More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Kimberlé Crenshaw is a civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory. She developed intersectionality, the study of how overlapping social identities, particularly minority identities, relate to structures of oppression. Her work includes intersectional feminism, which examines the systems of discrimination that women face due to their ethnicity, sexuality and economic background.
Thirty-five years ago, Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to explain how multiple forms of discrimination interact to exacerbate each other, resulting in amplified forms of prejudice and harm. Last week, California became the first state to explicitly recognize intersectionality in discrimination law.
The jailhouse death of Sandra Bland has her family and activists asking a lot of questions—which don’t seem to have good answers. Bland’s case is the latest example of police violence against Black women, joining many other women and girls of color who have been harassed, abused or killed at the hands of law enforcement. […]
“Once I put this baby in the ground, I’m ready…This means war.” These were the words spoken by Geneva Reed-Veal as she eulogized her late daughter, Sandra Bland, last week. On July 10, 28-year-old Bland was pulled over by police in Prairie View, Texas for allegedly failing to signal before changing lanes. According to police, she became […]
The following is excerpted from the latest issue of Ms. To read the entire article, get a print or digital subscription today! In 2012, 6-year-old Salecia Johnson was arrested and handcuffed in a Georgia school for having a temper tantrum. In 2007, 16-year-old Pleajhai Mervin was arrested after she dropped cake on the floor in […]
Aiyana Jones. Rekia Boyd. Tarika Wilson. Duanna Johnson. Kayla Moore. The list of Black women and girls victimized by police violence stretches on endlessly. The simple act of speaking their names has power. It symbolizes a refusal to forget these women and who they were. It honors the lives they lived and the loved ones […]
Last year, 12-year-old Mikia Hutchings was faced with expulsion from her Georgia middle school and possible felony charges by the local sheriff’s department. Her crime: writing the word “hi” on a locker room wall. Her white friend graffiti’d even more words on the wall, yet the school handled their punishments quite differently. Mikia’s friend paid […]
Almost everyone has an Anita Hill story. Some of us remember exactly where we were when that theater of sex, race and gender called a “hearing” was broadcast in primetime. Others recall water-cooler and sidewalk conversations and debates about guilt and innocence, about sexual harassment as a “white lady’s problem,” about the effect of the […]
Since the Arizona state legislature passed the draconian anti-immigration bill SB 1070, other states seem to be in a race to catch up. Nebraska and Mississippi, with some of the nation’s smallest percentages of Latinos living within their borders, are nonetheless trying to pass some of the toughest anti-immigration laws we have seen to date, […]