1
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I'd like to try something new.

2
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Those of you who are able,

3
00:00:04,966 --> 00:00:06,595
please stand up.

4
00:00:08,735 --> 00:00:12,251
Okay, so I'm going to name some names.

5
00:00:12,251 --> 00:00:14,655
When you hear a name
that you don't recognize,

6
00:00:14,655 --> 00:00:16,444
you can't tell me anything about them,

7
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I'd like you to take a seat,

8
00:00:18,208 --> 00:00:20,496
and stay seated.

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00:00:20,496 --> 00:00:24,665
The last person standing,
we're going to see what they know.

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Okay?

11
00:00:25,520 --> 00:00:26,524
(Laughter)

12
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All right.

13
00:00:27,353 --> 00:00:30,750
Eric Garner.

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Mike Brown.

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00:00:34,742 --> 00:00:36,876
Tamir Rice.

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00:00:39,948 --> 00:00:41,618
Freddie Gray.

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So those of you who are still standing,

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I'd like you to turn around
and take a look.

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I'd say half to most of the people
are still standing.

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00:00:53,193 --> 00:00:55,005
So let's continue.

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00:00:55,949 --> 00:00:58,115
Michelle Cusseaux.

22
00:01:03,979 --> 00:01:06,510
Tanisha Anderson.

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Ara Russer.

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Meagan Hockaday.

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So if we look around again, there are
about four people still standing,

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and actually I'm not going
to put you on the spot.

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I just say that to encourage transparency,

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so you can be seated.

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(Laughter)

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00:01:32,609 --> 00:01:35,917
So those of you who recognized
the first group of names know

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that these were African-Americans
who have been killed by the police

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over the last two and a half years.

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What you may not know is that
the other list is also

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African-Americans who have been killed
within the last two years.

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Only one thing distinguishes
the names that you know

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from the names that you don't know:

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00:02:02,615 --> 00:02:04,523
gender.

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So let me first let you know
that there's nothing at all distinct

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00:02:10,737 --> 00:02:12,546
about this audience

40
00:02:12,546 --> 00:02:16,166
that explains the patterns of recognition
that we've just seen.

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I've done this exercise
dozens of times around the country.

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I've done it to women's
rights organizations.

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00:02:23,513 --> 00:02:25,519
I've done it with civil rights groups.

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I've done it with professors.
I've done it with students.

45
00:02:28,726 --> 00:02:32,764
I've done it with psychologists.
I've done it with sociologists.

46
00:02:32,764 --> 00:02:36,456
I've done it even with
progressive members of Congress.

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And everywhere, the awareness
of the level of police violence

48
00:02:40,827 --> 00:02:42,653
that black women experience

49
00:02:42,653 --> 00:02:45,826
is exceedingly low.

50
00:02:45,826 --> 00:02:49,478
Now, it is surprising, isn't it,
that this would be the case.

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I mean, there are two issues
involved here.

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There's police violence
against African-Americans,

53
00:02:54,393 --> 00:02:56,563
and there's violence against women,

54
00:02:56,563 --> 00:03:00,308
two issues that have been
talked about a lot lately.

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But when we think about
who is implicated by these problems,

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when we think about who is
victimized by these problems,

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the names of these black women
never come to mind.

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Now, communications experts tell us

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that when facts do not fit
with the available frames,

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people have a difficult time
incorporating new facts

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00:03:24,847 --> 00:03:29,153
into their way of thinking
about a problem.

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These women's names have
slipped through our consciousness

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because there are no frames
for us to see them,

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no frames for us to remember them,

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no frames for us to hold them.

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As a consequence,

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reporters don't lead with them,

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policymakers don't think about them,

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and politicians aren't encouraged
or demanded that they speak to them.

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Now you might ask,

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why does a frame matter?

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I mean, after all,

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an issue that affects black people
and an issue that affects women,

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wouldn't that necessarily include
black people who are women

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and women who are black people?

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00:04:13,645 --> 00:04:18,198
Well, the simple answer is
that this is a trickle-down approach

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to social justice, and many times

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it just doesn't work.

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Without frames that allow us to see
how social problems impact

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00:04:26,650 --> 00:04:29,742
all the members of a targeted group,

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00:04:29,742 --> 00:04:32,817
many will fall through the cracks
of our movements,

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meant to suffer in virtual isolation.

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But it doesn't have to be this way.

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Many years ago, I began to use
the term "intersectionality"

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to deal with the fact that many
of our social justice problems

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like racism and sexism

87
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are often overlapping,

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creating multiple levels
of social injustice.

