This week's readings critically explore a new outlook on the complexities of racism and
discrimination whereby, critically analyzing the race theory, we get to find how various minority
groups, especially African American women, were left out in the progression of the African
American race. Intersectionality is essential as it helps us realize that identities interact and
overlap, resulting in compounded oppression or privileges. Through focusing on the theme of
intersectionality, this paper explores moments in our text where applying a single-axis approach
fostered by the dominant conception of discrimination led to the marginalization of African-
American women and limited their progression, resulting in further unfavourable positions then
and in our contemporary society.
In “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”, Kimberle Crenshaw expresses the
dominant conception of discrimination by the traditional approaches to antiracist and feminist
politics as they tend to overlook the experiences of black women when it comes to their
intersecting forms of gender and race oppression, therefore, limiting their opportunities for
complete remediation and redress as one will not be able to tell on how there are subjugated.
Through the concept of intersectionality, we get to see how African American women were
marginalized when society tried to understand and redress their problems using a single-axis
approach of either racism or sexism in isolation. “I argue that argue that Black women are
sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are
predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of
race and gender.”1 It shows that black women's experiences are evaluated through either the race
(represented by black men) and gender (represented by white women) axis and not an interaction
1 Crenshaw, Kimberle "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of
Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics," University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol.
1989: Iss. 1, Article 8.http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
of both, which primarily affects them simultaneously. Through the text “We Are All Bound Up
Together”, Harper expresses the black woman's experiences that have led her to fight for
suffrage rights where, through the years of battling wrongs, she did not feel she shared rights in
common with other white women. ‘You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs.”2
It is evident that the black woman's experience dramatically differs from the white woman's;
thus, they could not fully be represented by the latter.
“The Talent Tenth” text by Du Bois expresses the importance of education to the
African American race and how it would lead to the progression of their race. “The Negro race
like all other races is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then,
among Negroes must first all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the
Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the
Worst, in their own and other races.”3 It is evident that Du Bois only spoke for the Black men
and neglected the importance of educating the African American girls and women as he is only
advocating for the essentiality of African American men in receiving education as it will help
them become leaders of the community who will then guide the rest towards achieving rights of
African Americans. Educating only African American men would lead to the marginalization of
African American women politically, where they would be denied the opportunities to lead their
fellow people in the political activism of fighting against oppression and advocating for their
civil rights and liberties. Therefore, the educating of the tenth exceptional men was not enough;
it also needed to include women who would gain political consciousness of addressing the
2 Frances Ellen Harper, “‘We Are All Bound up Together’ (1866),” Proceedings of the Eleventh National Woman’s
Rights Convention., May 1, 1866, 46–48, https://doi.org/https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/we-are-all-
bound-up-together-may-1866/.
3 Dubois, W. E. BURGHARDT. “‘The Talented Tenth’ (1903).” September 30, 2009.
https://ilearn.laccd.edu/courses/277211/assignments/6950289?module_item_id=18513845
dominant conception of discrimination that conditioned the African American women to think
their subordination only occurred in terms of race and not due to gender.
Through the concept of intersectionality, we get to see how racism can overlap and
interact with other identities, such as gender and how they result in compounded oppression. The
failure of society to recognize the interaction of the race and gender identity of African American
women led to them being entirely denied an appropriate remedy for the oppression they faced
then, and that continues to torment our current society. Today, many African Americans are still
faced with various acts of oppression, like struggling to receive equal pay due to being
discriminated against because of their race and gender simultaneously.
