Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Scenario of intersectionality in everyday life
Intersectionality
How social class, occupation, power and ethnicity influence social stratifications
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Scenario of intersectionality in everyday life
According to the textbook, intersectionality is “a sociological perspective that holds that our multiple group memberships affect our lives in ways that are distinct from single group memberships” (page 205). Intersectionality begins with social stratification. Social stratification is “the existence of structured inequalities between groups in the society in terms of their access to material or symbolic rewards” (page 205). For example, some social stratifications include gender, age, and race. Statuses due to social stratification interact in which the inequalities become additive. The interacting effects of inequalities due to these sources creates an extra oppression on those who are facing it. Through social stratifications, intersectionality …show more content…
is built. One example that comes to mind is an elderly African American woman. This woman is facing the structured inequalities of being female, African American, and being elderly. All of these inequalities tie together to form the broader topic of intersectionality, in which this woman is treated poorly times three. The term of intersectionality ties to the film, Company Town, in many ways.
In order to address such a large term in such a large movie, I will narrow it down by applying the term to one character in the film. This person will be David Bouie. In the film, David Bouie is an elderly, African American, lower to mid-class male. Although he is a male, some of his attributions make him the perfect candidate to experience intersectionality: his age, race, and income. Not only is Bouie African American (which already sets him up for an inequality), but he is in the lower to mid-class as well. In the movie, Bouie is trying to fight with Georgia Pacific, a big factory. There is a Georgia Pacific Mill right near his town and this mill is majorly polluting the air and water. In fact, a lot of people in his town died from cancer, and they are tracing the cause of cancer to these pollutants. Because Bouie is African American and is not a part of the upper class, however, Georgia Pacific will not even consider any of his requests to get the pollution under control. In fact, everyone in the town forming a group and they got the EPA involved, but Koch Industries still did not give them the time of day. I believe that if it were upper class, white males getting harmed by these chemicals, there would be a change. It is saddening to say that being an upper class, white male leads to greater power. As you can see, David Bouie was oppressed due to structuring inequalities
(intersectionality).
People with little to no income do not have the same access to educations and jobs as white people. The upper class have better access to things that they want in life, they are also able to view things from different perspectives. In shooting an Elephant Orwell had a difficult time deciding on whether he should shoot the elephant, personally he doesn’t want to do it because he think it is morally wrong, on the other hand because he is the person in position of power it is the expectations of the Indians (pooper people) for him to take control of the situation and because he need to appear resolute and respected he ultimately pressured to shoot the elephant. This is an example of white privilege, although Orwell feels that the oppression of Indians is evil and shooting the elephant is wrong he shoot the elephant anyway because it was in his best interest to do
In the world of sociology and the studies of human interaction, the term intersectionality has been defined as, “the idea that various biological, social, and cultural categories – including gender, race, class, and ethnicity – interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality” (“Definition of Intersectionality – Sociology”). However, as Dr. White defined the term on the Spring 2014 Final Writing Assignment sheet, these categories that make up one’s identity can “intersect or interact in ways that can either advantage or disadvantage the person’s well-being and development” (White). In regards to the text, David M. Newman’s Identities & Inequalities: Exploring the Intersections of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality, Newman progressively explores the concept of intersectionality throughout the entirety of the text, but he does not ever actually define the term itself. Although an exact, clear-cut definition of the term “intersectionality” has not been officially established, the concept of the term is fairly simple to understand. Every person has different social identities that they carry to their name. Intersectionality is simply an analysis of how those different identities play off of each other and how they affect the person they are describing.
For instance, relating to the employment, there were two obvious hierarchical differences between the black and the white, and women and men. According to Kimberle (2015), in the late 1970, the employment opportunities for black people and women were still in the straitened circumstance, furthermore, even if there were chances for them, “... the black job were men’s job, and the women’s job were only for whites.” (Kimberle Cranshaw 2015). In other words, there was no opportunity for the black women. In this case, the unjust discriminatory treatment for black women simply resulted from their intersected identities as a “black” and “woman” both were marginalized in the society. In regard to this, however, the important point is that people did not analyze the cause of this situation through considering it from the both racial and sexual sides simultaneously. People ignored the experience of the others, and categorized the black women based on their sex as a “woman”. In other words, people, especially who were in the privileged position, just neglected the subtle “differences” of others, and they stretched the rules to their own advantages. Relating to these “differences”, Audre Lorde (1984: 115) explains that “ But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the
Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) does not explicitly define intersectionality in Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Colour. She does however, speak about the shortcomings in current social justice approaches when discussing the unique effects of oppression on women of colour. Crenshaw (1991) states early into her article, that “the problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference as some critics charge, but rather the opposite – that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences” (p. 1242.) This generalization and ignorance of differences in marginalized and racialized groups is troublesome, as ethnicity and socioeconomic status also contribute to unique
The theory of intersectionality is a very important concept when analysing the many different obstacles an individual may face throughout their life time. It takes into consideration that an individual is identified by many different labels rather than by their gender alone. Through the analysis of historical texts and extensive knowledge of activists and authors on the topic, Hunter College women’s and Gender Studies collective and Joan Simalchik (2016) is able to provide insight on the importance of intersectionality in studying identity markers and social categories when considering the many obstacles an individual may face through relations of power and privilege, multiple identities, and intersections of oppression.
