The urgency of intersectionality | Kimberlé Crenshaw | TED

1,934,474 views ・ 2016-12-07

TED


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00:12
I'd like to try something new.
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Those of you who are able,
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please stand up.
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OK, so I'm going to name some names.
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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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The last person standing, we're going to see what they know. OK?
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(Laughter)
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All right.
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Eric Garner.
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Mike Brown.
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Tamir Rice.
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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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So let's continue.
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Michelle Cusseaux.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I actually read about Emma's story from the pages of a legal opinion
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written by a judge who had dismissed Emma's claim
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of race and gender discrimination
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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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and she believed that she was not hired because she was a black woman.
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Now, the judge in question dismissed Emma's suit,
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and the argument for dismissing the suit was
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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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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,
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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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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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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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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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law's refusal to protect African-American women
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simply because their experiences weren't exactly the same
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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 antidiscrimination law,
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as a feminist,
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as an antiracist,
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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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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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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,
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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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to see gender discrimination or to see race discrimination
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was partial, and it was distorting.
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For me, the challenge that I faced was
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trying to figure out whether there was an alternative narrative,
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a prism that would allow us to see Emma's dilemma,
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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,
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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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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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and the other practices that ran through those roads.
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Now, because Emma was both black and female,
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she was positioned precisely where those roads overlapped,
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experiencing the simultaneous impact
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of the company's gender and race traffic.
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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 on the gender road
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but not where those roads intersected.
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So what do you call being impacted by multiple forces
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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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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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intersections of race and gender,
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of heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism,
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all of these social dynamics come together
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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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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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under which African-American women die.
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Police violence against black women
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is very real.
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The level of violence that black women face
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is such that it's not surprising
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that some of them do not survive their encounters with police.
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Black girls as young as seven,
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great grandmothers as old as 95
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have been killed by the police.
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They've been killed in their living rooms,
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in their bedrooms.
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They've been killed in their cars.
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They've been killed on the street.
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They've been killed in front of their parents
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and they've been killed in front of their children.
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They have been shot to death.
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They have been stomped to death.
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They have been suffocated to death.
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They have been manhandled to death.
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They have been tasered to death.
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They've been killed when they've called for help.
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They've been killed when they were alone,
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and they've been killed when they were with others.
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They've been killed shopping while black,
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driving while black,
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having a mental disability while black,
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having a domestic disturbance while black.
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They've even been killed being homeless while black.
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They've been killed talking on the cell phone,
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laughing with friends,
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sitting in a car reported as stolen
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and making a U-turn in front of the White House
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with an infant strapped in the backseat of the car.
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Why don't we know these stories?
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Why is it that their lost lives
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don't generate the same amount of media attention and communal outcry
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as the lost lives of their fallen brothers?
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It's time for a change.
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So what can we do?
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In 2014, the African-American Policy Forum began to demand
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that we "say her name"
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at rallies, at protests,
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at conferences, at meetings,
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anywhere and everywhere
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that state violence against black bodies is being discussed.
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But saying her name is not enough.
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We have to be willing to do more.
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We have to be willing to bear witness,
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to bear witness to the often painful realities
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that we would just rather not confront,
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the everyday violence and humiliation that many black women have had to face,
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black women across color,
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age, gender expression,
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sexuality and ability.
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So we have the opportunity right now --
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bearing in mind that some of the images that I'm about to share with you
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may be triggering for some --
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to collectively bear witness to some of this violence.
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We're going to hear the voice of the phenomenal Abby Dobson.
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And as we sit with these women,
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some who have experienced violence and some who have not survived them,
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we have an opportunity
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to reverse what happened at the beginning of this talk,
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when we could not stand for these women
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because we did not know their names.
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So at the end of this clip, there's going to be a roll call.
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Several black women's names will come up.
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I'd like those of you who are able to join us in saying these names
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as loud as you can,
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randomly, disorderly.
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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,
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to bring them into the light.
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(Singing) Abby Dobson: Say,
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say her name.
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Say,
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say her name.
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(Audience) Shelly!
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(Audience) Kayla!
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AD: Oh,
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say her name.
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(Audience shouting names)
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Say, say,
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say her name.
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Say her name.
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For all the names
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I'll never know,
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say her name.
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KC: 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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AD: Say her name.
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KC: 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)
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