1
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I'd like to try something new.

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00:00:03,200 --> 00:00:04,736
Those of you who are able,

3
00:00:04,760 --> 00:00:05,960
please stand up.

4
00:00:08,480 --> 00:00:11,600
OK, so I'm going to name some names.

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00:00:12,080 --> 00:00:14,456
When you hear a name
that you don't recognize,

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you can't tell me anything about them,

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I'd like you to take a seat

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and stay seated.

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00:00:20,240 --> 00:00:23,856
The last person standing,
we're going to see what they know. OK?

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00:00:23,880 --> 00:00:25,456
(Laughter)

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00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:26,680
All right.

12
00:00:27,160 --> 00:00:28,360
Eric Garner.

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Mike Brown.

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Tamir Rice.

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00:00:39,760 --> 00:00:40,960
Freddie Gray.

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So those of you who are still standing,

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00:00:46,160 --> 00:00:48,256
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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00:00:52,920 --> 00:00:54,120
So let's continue.

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00:00:55,640 --> 00:00:57,000
Michelle Cusseaux.

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00:01:03,720 --> 00:01:05,640
Tanisha Anderson.

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Aura Rosser.

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Meagan Hockaday.

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So if we look around again,

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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,
so you can be seated.

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(Laughter)

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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

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is that the other list
is also African-Americans

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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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00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:03,520
gender.

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

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about this audience

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00:02:12,360 --> 00:02:16,176
that explains the pattern 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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I've done it with civil rights groups.

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

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I've done it with psychologists.
I've done it with sociologists.

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I've done it even with
progressive members of Congress.

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And everywhere, the awareness
of the level of police violence

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that black women experience

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is exceedingly low.

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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,

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and there's violence against women,

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00:02:56,440 --> 00:02:59,400
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,

56
00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:09,616
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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00:03:24,680 --> 00:03:27,960
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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00:04:13,520 --> 00:04:18,776
Well, the simple answer is that this is
a trickle-down approach to social justice,

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and many times it just doesn't work.

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Without frames that allow us to see

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how social problems impact
all the members of a targeted group,

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many will fall through the cracks
of our movements,

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left 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

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are often overlapping,

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creating multiple levels
of social injustice.

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Now, the experience
that gave rise to intersectionality

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00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:11,400
was my chance encounter
with a woman named Emma DeGraffenreid.

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Emma DeGraffenreid
was an African-American woman,

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a working wife and a mother.

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00:05:18,800 --> 00:05:24,216
I actually read about Emma's story
from the pages of a legal opinion

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00:05:24,240 --> 00:05:28,376
written by a judge
who had dismissed Emma's claim

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00:05:28,400 --> 00:05:30,496
of race and gender discrimination

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00:05:30,520 --> 00:05:34,720
against a local car manufacturing plant.

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Emma, like so many African-American women,

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sought better employment
for her family and for others.

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She wanted to create a better life
for her children and for her family.

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But she applied for a job,

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and she was not hired,

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00:05:51,400 --> 00:05:55,040
and she believed that she was not hired
because she was a black woman.

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00:05:55,800 --> 00:06:00,416
Now, the judge in question
dismissed Emma's suit,

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00:06:00,440 --> 00:06:03,016
and the argument
for dismissing the suit was

104
00:06:03,040 --> 00:06:07,376
that the employer
did hire African-Americans

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00:06:07,400 --> 00:06:09,760
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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that the African-Americans
that were hired,

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00:06:21,560 --> 00:06:26,320
usually for industrial jobs,
maintenance jobs, were all men.

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And the women that were hired,

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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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00:06:43,160 --> 00:06:46,280
that Emma DeGraffenreid was facing.

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But the court refused to allow Emma
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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00:07:07,040 --> 00:07:11,680
when African-American men and white women
only had one swing at the bat.

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00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:17,456
But of course, neither
African-American men or white women

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00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:22,056
needed to combine a race
and gender discrimination claim

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to tell the story of the discrimination
they were experiencing.

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Why wasn't the real unfairness

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00:07:30,520 --> 00:07:34,656
law's refusal to protect
African-American women

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00:07:34,680 --> 00:07:38,776
simply because their experiences
weren't exactly the same

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00:07:38,800 --> 00:07:42,560
as white women and African-American men?

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00:07:43,280 --> 00:07:48,536
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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00:07:54,080 --> 00:07:58,056
Now, as a student
of antidiscrimination law,

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as a feminist,

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as an antiracist,

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00:08:01,960 --> 00:08:05,176
I was struck by this case.

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00:08:05,200 --> 00:08:09,856
It felt to me like injustice squared.

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00:08:09,880 --> 00:08:11,976
So first of all,

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00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:14,840
black women weren't allowed
to work at the plant.

