Comprehensive Study Notes on Intersectionality and Police Violence Against Black Women
Recognition Disparities in Police Violence
Pattern of Public Awareness
High awareness exists regarding African American men killed by police (e.g., Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray).
Unusually low awareness exists regarding African American women killed by police under similar timeframe conditions (e.g., Michelle Cusso, Tanisha Anderson, Ara Russer, Megan Hockady).
The primary distinguishing variable between widely recognized victims and unrecognized victims is gender.
This disparity in recognition persists across diverse audiences, including:
Women's rights organizations
Civil rights groups
Academic professors and students
Psychologists and sociologists
Progressive members of Congress
Cognitive Framing and "Trickle-Down" Social Justice
Cognitive Framing Theory
When empirical facts do not align with pre-existing cognitive frames, individuals experience significant difficulty processing, integrating, and retaining those facts.
Without available frames to perceive, memorize, and conceptualize specific experiences, information slips through collective consciousness.
Institutional consequences of absent frames:
Journalists do not report or lead with these stories.
Policymakers omit affected groups from legislative priorities.
Politicians face no public mandate or pressure to address the specific issue.
Failure of "Trickle-Down Social Justice"
"Trickle-down social justice" assumes that addressing overarching categories (e.g., race as a general category, gender as a general category) automatically protects individuals situated at the nexus of both categories.
Treating racial injustice and gender injustice as completely separate silos excludes individuals who belong to both marginalized groups.
Lacking specific frames forces vulnerable group members to fall through systemic cracks and suffer in virtual isolation.
Legal Frameworks and the Origins of Intersectionality
The Case of Emma deGraffenried
Background: Emma deGraffenried was an African American working wife and mother who applied for a job at a local car manufacturing plant to seek better employment and provide for her family.
Lawsuit: Upon being rejected, she filed a legal claim alleging combined race and gender discrimination against the manufacturing company.
Workforce Structure at the Plant:
African Americans were hired almost exclusively for industrial and maintenance roles, all of which were filled by Black men.
Women were hired primarily for secretarial and front-office roles, all of which were filled by white women.
Black women were excluded from both job categories.
Judicial Ruling and Rationale:
The judge dismissed the lawsuit, reasoning that the employer did not discriminate based on race (since Black men were hired) nor gender (since white women were hired).
The court refused to allow deGraffenried to combine race and gender into a single cause of action.
The judge argued that allowing a combined claim would give Black women "preferential treatment" and an unfair advantage—giving them "two swings at the bat" while Black men and white women only received "one swing."
Flaw in Judicial Logic:
Neither Black men nor white women needed to combine claims to demonstrate discrimination because the baseline job categories catered specifically to their single-identity status.
By refusing to broaden legal frames to cover compound discrimination, the court effectively rendered the systemic exclusion of Black women legally inconsequential.
Conceptualization of "Injustice Squared"
First layer of injustice: Total exclusion of Black women from employment opportunities at the plant.
Second layer of injustice: Legal refusal to acknowledge or penalize the exclusion.
Root cause: Absence of a specific name or legal category for the problem. Without a name, a problem cannot be seen; when it cannot be seen, it cannot be solved.
The Intersection Analogy
Structural Components of the Metaphor
The Roads: Represent the structural organization of society and workforces along distinct lines of race and gender.
The Traffic: Represents hiring policies, institutional practices, and systemic behaviors flowing down those roads.
The Overlap (Intersection): Represents the precise positional location of individuals who are simultaneously Black and female, subjected to traffic flowing from both directions at once.
The Law (Ambulance): Represents legal remedies that arrive to assist victims only if damage occurred exclusively on the "race road" or exclusively on the "gender road," but fail to provide aid if the harm occurred precisely where the roads intersect.
Defining Intersectionality
Intersectionality describes the state of being impacted by multiple overlapping social forces and structural dynamics, and subsequently being abandoned to navigate the combined impact without targeted support or protection.
Scope of Intersectionality and Real-World Impact
Extending the Analytical Framework
Intersectionality applies beyond race and gender to encompass multiple compounding systems of oppression, including:
Heterosexism
Transphobia
Xenophobia
Ableism
These intersecting vectors generate unique social dynamics, vulnerabilities, and lived realities for marginalized populations worldwide.
Manifestations of Police Violence Against Black Women
Demographics and Locations
Victims span all age demographics, ranging from girls as young as years old to great-grandmothers as old as years old.
Fatal encounters occur across diverse spaces, including:
Private living rooms and bedrooms
Personal motor vehicles
Public streets
Directly in front of parents or children
Methods of Fatal Force
Documented physical causes of death include being shot, stomped, suffocated, manhandled, and tasered.
Pretextual Circumstances and Everyday Activities
Black women have been killed under everyday conditions, such as:
Calling the police for help
Being alone or being accompanied by others
Shopping while Black
Driving while Black
Experiencing a mental health crisis / mental disability while Black
Experiencing a domestic disturbance while Black
Experiencing homelessness while Black
Talking on a mobile phone
Laughing with friends
Sitting inside a vehicle reported as stolen
Executing a U-turn in front of the White House with an infant secured in the back seat
The Say Her Name Movement and Collective Action
Initiative and Demands
In 2014, the African American Policy Forum launched the demand to "Say Her Name."
The directive mandates explicit vocal recognition of Black female victims of state-sanctioned violence at rallies, protests, legal conferences, and public meetings.
Bearing Witness
Beyond chanting names, individuals must actively bear witness to painful, everyday realities, violence, and humiliations experienced by Black women across variations in:
Skin color
Age
Gender expression
Sexuality
Ability
Call to Transformation
Public spaces must transition from silent mourning and invisible grief to audible, collective action and structural transformation.
Bringing impacted women into public light requires disrupting intentional invisibility with vocal, collective insistence on structural accountability.