Freeway Revolt Summary

Countless battles have been fought on American soil, some with weapons, but most with words, opinions, and selfless actions. These memoirs tell the stories of Malcolm X and Ulrich and how they affected their respective movements. Malcolm X is one of the most famous and well known advocates of the civil rights movement. He has inspired many to stand up for their race, and to not be put down for the color of their skin. Much like Malcolm X, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a famous and well known figure head in the fight for equality. Ulrich undoubtedly is most famous for her quote, “well behaved women seldom make history.” “Literacy Behind Bars” tells the story of how Malcolm X studied and read in Charlestown Prison and how the immense studying shaped

The problem with the “wave metaphor” is, when these periods of feminist history are viewed through an intersectional lens, we see that most of early feminist history was only the activity of economically privileged white women, or women whose intersectionality was favored by the American patriarchy. The marginalization of other women, whose intersectionalities were not favored in the past, leads to a whitewashed view of historical progress. However, women of color had recognized opinions among their own coalitions, but their opinions were simply not recognized by white upper-class feminist movements. Further analysis of feminist movements around the world, when viewed through an intersectional lens, allows us to see that the “wave metaphor” hardly holds it’s water.

On March 1 2017, I attended an event for the anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. This event included readings, musical performances, and a choreographed performance. The entire event completely captivated me, but I was most impacted by Andrea Jenkins reading from her part of the anthology titled “The Price We Pay: How Race and Gender Identity Converge”.

The predominant ideas put forth in the piece from the Combahee River Collective were those that addressed the shortcomings of the feminist movement to include all women and to address the full range of issues that oppress individuals and groups of people in our patriarchal society. This greatly furthered my ongoing development and understanding of what intersectionality is, what its goals are, and how it can help everyone instead of the predominately white, cisgendered, heterosexual, upper middle class women that composed and continue to compose a large portion of the feminist movement.

In the reading, What Has Happened Here by Elsa Brown, the author argues about how racial backgrounds are ignored in society. Furthermore, Brown also scrutinize how in feminist movements there are differences between black and white women. What I most found interesting from the text was the sexual harassment case Brown talked about and how Anita’s Hill race was not prevalent in case, for example, Brown stated “When Prof. Hill testified, a number of women rallied to support her…however (they) ignored the fact that she is a Black women, the thirteenth child of Oklahoma farmers, or treated these as merely descriptive or incidental matters” (302). In addition, the media also did not take into account her racial background because in the papers they

Susan S. Lanser’s “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the politics of color in America” examines the impacts “The Yellow Wallpaper” had on feminist writing styles and critiques. Lanser writes that the story helps to analyze the reading trough “the lens of a female consciousness” and apply the knowledge gained from a female perspective onto other literature (418). The transition that the narrator displays from being dependent on John to becoming independent reflects the feminist movement and challenges the “male dominance” that currently takes precedence in society (418). The “patriarchal prisonhouse” that is society controls the narrator and oppresses women not only in “The Yellow Wallpaper” but in real life as well (419). The

As part of my ongoing quest to understand the intersectional and multi-faceted world we live in, I was drawn to the McIntosh reading “White Privilege:Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” and its powerful commentary on racial biases affecting women in our modern world. I loved the way she spoke about the many simple things that she as a white person doesn’t need to worry about as a default, which non-white people wouldn’t,like the assumption that her tax audits would be executed fairly and without ludicrous scrutiny.This reading inspired me to venture out into my home town and look for an event that spoke to the same issues.I found myself in a small art gallery which was featuring various pieces by indigenous women. The exhibit had a particular focus on the

This extract is found in “The White Album” written by Joan Didion, who is the creator of many significant different literature pieces, both novels and essays. “The White Album” was published in 1979, and is the first and longest essay in the book. In this essay Joan Didion essentially uses a women as a connecting thread to describe what was happening in America at that time. I believe that the woman may even be herself to a certain extent, trying to externalize all her thoughts. What is perceived from the essay is that Didion was submerged into the focus of some big events that were happening in that year, not only as a journalist but also as a bystander and a normal Californian. Didion was also having some psychological problems at the time, and so to her all these events seem to have a connection. Although she is aware that what she is saying may be mindless, she wants to be transparent and tell the audience exactly “how it is for her”. Although my perspective may have changed to a certain extent, using writing as therapy and as well as all the events that have occurred in the 60s.

