Intersectionality: the Cross Between Race and Gender Essay Example

Head Start programs for her children. Then a black woman may join the civil right movement with hopes of dealing with the kind of discrimination at work. Even though racism is the main focus of the civil rights group, sexism becomes an issue, with a male-dominated agenda.

Feminist may Intersectionality grew out of trying to conceptualize the ways law responded to problems where both gender and race discrimination was involved. The concept developed from the idea that if one stands in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, one is likely to get hit by both (Crenshaw). In the 1980s, Crenshaw tried to understand why the United States anti-discrimination law failed to protect Black women in the workplace. Crenshaw discovered that the law distinguished between gender discrimination and racial discrimination.

Intersectionality is the examination of multiple dimensions of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation and how each factor contributes to social inequality. How these factors play out in different settings and situations can be disadvantageous. “Many races are divided along socioeconomic, political, religious, sexual orientation, and national origin lines, each of which generates intersectional individuals” (p. 99 Delgado & Stefancic). These divided within a society create lines which are complex intersections, specifically between race and gender.