Race and Intersectionality

Intersectional feminism acknowledges that women often minorities or face discrimination in other ways as well: in terms of race, sexuality, disability, religion, and class, among others. Political activist and radical feminist Angela Davis explains more about this concept in the video below:

Within racial groups in particular, women's struggles against stereotypes and patriarchal ideas are magnified. For example, women who are racially mixed often struggle with feeling as if they are not fully accepted in any community. In her 2018 article for The Today Show, writer Danielle Brennan says she struggles most with the question "What are you?"

"I began to feel not white or black 'enough.' It's a common feeling among mixed race people; because you're not just one race, you feel like you don't fit in either category and that you have to prove you belong in both worlds." (Danielle Brennan, 2018)

Women must already struggle with the often negative and conflicting expectations of what it means to be a woman. When a woman is also a member of another marginalized group, the conflicts within cultural messages and expectations are magnified even further.

If white, middle- and upper-class heterosexual CIS women feel the need to be extraordinary in order to be culturally acceptable, how much more pressure must women who are also members of marginalized groups feel?

References

"Barbie: Woman Speech [America Ferrera]." YouTube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsY9c9WodcE

Brennan, Danielle. "The Question I Hate As a Biracial Woman." Today, May 3, 2018.https://www.today.com/health/life-biracial-woman-why-i-hate-question-what-are-you-t129608

Davis, Angela. "Angela Davis on Intersectional Feminism." YouTube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GDjT3Fw_6w

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