The song “Q.U.E.E.N” by Janelle Monáe provides a concrete example of intersectionality. Janelle Monáe expertly blends the discrimination felt by women and African Americans in her upbeat song from 2013. She sings, “She who writes the movie owns the script and the sequel/ So why ain't the stealing of my rights made illegal?/ They keep us underground working hard for the greedy But when it's time pay they turn around and call us needy/ My crown too heavy like the Queen Nefertiti/ Gimme back my pyramid, I'm trying to free Kansas City” (Monáe, 2013). In this verse, Monáe is able to address the sexism she faces in the music industry when she asks “So why ain’t stealing of my rights made illegal?” right after she addresses the fact that she is self made (“he who writes the movie owns the script and the sequel”). …show more content…
She goes on to address the racism she faces as a black woman when she uses the imagery of Queen Nefertiti, an Egyptian queen, and the pyramids.
This proves as a powerful simile because it subtly brings attention to the black position in modern America as she refers to the pyramids, which were built on slave labor, and to Queen Nefertiti who was a powerful black ruler of an African empire that is often whitewashed due to American media. For instance, Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra still permeates the minds of many Americans and is seen as an accurate representation of Egypt, when in fact it further enforced eurocentric beauty standards. The lack of African identity in Egypt pop-culture is mixed with the lack of African culture in music and modern culture. She reiterates this sentiment by saying she’s trying to free her own community (Kansas
City). Finally, the last line of the verse “I’m trying to free Kansas City,” where Monáe grew up, refers to her attempt to bring black culture back to Kansas City. Furthermore, Monáe’s feminist anthem is strong in its intersectional message till the end of the song. Monáe raps, “Well I’m gonna keep leading like a young Harriet Tubman” (Monáe, 2013). This line pays tribute to an African American woman leader during the Civil War, someone who is still considered a great hero and visionary. Furthermore, Monáe states, “Categorize me, I defy every label” (Monáe, 2013). It is clear that Monáe is determined to defy the categories people put her in, through this song she proves that she is a strong black woman and she refuses to conform to white stereotypes or allow people to walk over her. Janelle Monáe’s song proves that it is an intersectional feminist anthem as it addresses not only the sexism that she has faced, but also how the color of her skin has brought discrimination against her in the music industry.
In many contemporary spaces, intersectionality is taught and consumed as a static concept of merely listing identities carried by one person simultaneously. It’s used more often as a checklist than a place of analysis or resistance. However, the use of intersectionality as just an apolitical tool, rather than a theory born from the knowledge of Black women experiencing a “triple jeopardy” of oppression and seeking liberation by deconstructing the institutions that bind them, is reductionist at best. In “Intersectionality is Not Neutral”May communicates that intersectionality pushes us to question and challenge the relatively mundane or acceptable norms in society that lend themselves to a continuous legacy of systemic inequality.
Elsa Barkley Brown focuses on the intersectionality of being a black woman in America, in “What Has Happened Here?”. Black women experience different forms of oppression simultaneously. Indeed, racism, sexism, classism, as well as heterosexism, intertwine and form layers of oppression.
The author, Sharon Olds, uses similes to show how the different characters are as people, according to the women in the subway cart. For example, Sharon states “he is wearing red, like the inside of the body exposed” and, “I am wearing dark fur, the whole skin of an animal taken and used.” This shows how the women is more privileged than the man across from her. Olds also states, “white in a complex pattern like a set of intentional scars.” This also shows how the colored man has a more complicated like than the woman that sits across from him.
Widely respected throughout America, Anna Quindlen is a notable author and columnist who jump started her career as a part-time reporter for the New York Post at the age of 18. After earning her B.A. degree at Barnard College, New York City, Quindlen upgraded to positions as a general columnist, and later deputy metropolitan editor, for the New York Times. Her biweekly column, “About New York,” resulted in her becoming the third woman in all history of the Times to write a regular column for the exclusive and elite op-ed page. Quindlen then went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992. From essays to children’s books to semi-autobiographical novels, Quindlen has been putting her thoughts down on paper for as long as she can remember -- a habit that has certainly paid off, as evidenced by her incredible success. This writer’s duty is to pass on the advice and
On Being Young-A Woman-and Colored an essay by Marita Bonner addresses what it means to be black women in a world of white privilege. Bonner reflects about a time when she was younger, how simple her life was, but as she grows older she is forced to work hard to live a life better than those around her. Ultimately, she is a woman living with the roles that women of all colors have been constrained to. Critics, within the last 20 years, believe that Marita Bonners’ essay primarily focuses on the double consciousness ; while others believe that she is focusing on gender , class , “economic hardships, and discrimination” . I argue that Bonner is writing her essay about the historical context of oppression forcing women into intersectional oppression by explaining the naturality of racial discrimination between black and white, how time and money equate to the American Dream, and lastly how gender discrimination silences women, specifically black women.