Generally, women are grouped together, as stated by Lorde: “As women we have either been taught to ignore our differences or view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than forces of change (Lorde, 1979).” Despite the efforts to categorize women’s issues into one mass of problems, White women perceive the world differently than African American women, Hispanic women, Native American women, etc., and vice versa. This conglomeration of “women’s issues” does not address every aspect of being a woman in patriarchal and unjust societies throughout the world. Through

She uses data from a field study on a battered women’s shelter in Los Angeles to back up her claims on structural intersectionality, explaining how women of color often face many structural barriers that keep them stuck in abusive relationships. The field study examines how most women at the shelter were struggling with language and financial barriers and facing racism, Crenshaw uses this information to propose that the struggles women of color face are often left unconsidered in the subject of feminism. In the fourth page of her essay, Crenshaw says, "WOC are differently situated in the economic, social and political worlds" (1250) . In making this claim, Crenshaw makes a warrant that all women of color are facing these same struggles, which is most likely true, but she only refers to the field study to support her claim, which is a generalization strategy. Making a claim about all WOC (women of color) based on the data from a single field suggests to the reader that every woman of color can be compared to the women at this one shelter in Los Angeles and all women can be properly represented by one region. This generalization fails to consider the struggles of WOC from other regions with different factors. Crenshaw’s generalization of representing

Though it was frowned for a woman to act, think, write, and speak like men, that didn’t stop them. In the book, Revolutionary Mothers by Carol Berkin, we learned that women were prohibited to exercise anything out of field and house work, especially politics, this book demonstrates that over the decades, women had altered that perception.

In the 1980’s black women are faced with a lot pressure in society, Because women of color are both women and racial minorities, they face more pressure in which lower economic opportunities due to their race and their gender. This pressure is reflected both in the jobs available to them and in their lower pay. Also because they are women of color they are likely to be the giver of the house and also within the families. Through the use of anecdotes,rhetorical questions, anaphora, ethos and metaphors, "In The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism, Audre Lorde argues that women of color need to respond to racism with anger spurred from their fear and that not a bad thing depends on how anger is portrayed.

In the poem “Ego Tripping” by Nikki Giovanni it is evident that it is difficult to fix a past filled with misogyny, and patriarchy that advance women as feeble vessels, whose words and activities put men at risk. Despite the fact that it implies battling a custom of subordinating women that stretches out back a large number of years, the women’s activist development has since the mid-1970s attempted to give a voice to ladies that offers trust, gives quality, and proposes approaches to battle for more equality. Nikki Giovanni fights for change for African American women in the form of present tense language that shows women’s strength, power, and beauty. Although she is speaking in present tense, she is alluding to the future she wants women

The passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, although riddled with ironies, was crucial in legitimizing the legal feminist strategy. The main paradox of Title VII was the amendment that include the word “sex” into the bill’s language, was offered by Rep. Howard Smith, an anti-civil rights democrat from Virginia (Freeman, “How ‘Sex’ Got into Title VII”). Therefore, the language of Title VII made it unlawful for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and nation origin. Rep. Smith’s plan to kill the bill by attaching the “sex” discrimination language backfired in a major way. The benefits Title VII had on the discourse of the feminist movement were innumerable. However, for the purposes of this analysis, the most significant benefits for legal feminists were threefold. First, equal rights feminists and labor protective feminists were no longer forced against each other over the ideas of a need for an ERA and a need for workplace protection. Second, the ERA did not disappear from the feminist’s dialogue, however, the passage of Title VII allowed pro-ERA feminists to sever the poisonous ties with anti-civil rights bigots. Third, the passage of Title VII finally allowed Pauli Murray and other like-minded feminists to connect a race-sex analogy that would advance the feminist legal strategy, without tossing African

Deep in a swarm of 500,000 women, men, and children; a small huddle of girls headed by lead singer MILCK sang their song “Quiet”, loudly, for all the world to hear during the Women’s March on Washington in 2017. Their voices carried a tune of faith, hope, and power, which Jill Lapore echoed in her work “Wars Within”. Lapore’s writing is essential to providing significant insight into the election of 2017 by connecting to past historical moments which many members of James Madison’s student body can recollect and link to the severity of the election results. Lapore uses the connections between the civil war era and present day America to tie together the presence of inequality in simple historical terms. The usage of this connection allows for readers to compare cause and solution to possibly be persuaded to enact change as Fredrick Douglass did in the past. For this reason, The Breeze should include this work in their latest issue to aid in persuading the student body to stand up for their right of equality and let their voices be the ones to instigate a true change in America.