St. Kate's English faculty Dr. Taiyon Coleman is a poet, essayist, and outspoken advocate for intersectionality. Photo by Bao Phi.
In early February, St. Kate's English assistant professor Taiyon Coleman, PhD, was one of three guests on "Friday Roundtable," the recurring segment that brings together three specialists to discuss news and culture.
Coleman, host and broadcast journalist Kerri Miller, and other guests Nancy Lyons and Reverend Lisa Sharon Harper discussed the state of feminism in the U.S. today, delving into increasing intersectionality, its accessibility as a movement, and the influence of activist language.
"What is American feminism?" asked Miller of her "Roundtable" guests and listeners. "Does it have a new purpose in the Trump era?"
"Feminism is not just a moment with that word on a poster," stated Coleman, who is a returning guest on Miller's "Friday Roundtable" segment. "Feminism is at the housing office, it's where you go to talk about food insecurity, it's incarceration, it's education, it's literacy, it's all these other issues. My challenge is, to everybody who came out for the Women's March, show up at the other places, too. ... I would say [feminism] permeates every aspect of our culture and all issues that matter, period."
You can listen to the segment .
"Diversity is not the presence of brown and black bodies, it's the amount of power that's distributed to them. Plantations were full of diversity, but what about the power distribution? Those black and brown bodies didn't have the same amount of power. ... Not to acknowledge that, I would argue, is an ability to not acknowledge intersectionality or the different ways in which gender affects different people depending on their positionality of class and race, and I would argue that that's the problem we have today."
— Taiyon Coleman, PhD, "Friday Roundtable: What is feminism today?"
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