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00:05:01,410 --> 00:05:04,617
Now, the experience that gave rise

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00:05:04,617 --> 00:05:08,122
to intersectionality
was my chance encounter

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00:05:08,122 --> 00:05:12,034
with a woman named Emma Degraffenreed.

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00:05:12,034 --> 00:05:16,257
Emma Degraffenreed was an
African-American woman,

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00:05:16,257 --> 00:05:19,020
a working wife, and a mother.

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00:05:19,020 --> 00:05:21,240
I actually read about Emma's story

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00:05:21,240 --> 00:05:24,200
from the pages of a legal opinion

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00:05:24,200 --> 00:05:28,607
written by a judge who had
dismissed Emma's claim

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00:05:28,607 --> 00:05:30,722
of race and gender discrimination

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00:05:30,722 --> 00:05:35,723
against a local car manufacturing plant.

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00:05:35,723 --> 00:05:39,261
Emma, like so many African-American women,

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00:05:39,261 --> 00:05:43,144
sought better employment
for her family and for others.

101
00:05:43,144 --> 00:05:47,600
She wanted to create a better life
for her children and for her family.

102
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But she applied for a job,

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and she was not hired,

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00:05:51,445 --> 00:05:55,920
and she believed that she was not hired
because she was a black woman.

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00:05:55,920 --> 00:06:00,588
Now, the judge in question
dismissed Emma's suit,

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and the argument
for dismissing the suit was

107
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that the employer did hire
African-Americans

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and the employer hired women.

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The real problem, though, that the judge
was not willing to acknowledge

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was what Emma was actually trying to say,

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00:06:18,724 --> 00:06:21,782
that the African-Americans
that were hired,

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usually for industrial jobs,
maintenance jobs, were all men,

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and the women that were hired, usually
for secretarial or front office work,

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were all white.

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Only if the court was able to see
how these policies came together

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would he be able to see
the double discrimination

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that Emma Degraffenreed was facing.

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But the court refused to allow Emma

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to put two causes of action together

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to tell her story

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because he believed that,
by allowing her to do that,

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she would be able to have
preferential treatment.

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She would have an advantage
by having two swings at the bat,

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when African-American men and white women
only had one swing at the bat.

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But of course, neither
African-American men or white women

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00:07:17,673 --> 00:07:22,209
needed to combine a race
and gender discrimination claim

127
00:07:22,209 --> 00:07:27,601
to tell the story of the discrimination
they were experiencing.

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Why wasn't the real unfairness

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laws refusal to protect
African-American women

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00:07:34,869 --> 00:07:38,799
simply because their experiences
weren't exactly the same

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00:07:38,799 --> 00:07:43,538
as white women
and African-American men?

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Rather than broadening the frame
to include African-American women,

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the court simply tossed their case
completely out of court.

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Now, as a student
of anti-discrimination law,

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as a feminist,

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as an anti-racist,

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I was struck by this case.

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It felt to me like injustice squared.

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So first of all,

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00:08:11,899 --> 00:08:15,762
black women weren't allowed
to work at the plant.

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00:08:15,762 --> 00:08:19,749
Second of all, the court
doubled down on this exclusion

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00:08:19,749 --> 00:08:23,680
by making it legally inconsequential.

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And to boot, there was
no name for this problem.

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And we all know that,
where there's no name for a problem,

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you can't see a problem,
and when you can't see a problem,

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00:08:34,224 --> 00:08:38,198
you pretty much can't solve it.

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Many years later, I had come to recognize
that the problem that Emma was facing

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00:08:44,384 --> 00:08:47,407
was a framing problem.

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The frame that the court was using
to see gender discrimination

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00:08:51,861 --> 00:08:55,381
or to see race discrimination was partial

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00:08:55,381 --> 00:08:58,176
and it was distorting.

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For me, the challenge that I faced was

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00:09:01,070 --> 00:09:05,878
trying to figure out whether there was
an alternative narrative,

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00:09:05,878 --> 00:09:10,574
a prism that would allow us to see
Emma's dilemma,

155
00:09:10,574 --> 00:09:16,493
a prism that would allow us
to rescue her from the cracks in the law,

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that would allow judges to see her story.

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So it occurred to me, maybe
a simple analogy to an intersection

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might allow judges to better see
Emma's dilemma.

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So if we think about this intersection,
the roads to the intersection would be

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the way that the work force
was structured by race and by gender,

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and then the traffic in those roads
would be the hiring policies

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and the other practices
that ran through those roads.

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00:09:53,604 --> 00:09:58,605
Now, because Emma was
both black and female,

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she was positioned precisely
where those roads overlapped,

165
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experiencing the simultaneous impact

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of the company's gender
and race traffic.

