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Karen Crenshaw Intersectionality

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Al Freeman 7/22/17 Extra Credit The article, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, by Karen Crenshaw discusses then race and gender issues surrounding violence against women of color. Crenshaw draws attention to the severity around issues of black women’s experiences of rape and domestic violence getting silenced, overlooked, and misrepresented. There are many political and structural aspects of intersectionality that Crenshaw focuses on within the article, including using an analysis of the violence against women of color to show how important it is to look at these issues through the lens of interconnected races. Crenshaw examines a “location” of politics, which she refers to as …show more content…

She argues that because race and gender converge, the "Concerns of minority women fall into the void between concerns about women 's issues and concerns about racism" (Crenshaw, 1993, p. 1282). Crenshaw states that there is a tolerance for of racialized violence against women. She uses the example of the popular rap group, 2 Live Crew, who was prosecuted for a live performance (the first ever all black group to be prosecuted for a live performance – the all black part most likely having a lot to do with it). Crenshaw then compares the 2 Live Crew prosecution to live performances by Madonna which had very similar obscenity to the 2 Live Crew performances, but were not prosecuted. Although 2 Live Crew was prosecuted, the prosecution was not in any way about protecting the people most directly indicated in their lyrics and obscenity, which is black …show more content…

She states that Lafree’s article is a classic example of how social science studies fail to, “Examine the ways in which racism and sexism converge” (Crenshaw, 1993, 1275). Lafree focuses on the face that men of color are prosecuted more harshly depending on the race of the victim, but he fails to really go into detail on the experiences of those victims who were women of color. While he talks about men of color a great deal, he leaves out issues for women of color and makes racism to seem like inequality between men

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