ABSTRACT
From the time when the Emancipation Proclamation of 186 and the 13th Amendment of 1865 were recognized, African Americans have been subjected to many harmful labels. Such images include the physical brute and anti-intellectual; the shiftless and lazy; the sex depraved/hypersexual; the pimp/slickster; and the criminal minded. According to Feagin and Feagin, one problem in conceptualizing discrimination is the tendency to distinguish individual from institutionalized forms of discrimination. Feagin and Feagin expound some differences of emphasis when looking at a single view versus an institutionalized view of discrimination. Crenshaw used the "concept of intersectionality to denote the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women's employment experiences". Intersectionality is the acknowledgement of numerous interconnecting characteristics that are defined in terms of comparative societal racial control and privilege and shapes a person's individual and shared identities and experiences.
