"[1] Delia D. Aguilar writes that Intersectionality illuminates the “triple jeopardy” sociological barriers of racism, capitalism, and sexism that African American women experience.
“As knowledge of victimization trajectories develops, scholars have underscored the need to adopt an intersectional approach that considers how convergent social categories related to age, gender, race, class, and others shape victimization experiences.”[3] Race and gender have consistently played a role in how Black women have historically experienced violence, and how they still continue to experience violence today.
The idea that multiple oppressions reinforce each other to create new categories of suffering was created by the Combahee River Collective, a radical Black feminist organization formed in 1974 and named after Harriet Tubman’s 1863 raid on the Combahee River in South Carolina that freed 750 enslaved people (K. Y. Taylor, 2019).
Later, the term and the analysis that articulates and animates the meaning of intersectionality was conceptualized by second- and third-wave feminists (Crenshaw, 1991; K. Y. Taylor, 2019).
[7] Their analyses included pointing out the differences between race, class, and gender and a calling to other feminists to take up the plight of marginalized groups of people.
Intersectional theories looks at how race, class, sexuality and gender inform discourses of feminism and feminist thought.
"Rather than viewing separate oppressions as distinct categories, 'intersectionality describes a more fluid, mutually constrictive process' whereby every social act is imbricated by gender, race, class, and sexuality.
Crenshaw argues that race, class and gender need to be an essential part of the feminist discourse, especially when talking about violence experienced by Black women.
She writes, "The failure of feminism to interrogate race means that the resistance strategies of feminism will often replicate and reinforce the subordination of people of color, and the failure of antiracism interrogate patriarchy means that antiracism will frequently reproduce the subordination of women.These mutual elisions present a particularly difficult political dilemma for women of color.
Adopting either analysis constitutes a denial of a fundamental dimension of our subordination and precluded the development of a political discourse that more fully empowers women of color".
[10]Audre Lorde is an African American writer, feminist, lesbian, and activist, who speaks and writes about inequalities and injustice that women of color face, which are expressed through her works.
She argues that the exclusion of other stories that intersect with race, class, and gender, will continue to oppress and silence, especially when instances of violence occur.
Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican poet, writer and essayist who is the author of many important works pertinent to racism and feminism.
In one of her most recent books entitled, "Citizen", Rankine uses the lyric essay as a way to describe an example of the Black female experience in America.
In one of her pieces she writes, "Because of your elite status from a year's worth of travel, you have already settled into your window seat on United Airlines, when the girl and her mother arrive at your row.
[12]Rankine's account of this specific encounter is an example of how the Black female experience can be used to inform how we look at feminist discourse.
Women of color also disproportionally experience violence reinforced by government officials which are supposed to serve and protect the public.
Black women face higher forms of physical violence in institutions such as the American prison system, and within law enforcement.
[18] Collins’s (2002) conceptualization of controlling images highlights the ways in which biological determinism and oppression serve to justify the subordination of African American women.
They are grossly oversimplified fabrications that perpetuate and rationalize ongoing disparities and a failure to develop appropriate policy responses to their abuse and mistreatment (Collins, 1999).
"[19]The ERA was brought to Congress in 1972, where it was passed under condition that within seven years, three-fourths of the states needed to vote in order for it to be ratified into the Constitution.
"Caught in the Crossroad: An Intersectional Examination of African American Women Intimate Partner Violence Survivors' Help Seeking".