167
00:10:13,766 --> 00:10:18,367
The law, the law is like
that ambulance that shows up

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and is ready to treat Emma
only if it can be shown

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that she was harmed
on the race road or the gender road

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00:10:27,377 --> 00:10:32,163
but not where those roads intersected.

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So what do you call being impacted
by multiple forces

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00:10:37,458 --> 00:10:41,946
and then abandoned to fend for yourself?

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Intersectionality seemed to do it for me.

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I would go on to learn that
African-American women,

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00:10:50,939 --> 00:10:53,144
like other women of color,

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like other socially marginalized people
all over the world,

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were facing all kinds
of dilemmas and challenges

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as a consequence of intersectionality,

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00:11:04,186 --> 00:11:07,728
intersections of race and gender,

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00:11:07,728 --> 00:11:11,952
of heterosexism, transphobia,
xenophobia, ablism,

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all of these social dynamics come together

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and create challenges

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00:11:19,731 --> 00:11:23,233
that are sometimes quite unique.

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But in the same way

185
00:11:25,864 --> 00:11:27,494
that intersectionality

186
00:11:27,494 --> 00:11:33,576
raised our awareness to the way
that black women live their lives,

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it also exposes the tragic circumstances

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00:11:38,131 --> 00:11:42,511
under which African-American women die.

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Police violence against black women

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00:11:46,566 --> 00:11:48,391
is very real.

191
00:11:48,391 --> 00:11:51,991
The level of violence
that black women face

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is such that it's not surprising

193
00:11:53,817 --> 00:11:59,339
that some of them do not survive
their encounters with police.

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Black girls as young as seven,

195
00:12:03,074 --> 00:12:07,760
great grandmothers as old as 95,

196
00:12:07,760 --> 00:12:10,292
have been killed by the police.

197
00:12:10,292 --> 00:12:13,006
They've been killed in their living rooms,

198
00:12:13,006 --> 00:12:14,918
in their bedrooms.

199
00:12:14,918 --> 00:12:17,831
They've been killed in their cars.

200
00:12:17,831 --> 00:12:20,067
They've been killed on the street.

201
00:12:20,067 --> 00:12:22,766
They've been killed
in front of their parents

202
00:12:22,766 --> 00:12:26,383
and they've been killed
in front of their children.

203
00:12:26,383 --> 00:12:28,756
They have been shot to death.

204
00:12:28,756 --> 00:12:32,176
They have bene stomped to death.

205
00:12:32,176 --> 00:12:34,853
They have been suffocated to death.

206
00:12:34,853 --> 00:12:37,833
They have been manhandled to death.

207
00:12:37,833 --> 00:12:40,960
They have been tasered to death.

208
00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:45,791
They've been killed when they've
called for help.

209
00:12:45,791 --> 00:12:49,178
They've been killed when they
were alone,

210
00:12:49,178 --> 00:12:53,058
and they've been killed
when they were with others.

211
00:12:53,058 --> 00:12:56,741
They've been killed shopping while black,

212
00:12:56,741 --> 00:12:59,388
driving while black,

213
00:12:59,388 --> 00:13:03,631
having a mental disability while black,

214
00:13:03,631 --> 00:13:07,561
having a domestic disturbance while black.

215
00:13:07,561 --> 00:13:12,298
They've even been killed
being homeless while black.

216
00:13:12,298 --> 00:13:15,289
They've been killed
talking on the cell phone,

217
00:13:15,289 --> 00:13:17,427
laughing with friends,

218
00:13:17,427 --> 00:13:20,501
sitting in a car reported as stolen,

219
00:13:20,501 --> 00:13:24,091
and making a u-turn
in front of a White House

220
00:13:24,091 --> 00:13:28,180
with an infant strapped
in the back seat of the car.

221
00:13:28,180 --> 00:13:32,060
Why don't we know these stories?

222
00:13:32,060 --> 00:13:36,615
Why is it that their lost lives

223
00:13:36,615 --> 00:13:41,318
don't generate the same amount
of media attention and communal outcry

224
00:13:41,318 --> 00:13:46,185
as the lost lives
of their fallen brothers?

225
00:13:46,185 --> 00:13:49,408
It's time for a change.

226
00:13:49,408 --> 00:13:54,866
So what can we do?

227
00:13:54,866 --> 00:13:59,817
In 2014, the African-American
Policy Forum began to demand

228
00:13:59,817 --> 00:14:04,616
that we "say her name"

229
00:14:04,616 --> 00:14:08,136
at rallies, at protests,

230
00:14:08,136 --> 00:14:11,014
at conferences, at meetings,

231
00:14:11,014 --> 00:14:13,496
anywhere and everywhere

232
00:14:13,496 --> 00:14:16,850
that state violence against black bodies
is being discussed.

