This resource list was compiled by Nia Langley for her Critical Race Theory seminar paper, #SeeHerName: Using Intersectionality and Storytelling to Bring Visibility to Black Women in Employment Discrimination and Police Brutality, which uses intersectionality and some storytelling to discuss the invisibility of Black women and their unique experiences in employment discrimination and police brutality. The invisibility precludes Black women from enjoying legal protections, social value, and freedom. Langley argues that Black women’s invisibility is rooted in a historic system of oppression that is rooted in lies and omissions and that true liberation can only come by first unearthing and contextualizing those lies.
The Journal hopes the information provided allows an opportunity for people to educate themselves about issues of systemic oppression through racism and classism that impact Black women and provides more opportunities to continue discussions of how non-Black people can be better allies to this community.
Intersectionality, Broadly:
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, 1989 U. Chi. Legal F. 139 (1989).
Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More Than Two Decades Later, Colum. L. Sch. (June 8, 2017), available https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later.
Employment Discrimination:
Yvette Pappoe, The Shortcomings of Title VII for the Black Female Plaintiff 22 U. Penn. J. L. & Social Change 1 (2019).
Diane Avery et al., Employment Discrimination Law 47 (8th ed. 2010).
EEOC, Office of Legal Counsel, Directives Transmittals, EEOC Compliance Manual (2006), https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/section-15-race-and-color-discrimination.
Bradley A. Areheart, Intersectionality and Identity: Revisiting a Wrinkle in Title VII, GEO. MASON U. C.R. L.J. 199, 214 (2006).
Serena Mayeri, Intersectionality and Title VII: A Brief (Pre-) History, 95 B.U. L. REV. 713, 727 (2015).
D. Wendy Greene, Splitting Hairs: The Eleventh Circuit’s Take on Workplace Bans Against Black Women’s Natural Hair in EEOC v. Catastrophe Management Solutions, 71 U. Miami L. Rev. 987 (2017).
The CROWN Research Study, Dove (2019), available at https://thecrownact.com.
Paulette M. Caldwell, Intersectional Bias and the Courts: The Story of Rogers v. American Airlines, in Race Law Stories 571 (Rachel F. Moran & Devon W. Carbado, eds., 2008).
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Another Hair Piece: Exploring New Strands of Analysis Under Title VII, 98 Geo L. J. 1080 (2010).
Alexis McGill Johnson, et al., The “Good Hair” Study: Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Toward Black Women’s Hair,Perception Inst. (2017).
Cases:
DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, 413 F. Supp. 142 (E.D. Mo. 1976).
Moore v. Hughes Helicopter, 708 F.2d 475 (9th Cir. 1983).
Payne v. Travenol, 673 F.2d 798 (5th Cir. 1982).
Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324 (1977).
McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973).
Texas Dep’t of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248 (1981).
Jeffries v. Harris County Community Action Ass’n, 615 F.2d 1025 (5th Cir. 1980).
Westmoreland v. Prince George’s Cty, 876 F. Supp. 2d 594 (D. Md. 2012).
Lam v. Univ. of Hawai’i, 40 F.3d 1551 (9th Cir. 1994).
Hucks v. Gates Rubber Co., 833 F.2d 1406 (10th Cir. 1987).
Jeffers v. Thompson, 264 F. Supp. 2d 314 (D. Md. 2003).
Brown v. OMO Group, Inc., 2017 WL 1148743, at *1 (D.S.C. Mar. 28, 2017).
See Olmstead v. L.C. ex rel. Zimring, 527 U.S. 581 (1999).
Rogers v. American Airlines, 527 F. Supp. 229 (S.D.N.Y. 1981).
EEOC v. Catastrophe Mgmt Systems, 852 F.3d 1018 (11th Cir. 2016).
EEOC v. Catastrophe Mgmt., 837 F.3d 1156 (11th Cir. 2016).
Willingham v. Macon Tel. Pub. Co.,507 F.2d 1084 (5th Cir. 1975).
Statutes:
Civil Rights Act of 1964 § 7, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2.
Police Brutality:
Kimberlé Crenshaw and Andrea J. Ritchie, Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, African American Policy Forum (2015), available at aapf.org.
#SayHerName Campaign, African American Policy Forum, https://aapf.org/sayhername.
Evan Hill, Ainara Tiefenthäler, Christiaan Triebert, Drew Jordan, Haley Willis, and Robin Stein, How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody, The New York Times (May 31, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html.
People shot to death by U.S. police, by race 2017-2020, Statista (Nov. 30, 2020), https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race.
Justin Nix et al., A Birds Eye View of Civilians Killed by Police in 2015: Further Evidence of Implicit Bias, 16 Criminology & Public Policy, 309 (2017).
Princess Harmony Rodriguez, Whose Lives Matter: Trans Women of Color and Police Violence, Black Girl Dangerous (Dec. 9, 2014).
Historical Lies and Omissions:
Michelle S. Jacobs, The Violent State: Black Women’s Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence, 24 Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 39 (2017).
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., In the Matter of Color, Race & The American Legal Process: The Colonial Period 36 (1978).
James Baldwin, Address at Second Baptist Church (May 10, 1963) (transcript available in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting).
Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body (1997).
Angela P. Harris, Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory, in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge 347 (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds., 2013).
Ruth Thompson-Miller & Leslie H. Picca, “There Were Rapes!”: Sexual Assaults of African American Women and Children in Jim Crow, 23 Violence Against Women 934 (2017).
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. & Anne F. Jacobs, The “Law Only As an Enemy”: The Legitimization of Racial Powerlessness Through the Colonial and Antebellum Criminal Laws of Virginia, 70 N. C. L. Rev. 969 (1992).
Deborah G. White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985).
The Jezebel Stereotype, Ferris State University, https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel.
Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860 (1996).
Marilyn Yarbrough & Crystal Bennett, Cassandra and the “Sistahs”: The Peculiar Treatment of African American Women in the Myth of Women as Liars, 3 J. Gender Race & Just. 625 (2000).
Linda L. Ammons, Mules, Madonnas, Babies, Bath Water, Racial Imagery and Stereotypes: The African-American Woman and the Battered Woman Syndrome, 1995 Wisc. L. Rev. 1003 (1995).
Gary LaFree et al., Rape and Criminal Justice: The Social Construction of Sexual Assault 219-20 (1989).
Geneva Brown, Ain’t I a Victim: The Intersection of Race, Class and Gender in Domestic Violence and the Courtroom, 19 Cardozo J.L. & Gender 147 (2012).
Jennifer Wriggins, Rape, Racism, and the Law, 6 Harv. Women’s L.J. 103 (1983).
Jesse Singal, White People Think Black People Are Magical, The Cut (Nov. 14, 2014), https://www.thecut.com/2014/11/white-people-think-black-people-are-magical.html.
Adam Waytz et al., A Superhumanization Bias in Whites’ Perceptions of Blacks, 6 Social Psychological and Personality Science, 352 (2014).
Jordan R. Axt, Kelly M. Hoffman, M. Norman Oliver, & Sophie Trawalter, Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites, 113 PNAS 4296 (2016).
Cases:
George v. State, 37 Miss. 316, 318 (1859).