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Thesis For African American Women

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Problem Statement

In the words of Zora Neale Hurston, “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” African-American women, a seemingly controversial topic amongst the crowd, are faced with racial discrimination, sexism, colorism, and more just merely in the corporate world. Black women have always been pushed to the back burner of several jobs and opportunities due to oppression since the 1800s. The U.S. Bureau of Labor has found that black women make up only about seven percent of the workforce in America. According to the Intersecting Axes of Privilege, Domination, and Oppression wheel, black women are not only oppressed …show more content…

This Africana Studies United States research essay will dive into my inspiration for researching this topic, employment rates, the partisanship black women are up against, and solutions that will affect black women on a daily and long-term basis …show more content…

Intersectionality the analytical framework coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 was a key principle in the black feminism era in American history. As stated by Crenshaw, “Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things.” (Columbia Law School, “Kimberle Creshaw on Intersectionality”). Black feminism originated with Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women's rights activist born in Rifton, New York in 1883. Truth pushed for the slavery abolitionist movement and the women's rights movement to include and not limit people no matter their race or gender. As expounded by the Smithsonian, black feminism is an intellectual, artistic, philosophical, and activist practice grounded in black women’s lived experiences. Comparatively, in 1983, Alice Walker, a novelist, and social activist, designed the term “womanist” which would further depict any woman of color and or black woman. Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Alice Walker, Shirley Chisholm, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Maya Angelou are just some of the astounding, impactful black women who paved the way for black

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