Intersectionality is a concept that looks at the dynamics of a movement by noting that people are complex and when analysing certain subjects one should acknowledge these complexities instead of viewing it with a narrow mind set. Resistance and how intersectional movements resist is one of the connections which Spade wants to note and brings attention to legal systems that emphasize that they are gender and race neutral but actually perpetuate the opposite in terms of the nation state (Spade, 2013). In this review I aim to examine intersectional approaches which lead to the above mentioned conclusions and discusses how law reform changes when these demands emerge. Spade draws on his own arguments and counter arguments in order to reinforce …show more content…
Spade argues that legal equality highlights the difference between racial neutrality introduced in law and the realities of white supremacy. He introduces arguments that further prove that “colour blindness is the rationale for this approach” (Spade, 2013). Drawing on the experiences of black people, women and other minority groups, Spade reaches the conclusion that in order for prosecution, in a discriminatory case, to occur one has to understand intersectionality in order to understand that discrimination is more complex than it appears. Spade uses population control to highlight how intersectionality can be used in connection with the population to study certain harms by including the population instead of the individual. He uses Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of racism which states “group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death” to reinforce that the condition of the population should be focused on the group instead of the individual (Spade, 2013). Spade also discusses reproductive justice in connection with population control as it moves away from the individual rights and discusses the relationship between “multiple vectors of harm and how systems of control affect the population.” (Spade, 2013) Spade presents a counter argument that states that population control perpetuates norms that divide the population into those who must be protected and those who are seen as a threat. Thus, in this argument, population control can be seen as a narrow measure instead of intersectional. Liberal intersectional movements have supported increased criminalization in order to address law enforcements response to violence. Spade introduces arguments which argue that increased criminalization leads to increased violence and vulnerability for those involved (Spade, 2013). In reinforcing his main argument, Spade discusses disability justice which moves
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.
“The New Jim Crow” is an article by Michelle Alexander, published by the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. Michelle is a professor at the Ohio State Moritz college of criminal law as well as a civil rights advocate. Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law is part of the world’s top education system, is accredited by the American Bar Association, and is a long-time member of the American Law association. The goal of “The New Jim Crow” is to inform the public about the issues of race in our country, especially our legal system. The article is written in plain English, so the common person can fully understand it, but it also remains very professional. Throughout the article, Alexander provides factual information about racial issues in our country. She relates them back to the Jim Crow era and explains how the large social problem affects individual lives of people of color all over the country. By doing this, Alexander appeals to the reader’s ethos, logos, and pathos, forming a persuasive essay that shifts the understanding and opinions of all readers.
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.
In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander states that we still use our criminal justice system to “label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage i...
The work by Victor M. Rios entitled Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness depict ways in which policing and incarceration affect inequalities that exist in society. In this body of work I will draw on specific examples from the works of Victor M. Rios and Michelle Alexander to fulfill the tasks of this project. Over the course of the semester and by means of supplemental readings, a few key points are highlighted: how race and gender inequalities correlate to policing and incarceration, how laws marginalize specific groups, and lastly how policing and incarceration perpetuate the very inequalities that exist within American society.
What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than directly rely on race, we use the criminal justi...
Women, Race and Class is the prolific analysis of the women's rights movement in the United States as observed by celebrated author, scholar, academic and political activist. Angela Y. Davis, Ph.D. The book is written in the same spirit as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Davis does not merely recount the glorious deeds of history. traditional feminist icons, but rather tells the story of women's liberation from the perspective of former black slaves and wage laborers. Essential to this approach is the salient omnipresent concept known as intersectionality.
Instead, this only increases criminalization, incarceration rates, policing, and only continues this cycle of hatred and bigotry fueled violence allotted by the state, because “the criminal punishment system itself is a significant source of racialized-gendered violence” (90). Criminal punishment and its legal system does not promote safety and non-violence but is rather “a site of enormous violence” and is the largest perpetrator of violence and hatred (90). This only allows more opportunities and resources for these exact system to strengthen and therefore continue to commit these hate acts of violence and disparity in increasing rates and severer forms, or as Spaid puts it, “provides even great opportunity for harmful systems to claim fairness and equality while continuing to kill us”
Policing, Race, and Criminal Injustice." Human Rights. Spring 2009: 6. SIRS Issues Researcher. Pritchard, Justin.
The identities have tended to be divided into some different categories, such as gender, race, and class, and these sources have been judged in the different ways. In other words, the different determinant factors of the individuality have been considered separately, and these components have been regarded as a unrelated simple category. Under these points of view, however, it is hard to recognize the problems of interrelated individual component of the identity. Thus, to solve the disregarding crossover point, the new theory of the “intersectionality” are essential. This essay explores the key definition of the “intersectionality” from the viewpoint of gender studies, and how the concept is connected with the social system and individual identity
The real issue focuses on the idea that victimization is being utilized to propose anti-black or anti-minority sentiments. Let’s provide an example. The Trayvon Martin Case established an unfortunate but necessary strength for blacks to voice their opinions against the unfair justice that was issued for the seventeen-year old boy and his family. “As a young black male, he was described in court by a defense attorney as having power to turn the sidewalk into a weapon, and he was thus an obvious danger to the anxious neighborhood watchman following him with a gun” (Reggie et al.,25). Note that the defense attorney described Trayvon Martin, the unarmed boy, as being the fault of his own death because he, as a black male, had the power to utilize a small space as a weapon while being present in a white neighborhood which may initiate some sort of fear to the
In relation to the Critical Race Theory, the idea of the “gap between law, politics, economics, and sociological reality of racialized lives” (Critical Race Theory slides). The critical race theory gives us a guide to analyze privileges and hardships that comes across different races and gender. For example, analyzing how and why a “black” or “indigenous” woman may experience more hardships versus not only a “white” man, but a “white”
To look closely at many of the mechanisms in American society is to observe the contradiction between constitutional equality and equality in practice. Several of these contradictions exist in the realm of racial equality. For example, Black s often get dealt an unfair hand in the criminal justice system. In The Real War on Crime, Steven Donziger explains,
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
Knapp, Peter, Jane C. Kronick, R. William Marks, and Miriam G. Vosburgh. The Assault on Equality. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1996.