact that many of our social justice problems
5:03like racism and sexism
5:05are often overlapping,
5:08creating multiple levels of social injustice.
5:13Now, the experience that gave rise to intersectionality
5:18was my chance encounter with a woman named Emma DeGraffenreid.
5:24Emma DeGraffenreid was an African-American woman,
5:28a working wife and a mother.
5:30I actually read about Emma's story from the pages of a legal opinion
5:36written by a judge who had dismissed Emma's claim
5:40of race and gender discrimination
5:42against a local car manufacturing plant.
5:47Emma, like so many African-American women,
5:51sought better employment for her family and for others.
5:55She wanted to create a better life for her children and for her family.
5:59But she applied for a job,
6:01and she was not hired,
6:03and she believed that she was not hired because she was a black woman.
6:07Now, the judge in question dismissed Emma's suit,
6:12and the argument for dismissing the suit was
6:15that the employer did hire African-Americans
6:19and the employer hired women.
6:23The real problem, though, that the judge was not willing to acknowledge
6:27was what Emma was actually trying to say,
6:30that the African-Americans that were hired,
6:33usually for industrial jobs, maintenance jobs, were all men.
6:39And the women that were hired,
6:41usually for secretarial or front-office work,
6:44were all white.
6:46Only if the court was able to see how these policies came together
6:51would he be able to see the double discrimination
6:55that Emma DeGraffenreid was facing.
6:58But the court refused to allow Emma to put two causes of action together
7:04to tell her story
7:05because he believed that, by allowing her to do that,
7:09she would be able to have preferential treatment.
7:13She would have an advantage by having two swings at the bat,
7:19when African-American men and white women only had one swing at the bat.
7:24But of course, neither African-American men or white women
7:29needed to combine a race and gender discrimination claim
7:34to tell the story of the discrimination they were experiencing.
7:39Why wasn't the real unfairness
7:42law's refusal to protect African-American women
7:46simply because their experiences weren't exactly the same
7:50as white women and African-American men?
7:55Rather than broadening the frame to include African-American women,
8:00the court simply tossed their case completely out of court.
8:06Now, as a student of antidiscrimination law,
8:10as a feminist,
8:11as an antiracist,
8:13I was struck by this case.
8:17It felt to me like injustice squared.
8:21So first of all,
8:24black women weren't allowed to work at the plant.
8:27Second of all, the court doubled down on this exclusion
8:31by making it legally inconsequential.
8:35And to boot, there was no name for this problem.
8:39And we all know that, where there's no name for a problem,
8:43you can't see a problem,
8:44and when you can't see a problem, you pretty much can't solve it.
8:50Many years later, I had come to recognize
8:52that the problem that Emma was facing was a framing problem.
8:59The frame that the court was using
9:01to see gender discrimination or to see race discrimination
9:06was partial, and it was distorting.
9:10For me, the challenge that I faced was
9:12trying to figure out whether there was an alternative narrative,
9:17a prism that would allow us to see Emma's dilemma,
9:22a prism that would allow us to rescue her from the cracks in the law,
9:28that would allow judges to see her story.
9:33So it occurred to me,
9:34maybe a simple analogy to an intersection
9:39might allow judges to better see Emma's dilemma.
9:44So if we think about this intersection, the roads to the intersection would be
9:49the way that the workforce was structured by race and by gender.
9:56And then the traffic in those roads would be the hiring policies
10:00and the other practices that ran through those roads.
10:05Now, because Emma was both black and female,
10:10she was positioned precisely where those roads overlapped,
10:15experiencing the simultaneous impact
10:20of the company's gender and race traffic.
10:25The law -- the law is like that ambulance that shows up
10:31and is ready to treat Emma only if it can be shown
10:34that she was harmed on the race road or on the gender road
10:39but not where those roads intersected.
10:43So what do you call being impacted by multiple forces
10:49and then abandoned to fend for yourself?
10:53Intersectionality seemed to do it for me.
10:58I would go on to learn that African-American women,
11:02like other women of color,
11:04like other socially marginalized people all over the world,
11:08were facing all kinds of dilemmas and challenges
11:12as a consequence of intersectionality,
11:15intersections of race and gender,
11:19of heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism,
11:24all of these social dynamics come together
11:29and create challenges that are sometimes quite unique.
