How do we talk about slavery?
Firelei Báez, Years of Holding Your Tongue (2018).
Positionality refers to a person’s location in relation to the various processes which produce and have produced power, now and in the past. Positionality, in other words, is where people are “positioned” — by law, force, policy, and other constructed (man-made) historical processes. This means positionality can be stable, shifting, or both at the same time!
Identity refers to a set of characteristics. Race, gender and sexual orientation are all aspects of identity.
Intersectionality (a term coined by law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw) is a framework that allows us to consider how multiple social and biological identities (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, etc.) interact with each other and with systems of oppression and discrimination.
The images below are screenshots of comments posted to the New York Times website in response to the assigned article by Jamelle Bouie.
Imagine the comment assigned to your group was something you heard in the course of an in-person conversation with the commenter.
Would you engage the commenter in a conversation? Why or why not? In other words, what factors would determine whether or not you engaged this person in a conversation?
If you were to engage in a conversation with this person, how would you respond? Why? What would your goal for the conversation be?
How do the terms defined above relate to your answers to the previous questions?
