Recognition

Intersectionality is a concept that is premised on recognition.

Crenshaw argues that by trying to understand oppression on a “single-axis” with regard to identity, multidimensional oppression cannot be understood. By extension, intersectional politics allows intersecting oppression to be recognized. Recognition is precisely what doubly oppressed groups do not get. Even historiographers do not account for their perspective.

The effects of such oppression linger on today. The theoretical framework of how discrimination is interpreted needs to change, which makes intersectional politics a necessity as it empowers those who have been silenced. The need for recognition is pertinent because intersecting oppressions continue to exist. Identities tend to be neatly demarcated, but in reality, there is quite often an overlap which empowers certain groups at the expense of others. There are power differentials present in every society which are inherently oppressive.

African American women have been marginalized along the fault lines of race and sex. Liberation movements prioritize the emancipation of a group over others. Hooks argues that these movements in the 20th century, further disenfranchised African American women by negating their identity. For instance, the women’s movement in the late 60s was both racist and sexist in its attitude towards black women. Instead of being inclusive towards all women irrespective of race, the movement was fronted by white women who supported the values imbued by white racial imperialism. Furthermore, black liberation leaders were unwilling to acknowledge the sexist oppression of black women by black men as it would “complicate efforts to resist racism.” As a result, black women were permanently cast to the background. Intersectional politics offer a way of rectifying such mistakes.

Even though social media driven socio-political movements in the contemporary era appear to be inclusive, intersectional politics allows Black women still have to carve out a space to give prominence to their respective grievances. The African American Policy Forum (AAPF), a gender and racial equity think tank, has initiated social media campaigns and published reports to challenge the narrative that victims of institutionalized racism are mostly black men. Black Lives Matter is a social movement initiated after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting of African American teen Trayvon Martin in 2012. While the movement appeared to be for “all Black lives along the gender spectrum,” in reality, it failed to acknowledge the work of Black women, trans people, and queer people within contemporary movements for racial justice. Furthermore, Treva B. Lindsey criticized Black Lives Matter for promoting a narrative against racial violence which was premised on a Black masculine perspective. In the three years following Black Lives Matter, more than seventy Black women have lost their lives to police violence. For every Trayvon Martin, there has been a Rekia Boyd. In the documentary The Lives of Black Women, Rekia’s brother stated: “They barely talk about women. Why is that? It’s crazy, because you see that even in death, women play the second role.” In response to instances of racial injustice against Black women being forgotten, the AAPF launched two social media campaigns—#BlackGirlsMatter and #SayHerName. In collaboration with the think tank, Crenshaw published a report titled “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected” to illustrate how disciplinary policies negatively impacted Black girls and other girls of color. The aim of the report was to understand “the ways [these girls] experience inhospitable educational environments and to produce recommendations designed to eliminate those inequities.”

Moreover, SayHerName was launched in 2015 after the death of Sandra Bland who died in police custody. Her story was representative of how many Black women were mistreated by the criminal justice system, and how they were disregarded by the wider public. The neglect shown toward Black women has not entirely been a matter of missing facts. Even where women are present in the data, “narratives framing police profiling and lethal force as exclusively male experiences lead researchers, the media, and advocates to exclude them.” The report titled “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women” demonstrates how Black women who are “profiled, beaten, sexually assaulted, and killed by law enforcement officials are conspicuously absent from this frame even when their experiences are identical [to Black men].” Choo and Ferree note that the aim of this campaign was to “meet the locational standard of intersectionality by which the perspectives of the oppressed move from margin to center.” If activism fails to incorporate violence against Black women, they are further marginalized and rendered invisible. In order to prevent these women from being cast into a “zone of nonbeing” in which they question their own identity, activism has to be inclusive in both its ideology and documentation while condemning state-sanctioned violence against Black people.

If intersecting oppressions are not taken into consideration, the condition of certain groups can worsen. For the individual experiencing these multifaceted identities, it can be difficult to process their experiences. Their reality can be wrongfully interpreted as destiny instead of what it actually is—a manifestation of discriminatory norms.