In the month of March 2016, Women of the World Poetry Slam had Rachel Wiley, a poet and body-positive activist, present her now viral poem called “The Dozens” (Vagianos 2016). This poem was about slams white feminism as a clear indication of whiteness self-defense mechanism. In this poem Wiley included various kinds social events that have occurred in the past years and just to name two: Raven Symone on blackness and Miley Cyrus and Nicki Manji at the VMAs. White feminism continues to become more problematic as the media continues to allow it to be because whiteness makes money; however, intersectionality about race, public imagery, and actual feminism also continues to go viral as the diversity of American become more and more productive.
The imagery is strong here because if Patricia just said he sat there watching “niggers” walk up and down the street like they run the place, the meaning of the poem would of not as been as strong and the image would be not as strong as the her she wrote it. The similes also make her imagery effective because the comparison makes sense and you really get the sense of racism with the simile and the main characters comments.
Nina Simone used music to challenge, provoke, incite, and inform the masses during the period that we know as the Civil Rights Era. In the songs” Four Women”, “Young Gifted and Black”, and Mississippi God Damn”, Nina Simone musically maps a personal "intersectionality" as it relates to being a black American female artist. Kimberly Crenshaw defines "intersectionality" as an inability for black women to separate race, class and gender. Nina Simone’s music directly addresses this paradigm. While she is celebrated as a prolific artist, her political and social activism is understated despite her front-line presence in the movement.
More specifically, the sambo doll represents the old racist stereotypes are still present even without slavery. The jingle, singing “shake him, stretch him by the neck and set him down--he’ll do the rest”(Ellison, 431) is alluding to the control whites have over backs, even in the years after the abolition of slavery. Moreover, the narrator describes the doll” throwing itself about with the fierce defiance of someone performing a degrading act in public, dancing as though it received a perverse pleasure from its motions” (Elisson, 431). Clifton, having been shunned from the brotherhood, is now mocking their ideals by demonstrating that whites will always have the master role when it comes to dealing with blacks. Similarly Booker T. Washington in 1895 advises in his speech, “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing” (Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address). He invites the African Americans to struggle but not fight against others. The equality will come to us through privileges but agaiation is not the right way to approach for the social
Women in popular music have created a tremendous history in the wake of feminism. They have made their presence visible by identifying themselves as feminists. Being a woman was hard during that stage. Women were not allowed to do many things due to gender inequality such as the right to vote and to own a property. Therefore, from that moment onwards, women decided to stand up and make some changes. During the early stage of feminism, women developed their skills in popular music to create awareness. They associate popular music with feminism. Although there were racial issues between the black and white during that time, both sides continued to establish in different ways, through different genres of music. Black women focused on ‘black genres’ such as blues, jazz, and gospel, whereas white women performed in musical theatres. Female artists such as Lilian Hardin, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Nina Simone were among the notable exceptions of female instrumentalists during feminism. In this essay, I will assess feminism focusing on the second-wave.
“Desiree Baby” by Kate Chopin is a very thought provoking short story that deals with racism, prejudice, and love. The story takes place in southern Louisiana, where Armand, a prominent landowner, marries a girl of unknown origin named Desiree. The story has a twist when their baby is born and is discovered to be of mixed race. Armand knew all along that he was OF mixed race, and I will prove it by analyzing characterization, diction, and imagery.
In other words, Carbado meant to prove that not only Black women fit into this definition of intersectionality, and therefore there are other groups of people, aside from Black women, who can share their same experiences. Carbado’s theory about gender and colorblind intersectionality comes close to being able to explain Audrey Lorde’s understanding of the Black women identity. But applying Carbado’s theory it becomes more inclusive towards other oppressed groups of people, and it highlights Carbado’s expansion of intersectionality within Lorde’s essay.
“He don't smack that ass and pull your hair like that” is a rather vulgar and demeaning statement, yet it is freely sung in Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, a song that was in the top ten on the Billboard list of the most popular R&B/Hip-Hop songs in 2013. Because hip-hop is a very large part of the African American culture, and many speakers of African American English (AAE) are portrayed through these songs, women are often highly influenced by the objectification of their bodies in hip-hop songs. Since the emergence of the hip-hop genre in popular culture in the 1960s and 70s, women’s bodies have been sexually objectified through this music. Although the impact of the sexualization of women’s bodies in hip-hop songs is still very prevalent, the effect of this in recent years has decreased because of a learned linguistic way to navigate the misogynistic words that diminish the humanity of women.
Primarily, she cites a tropic history of patriarchy and “male construction of brute force” as the reasons why women so often fear and suppress anger—whether projected from others or their own—for “there was nothing to be learned from it but pain” (Lorde). Conceivably, Lorde thus fashions and presents a female victim narrative to her audience that bears “facet [in] community building, community-member aggregation and remedying internal fissures” (Saleh). As such, Lorde provides a certain pathos appeal—and perhaps even ethos appeal in referencing humanistic traditions—that further amalgamates her audience by designating male dominance as representative of a common shared “antagonism” demanding amalgamated rebuttal from both black and white women. Lorde thus importantly bridges the racial chasm in citing a larger discrepancy necessitating immediate remedial action within the inclusive category of
Ellison uses this as symbolism because it shows the gruesome violence and oppression black people had to enure at the time. Ellison shows that the white oppressors will never give any other race the chance to thrive. The violent story shows how little of a chance African Americans had during this time because of white oppressors never seeing them as