Social Identity
Session 4 of HBA1 LPO Course
Pre-Session
Ted Talk
The urgency of intersectionality, TED talk by Kimberle Crenshaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOe5-UsQ2o
Opening Activity
Kimberle had everyone who can, stand up. Then she started listing names, if you knew them, you sat down.
Within the first 4 names, there were less than 10 people left standing.
After the next 4, there were a similar number of people.
First 4 names were prominent African-American males who were shot and killed by police. Next 4 names were African-American females who were shot and killed by police.
This talk will focus about that intersection. Yes we talk about black men being discriminated, and we talk about violence against women, but it’s that intersection of black women that we will investigate.
Story about Emma DeGraffenreid
Emma is a African-American women who filed a law suit against a car manufacturing company for discrimination.
The judge dismissed the case because:
- The company hired Africian-American workers
- The company hired women workers
But one may miss, of the African-American workers, most were men, and of the women, most were white.
The judge ruled that Emma couldn’t stack discrimination as it was unfair, the typical women can only take one attribute at a time to court. It is unfair to give her multiple traits to then find more niche discriminations.
Kimberle is a African-American women studying antidiscrimination law. Over time, she realized that the problem Emma had was a framing problem.