233
00:14:16,850 --> 00:14:21,832
But saying her name is not enough.

234
00:14:21,832 --> 00:14:24,069
We have to be willing to do more.

235
00:14:24,069 --> 00:14:27,488
We have to be willing to bear witness,

236
00:14:27,488 --> 00:14:30,908
to bear witness to the often
painful realities

237
00:14:30,908 --> 00:14:33,918
that we would just rather not confront,

238
00:14:33,918 --> 00:14:37,157
the everyday violence and humiliation

239
00:14:37,157 --> 00:14:40,233
that many black women have had to face,

240
00:14:40,233 --> 00:14:42,632
black women across color,

241
00:14:42,632 --> 00:14:45,525
age, gender expression,

242
00:14:45,525 --> 00:14:49,111
sexuality, and ability.

243
00:14:49,111 --> 00:14:51,357
So we have the opportunity right now,

244
00:14:51,357 --> 00:14:57,540
bearing in mind that some of the images
that I'm about to share with you

245
00:14:57,540 --> 00:15:00,252
may be triggering for some,

246
00:15:00,252 --> 00:15:02,275
to collectively bear witness

247
00:15:02,275 --> 00:15:06,382
to some of this violence.

248
00:15:06,382 --> 00:15:08,375
We're going to hear the voice

249
00:15:08,375 --> 00:15:11,384
of the phenomenal Abby Dobson,

250
00:15:11,384 --> 00:15:14,968
and as we sit with these women,

251
00:15:14,968 --> 00:15:21,282
some who have experienced violence
and some who have not survived them,

252
00:15:21,282 --> 00:15:26,725
we have an opportunity to reverse what
happened at the beginning of this talk,

253
00:15:26,725 --> 00:15:29,590
when we could not stand for these women

254
00:15:29,590 --> 00:15:33,893
because we did not know their names.

255
00:15:33,893 --> 00:15:38,858
So at the end of this clip,
there's going to be a roll call.

256
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Several black women's names will come up.

257
00:15:42,838 --> 00:15:47,899
I'd like those of you who are able
to join us in saying these names

258
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as loud as you can,

259
00:15:50,315 --> 00:15:53,440
randomly, disorderly.

260
00:15:53,440 --> 00:15:56,712
Let's create a cacophony of sound

261
00:15:56,712 --> 00:16:03,470
to represent our intention

262
00:16:03,470 --> 00:16:04,473
to hold these women up,

263
00:16:04,473 --> 00:16:05,673
to sit with them,

264
00:16:05,673 --> 00:16:06,808
to bear witness to them,

265
00:16:06,808 --> 00:16:09,750
to bring them into the light.

266
00:16:16,659 --> 00:16:29,613
Abby Dobson: Say, say her name.

267
00:16:30,885 --> 00:16:37,046
Say

268
00:16:38,394 --> 00:16:44,037
Say her name

269
00:16:46,057 --> 00:16:53,916
Oh

270
00:16:53,916 --> 00:17:02,943
Say her name

271
00:17:02,943 --> 00:17:10,540
Say, say

272
00:17:10,540 --> 00:17:17,593
Say her name

273
00:17:17,593 --> 00:17:23,334
Say her name

274
00:17:23,334 --> 00:17:34,086
All the names I'll never know

275
00:17:34,086 --> 00:17:46,860
Say her name

276
00:17:49,246 --> 00:17:56,709
Say her name

277
00:17:59,325 --> 00:18:02,156
Kimberlé Crenshaw: So I said
at the beginning,

278
00:18:02,156 --> 00:18:05,672
if we can't see a problem,

279
00:18:05,672 --> 00:18:08,598
we can't fix a problem.

280
00:18:08,598 --> 00:18:12,545
Together, we've come together
to bear witness

281
00:18:12,545 --> 00:18:15,160
to these women's lost lives,

282
00:18:15,160 --> 00:18:17,822
but the time now is to move

283
00:18:17,822 --> 00:18:20,045
from mourning and grief

284
00:18:20,045 --> 00:18:24,089
to action and transformation.

285
00:18:24,089 --> 00:18:27,696
This is something that we can do.

286
00:18:27,696 --> 00:18:29,891
It's up to us.

287
00:18:29,891 --> 00:18:32,705
Thank you for joining us.

288
00:18:32,705 --> 00:18:36,312
(Applause)