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Second of all, the court
doubled down on this exclusion

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by making it legally inconsequential.

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00:08:23,480 --> 00:08:26,880
And to boot, there was
no name for this problem.

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00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:31,096
And we all know that,
where there's no name for a problem,

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00:08:31,120 --> 00:08:32,376
you can't see a problem,

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00:08:32,400 --> 00:08:36,600
and when you can't see a problem,
you pretty much can't solve it.

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Many years later, I had come to recognize

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that the problem that Emma was facing
was a framing problem.

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The frame that the court was using

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00:08:49,120 --> 00:08:54,096
to see gender discrimination
or to see race discrimination

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00:08:54,120 --> 00:08:57,040
was partial, and it was distorting.

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For me, the challenge that I faced was

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00:09:00,800 --> 00:09:05,616
trying to figure out whether
there was an alternative narrative,

151
00:09:05,640 --> 00:09:10,336
a prism that would allow us
to see Emma's dilemma,

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00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:16,296
a prism that would allow us
to rescue her from the cracks in the law,

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00:09:16,320 --> 00:09:19,600
that would allow judges to see her story.

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So it occurred to me,

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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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00:09:37,720 --> 00:09:43,640
the way that the workforce
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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00:09:48,880 --> 00:09:53,416
and the other practices
that ran through those roads.

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00:09:53,440 --> 00:09:58,376
Now, because Emma
was both black and female,

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00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:03,080
she was positioned precisely
where those roads overlapped,

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experiencing the simultaneous impact

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00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:11,960
of the company's gender and race traffic.

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00:10:13,400 --> 00:10:19,176
The law -- the law is
like that ambulance that shows up

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00:10:19,200 --> 00:10:22,616
and is ready to treat Emma
only if it can be shown

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00:10:22,640 --> 00:10:27,256
that she was harmed
on the race road or on the gender road

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00:10:27,280 --> 00:10:31,120
but not where those roads intersected.

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So what do you call
being impacted by multiple forces

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00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:40,760
and then abandoned to fend for yourself?

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00:10:41,720 --> 00:10:44,360
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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like other women of color,

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like other socially marginalized people
all over the world,

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00:10:56,840 --> 00:11:00,816
were facing all kinds
of dilemmas and challenges

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00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:03,936
as a consequence of intersectionality,

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00:11:03,960 --> 00:11:07,536
intersections of race and gender,

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00:11:07,560 --> 00:11:12,776
of heterosexism, transphobia,
xenophobia, ableism,

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00:11:12,800 --> 00:11:17,376
all of these social dynamics come together

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00:11:17,400 --> 00:11:21,640
and create challenges
that are sometimes quite unique.

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But in the same way

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that intersectionality

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00:11:27,200 --> 00:11:32,280
raised our awareness to the way
that black women live their lives,

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it also exposes the tragic circumstances

185
00:11:37,440 --> 00:11:40,600
under which African-American women die.

186
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Police violence against black women

187
00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:47,320
is very real.

188
00:11:48,080 --> 00:11:50,576
The level of violence
that black women face

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00:11:50,600 --> 00:11:52,760
is such that it's not surprising

190
00:11:53,640 --> 00:11:57,960
that some of them do not survive
their encounters with police.

191
00:11:59,200 --> 00:12:02,656
Black girls as young as seven,

192
00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:06,400
great grandmothers as old as 95

193
00:12:07,520 --> 00:12:09,280
have been killed by the police.

194
00:12:09,960 --> 00:12:12,000
They've been killed in their living rooms,

195
00:12:12,760 --> 00:12:14,000
in their bedrooms.

196
00:12:14,800 --> 00:12:16,720
They've been killed in their cars.

197
00:12:17,800 --> 00:12:19,736
They've been killed on the street.

198
00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:22,616
They've been killed
in front of their parents

199
00:12:22,640 --> 00:12:25,440
and they've been killed
in front of their children.

200
00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:27,800
They have been shot to death.

201
00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:30,960
They have been stomped to death.

202
00:12:31,960 --> 00:12:33,840
They have been suffocated to death.

203
00:12:34,560 --> 00:12:37,496
They have been manhandled to death.

204
00:12:37,520 --> 00:12:40,000
They have been tasered to death.

205
00:12:41,160 --> 00:12:44,160
They've been killed
when they've called for help.

206
00:12:45,560 --> 00:12:48,656
They've been killed when they were alone,

207
00:12:48,680 --> 00:12:51,800
and they've been killed
when they were with others.

208
00:12:52,880 --> 00:12:55,640
They've been killed shopping while black,

209
00:12:56,520 --> 00:12:58,000
driving while black,

210
00:12:59,400 --> 00:13:02,520
having a mental disability while black,

211
00:13:03,120 --> 00:13:05,920
having a domestic disturbance while black.

