Intersectionality Theory

The more a person’s identity overlies with the marginal classes, such as gender, race, age, health, and ethnicity, the more the effect of intersectionality in their lives. Women, for example, face sexism at their places of work black people on the other face racism. Therefore, the discrimination against black women gets more intense than that against white women or black men. Another form of discrimination could be against trans-women and aged people (K. W. The effect of intersectionality has structured the management systems in most organizations, either consciously or unconsciously. Most organizations, existing legal and policy mechanism often fail to account for critical cultural differences as they go up against intersectionality. In these organizations, the systems are against people with multiple minority identities.

Some individuals in the management of these organizations often strive to prove that intersectionality is meaningless. The systems believe in treating each discrimination at its level and not overlapping the effects. The court expected the case to be founded on racism against blacks or sexism against women (K. Crenshaw 60). However, General Motors could not be pinned for either, since the company hired black men and white women alike. The plaintiffs’ case concerning failure by the company to hire black women, got dismissed because it attempted to fuse the two types of discrimination into one sensitive issue. From the ruling, the statutory history enclosing Title VII did not depict whether the decree aimed at creating a new category of women of color, which would stand greater than a black man.

The approach by the courts implies that challenged policies may openly discriminate against all women, but because it discriminates harshly against black women, black plaintiffs stand at odds with their white counterparts in notwithstanding the fact that black females may stand a good chance expressing the discrimination acts better than their white counterparts. In the short story, Becky, intersectionality comes into play as Becky, a white woman, finds herself despised by both white and black communities that ought to have taken her in. By getting pregnant with a black man’s child, Becky experiences resentment from her white folks. They resent her for stooping so low as to have a sexual encounter with a black man in the first place. As a white girl, she should not have given in to the black man at all.

In other words, she is perceived as a person who pretended to hold high standards for herself only to be realized as being useless. The black community would not take her in claiming that she does not look like her worth. The black community also refuses to allow her cabin to be built on their portion of land despite offering her a helping hand (Rudisel). Before the pregnancy, the black people must have respected Becky and thought of how high her social class was. The black community, having been discriminated against, had now bought into the supremacy of the white folks. In conclusion, discrimination affects everyone differently as long as the individual experiences a being in a minority class at some point.