11:35But in the same way
11:36that intersectionality
11:39raised our awareness to the way that black women live their lives,
11:45it also exposes the tragic circumstances
11:49under which African-American women die.
11:54Police violence against black women
11:58is very real.
12:00The level of violence that black women face
12:02is such that it's not surprising
12:05that some of them do not survive their encounters with police.
12:11Black girls as young as seven,
12:14great grandmothers as old as 95
12:19have been killed by the police.
12:21They've been killed in their living rooms,
12:24in their bedrooms.
12:26They've been killed in their cars.
12:29They've been killed on the street.
12:31They've been killed in front of their parents
12:34and they've been killed in front of their children.
12:38They have been shot to death.
12:41They have been stomped to death.
12:43They have been suffocated to death.
12:46They have been manhandled to death.
12:49They have been tasered to death.
12:53They've been killed when they've called for help.
12:57They've been killed when they were alone,
13:00and they've been killed when they were with others.
13:04They've been killed shopping while black,
13:08driving while black,
13:11having a mental disability while black,
13:15having a domestic disturbance while black.
13:19They've even been killed being homeless while black.
13:24They've been killed talking on the cell phone,
13:26laughing with friends,
13:29sitting in a car reported as stolen
13:32and making a U-turn in front of the White House
13:35with an infant strapped in the backseat of the car.
13:40Why don't we know these stories?
13:44Why is it that their lost lives
13:48don't generate the same amount of media attention and communal outcry
13:53as the lost lives of their fallen brothers?
13:57It's time for a change.
14:03So what can we do?
14:06In 2014, the African-American Policy Forum began to demand
14:12that we "say her name"
14:16at rallies, at protests,
14:19at conferences, at meetings,
14:22anywhere and everywhere
14:25that state violence against black bodies is being discussed.
14:30But saying her name is not enough.
14:33We have to be willing to do more.
14:36We have to be willing to bear witness,
14:39to bear witness to the often painful realities
14:42that we would just rather not confront,
14:45the everyday violence and humiliation that many black women have had to face,
14:52black women across color,
14:54age, gender expression,
14:57sexuality and ability.
15:01So we have the opportunity right now --
15:05bearing in mind that some of the images that I'm about to share with you
15:09may be triggering for some --
15:12to collectively bear witness to some of this violence.
15:18We're going to hear the voice of the phenomenal Abby Dobson.
15:23And as we sit with these women,
15:26some who have experienced violence and some who have not survived them,
15:33we have an opportunity
15:34to reverse what happened at the beginning of this talk,
15:38when we could not stand for these women
15:41because we did not know their names.
15:45So at the end of this clip, there's going to be a roll call.
15:50Several black women's names will come up.
15:54I'd like those of you who are able to join us in saying these names
15:59as loud as you can,
16:02randomly, disorderly.
16:04Let's create a cacophony of sound
16:08to represent our intention
16:11to hold these women up,
16:14to sit with them,
16:15to bear witness to them,
16:18to bring them into the light.
16:28(Singing) Abby Dobson: Say,
16:35say her name.
16:42Say,
16:50say her name.
16:54(Audience) Shelly!
16:56(Audience) Kayla!
16:57AD: Oh,
17:05say her name.
17:11(Audience shouting names)
17:14Say, say,
17:21say her name.
17:29Say her name.
17:34For all the names
17:37I'll never know,
17:44say her name.
17:47KC: Aiyanna Stanley Jones, Janisha Fonville,
17:50Kathryn Johnston, Kayla Moore,
17:52Michelle Cusseaux, Rekia Boyd,
17:55Shelly Frey, Tarika, Yvette Smith.
18:00AD: Say her name.
18:11KC: So I said at the beginning,
18:13if we can't see a problem,
18:17we can't fix a problem.
18:20Together, we've come together to bear witness
18:24to these women's lost lives.
18:27But the time now is to move
18:29from mourning and grief
18:32to action and transformation.
18:36This is something that we can do.
18:39It's up to us.
18:42Thank you for joining us.
18:44Thank you.
18:46(Applause)

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