212
00:13:07,200 --> 00:13:11,080
They've even been killed
being homeless while black.

213
00:13:12,200 --> 00:13:14,816
They've been killed
talking on the cell phone,

214
00:13:14,840 --> 00:13:17,216
laughing with friends,

215
00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:20,296
sitting in a car reported as stolen,

216
00:13:20,320 --> 00:13:23,936
and making a U-turn
in front of the White House

217
00:13:23,960 --> 00:13:26,800
with an infant strapped
in the backseat of the car.

218
00:13:28,040 --> 00:13:29,840
Why don't we know these stories?

219
00:13:32,640 --> 00:13:35,640
Why is it that their lost lives

220
00:13:36,440 --> 00:13:41,176
don't generate the same amount
of media attention and communal outcry

221
00:13:41,200 --> 00:13:44,360
as the lost lives
of their fallen brothers?

222
00:13:45,800 --> 00:13:47,760
It's time for a change.

223
00:13:51,040 --> 00:13:52,480
So what can we do?

224
00:13:54,800 --> 00:14:00,176
In 2014, the African-American
Policy Forum began to demand

225
00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:02,440
that we "say her name"

226
00:14:04,360 --> 00:14:07,200
at rallies, at protests,

227
00:14:07,960 --> 00:14:10,616
at conferences, at meetings,

228
00:14:10,640 --> 00:14:13,256
anywhere and everywhere

229
00:14:13,280 --> 00:14:17,280
that state violence against black bodies
is being discussed.

230
00:14:18,800 --> 00:14:21,456
But saying her name is not enough.

231
00:14:21,480 --> 00:14:24,056
We have to be willing to do more.

232
00:14:24,080 --> 00:14:27,296
We have to be willing to bear witness,

233
00:14:27,320 --> 00:14:30,936
to bear witness
to the often painful realities

234
00:14:30,960 --> 00:14:33,696
that we would just rather not confront,

235
00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:40,176
the everyday violence and humiliation
that many black women have had to face,

236
00:14:40,200 --> 00:14:42,576
black women across color,

237
00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:45,016
age, gender expression,

238
00:14:45,040 --> 00:14:47,320
sexuality and ability.

239
00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:53,216
So we have the opportunity right now --

240
00:14:53,240 --> 00:14:57,256
bearing in mind that some of the images
that I'm about to share with you

241
00:14:57,280 --> 00:14:59,000
may be triggering for some --

242
00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:04,600
to collectively bear witness
to some of this violence.

243
00:15:06,120 --> 00:15:10,400
We're going to hear the voice
of the phenomenal Abby Dobson,

244
00:15:11,160 --> 00:15:14,160
and as we sit with these women,

245
00:15:14,760 --> 00:15:19,960
some who have experienced violence
and some who have not survived them,

246
00:15:21,280 --> 00:15:22,896
we have an opportunity

247
00:15:22,920 --> 00:15:26,656
to reverse what happened
at the beginning of this talk,

248
00:15:26,680 --> 00:15:29,376
when we could not stand for these women

249
00:15:29,400 --> 00:15:32,760
because we did not know their names.

250
00:15:33,640 --> 00:15:37,040
So at the end of this clip,
there's going to be a roll call.

251
00:15:38,560 --> 00:15:41,160
Several black women's names will come up.

252
00:15:42,800 --> 00:15:47,736
I'd like those of you who are able
to join us in saying these names

253
00:15:47,760 --> 00:15:50,136
as loud as you can,

254
00:15:50,160 --> 00:15:52,896
randomly, disorderly.

255
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Let's create a cacophony of sound

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to represent our intention

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to hold these women up,

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to sit with them,

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to bear witness to them,

260
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to bring them into the light.

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(Song) Abby Dobson: Say,

262
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say her name.

263
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Say,

264
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say her name.

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(Audience) Shelly!

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(Audience) Kayla!

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(Song) Oh,

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say her name.

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(Audience shouting out the names)

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Say, say,

271
00:17:09,760 --> 00:17:15,520
say her name.

272
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Say her name.

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For all the names

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I'll never know,

275
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say her name.

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Kimberlé Crenshaw:
Aiyanna Stanley Jones, Janisha Fonville,

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Kathryn Johnston, Kayla Moore,

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Michelle Cusseaux, Rekia Boyd,

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Shelly Frey, Tarika, Yvette Smith.

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(Song) Say her name.

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Kimberlé Crenshaw:
So I said at the beginning,

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if we can't see a problem,

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we can't fix a problem.

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Together, we've come together
to bear witness

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to these women's lost lives,

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but the time now is to move

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from mourning and grief

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to action and transformation.

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This is something that we can do.

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It's up to us.

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Thank you for joining us.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)