Paper Example - Intersectionality and Women's Leadership

Civil Rights Movement is known for helping to fight for the rights of the minority, especially African Americans. The movement created an uproar and awareness about the challenges facing black people, thus compelling the government to recognize and act on such issues. However, despite the concerns of discrimination, the focus of this activism has mainly been on males. Therefore, cases of oppression facing women on the minority side require special attention since they are confronted with discrimination in two ways. The patriarchal structure of society causes the concerns of women to miss the necessary attention. Women are at an intersection of the challenges of race and that gender, yet society only requires a highlight of one to address.

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The Civil Rights Movement

The discrimination that the Civil Rights Movement sought to fight remains as part of society affecting African American women. The reason for this is because the focus on racial discrimination highlights only the plight of men. On the other hand, gender inequality only addresses issues that face white women, thus creating a grey area for black women where their problems appear technically fixed due to association. For this reason, the Civil Rights Movement failed to acknowledge gender inclusivity in their quest and ran a blanket theme of defending black people. Women, therefore, became exposed by a biased approach to resolving issues since they face a double struggle of discrimination. Talib Kweli (2010), in the song 'For women,' highlights the plight of women who were forced to lose themselves by becoming maids, housewives, cleaning ladies, prostitutes, and some drug addicts. Despite the massive contribution women made to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, their unique challenge failed to be recognized, thus leading the concept of intersectionality. There needed to be a scale that weighed the issues of black women by considering both gender and race.

Intersectionality

Kimberle Crenshaw, in a TEDTalk show in 2016, explained the concept of intersectionality as where black women have to deal with the discrimination of race and that of gender. Efforts to address these forms of discrimination focuses on each individually but not when the two intersect. Therefore, a black woman finds that men are considered in addressing racial discrimination while white women fill the gap of gender discrimination. Being at the crossroads makes it challenging to find help in addressing issues that black women. Female victims of police brutality do not get enough attention to raise awareness of the challenges facing these women.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the issue of discrimination is a challenge that society needs to address with urgency. The Civil Rights Movement made efforts to curtail racial oppression, and there have been strides made regarding gender bias. However, the two miss a select group that is affected by both gender and racial discrimination. Therefore, there should be structures that focus on this group to help address the unique challenges of discrimination. Although such a solution would mean applying double protection that involves stopping both racial discrimination and gender discrimination.

References

Crenshaw, K. (2016, Dec 7). The urgency of intersectionality [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOe5-UsQ2o

ElpandaXpress (2010, Feb 15). Talib Kweli for women [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qkjtK3O15Q