Intersectionality is a term used to describe a situation whereby an individual has multiple identities and as result, the person feels that he or she doesn’t belong to one community or another. Because of the many conflicts in an individual’s identities, he or she could be a victim of multiple threats of discrimination (Williams, 2017). The discrimination could be a result of race, gender, age, health and ethnicity among others. To give an example, a black transgender woman could be discriminated in the workplace because of being black and also because she is transgender. From an intersectionality perspective, the woman faces multiple threats of discrimination because of the overlapping identities of gender and race and therefore the transwoman faces a bigger struggle (Barber, 2017). Transwomen of color will most likely encounter prejudices in the form of homophobia, racism or sexism in many dimensions of their life. The perspective of intersectionality is not only applicable to women but it can also be applied to males. For example, a gay Latino man could be discriminated based on race because he is an immigrant into
would be a show called The Office. The Office is an American television comedy, based of a UK show also called The Office. This show portrays the everyday lives of Office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of a fictional business called Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. This show was meant to appear as if it is an actual documentary, but in reality, it is just a fictional show. To make the show actually look like a documentary, it is filmed in a single-camera setup, without a studio audience. They even had the characters have interviews with the camera and various points throughout the series, and at the end there was a documentary released as if
So, to begin to understand intersectionality and its importance, it might be easier to introduce intersectionality with a dictionary definition. Intersectionality, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating
Intersectionality was one of the greatest concepts this course shed light on, intersectionality is can be broadly defined as the coming together of various social groups to work together to fight against forms of oppression. In the conceptual frameworks portion of the book Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, they talk about the importance of privileged identities and disadvantaged identities coming together to work towards solving a particular issue. While before taking this course I was somewhat aware of the various forms of oppression, I never gave much thought to how I could help combat forms of oppression that I did not necessarily experience with my own identity.
Intersectional theory is a term that was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989. The theory addresses how different forms of oppression or discrimination converge, this includes: sexism, racism, classism and other issues (Crenshaw 1989). In her article Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex, Crenshaw (1989:p139) highlighted that issues such as racism and sexism were often treated as “mutually exclusive categories”. This meant that various forms of discrimination were often seen as separate components and other movements such as feminism, failed to acknowledge that they can occur simultaneously. Crenshaw (1989) used the DeGraffenreid v General Motors (1977) case, as an example of how intersectionality was not acknowledged. Five black
Socio-cultural and socio-economic discriminations faced by North Americans affected by intersectionality and the psychological effects.
This suggests that race is an intertwining factor of socioeconomic privilege. Understanding that, I can relate this to the way interpersonal oppression plays a role in my community. Interpersonal oppression incorporates the oppressive messages that we absorb from one group to another not of our own (Margles & Margles, 2010). Racism is something that has been taught to us and embedded in our thinking. That than plays out in the way we respond, think and value certain racialized others. When I reflect on this I realize how discriminatory it is to think that my community is safe because of the presence of white people. This distorted lens causes me as a white person to be deprived of the way racialized people can contribute to my society (Margles & Margles, 2010). This subtle form of racism assigns labels on communities and enforces the notion of discrimination. These messages cause us to choose places to live that are deemed as “safe” due to the social identity of the people who reside in
Working in today’s society has changed in the last few decades. The economy and technology are the main reasons for this change. The type of job and environment where one works has also changed. The fact that many people work from home via the internet has drastically changed the workforce and the environment surrounding it. With this change have come new demands, expectations, and opportunities for employers. Everyone deals with these demands differently, affecting the employee’s quality of life and job satisfaction. Though the job and office types and locations have changed over the years the need for job satisfaction has not. In today’s economy the job is not as stable as it used to be. One must be prepared for changes in the future.
The Effect of the Development of Large Firms on Society Many firms choose to expand in size because of the cost and market share benefits the firms can reap. However, the development of large firms may not always be of benefit to consumers, and the advantages and disadvantages will be discussed in the following essay. Because larger firms such as Shell Petrol Station are able to experience internal economies of scale through lower unit costs, many of the cost savings are then passed on to the consumers through lower prices. Hence consumers are then able to enjoy greater consumer surplus, defined as the difference between the maximum price that a buyer is willing to pay for a good or service and the actual price paid. As seen from the diagram below, the marginal cost curve shifts to the right such that the new marginal cost = marginal revenue equilibrium lowers the price and increases the output level compared with the initial equilibrium.
Anthropologists are very well suited to study consumer and market research for businesses. This is due to the fact that they are able to provide inside knowledge of consumers that businesses are looking to target. They provide a perspective on people that companies aren’t able to see and know the ways specific cultures think, feel and behave. Unlike other fields such as sociology which looks at groups of people or psychology which looks at the behaviour of the mind anthropology explains individual behaviour on a macro level. This in turn can help companies make better decisions and be able to relate and address their customers needs.