Disparities continue to persist in rates of STDs among some racial minority or Hispanic groups when compared with rates among Whites. Significant differences by race and Hispanic ethnicity in the proportion of the population living in poverty persisted in and were even more acute for family households headed by women Those who cannot afford basic necessities often have trouble accessing and affording quality health care, including sexual health services. Of the estimated 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections STIs that occur each year, approximately half of all cases occur among people aged 15—24 years. Even when health care is readily available to racial and ethnic minority populations, fear and distrust of health care institutions can negatively affect the health care-seeking experience. Social and cultural discrimination, language barriers, provider bias, or the perception that these may exist, likely discourage some people from seeking care.

Indeed, Crenshaw uses the following analogy, referring to a traffic intersection, or crossroad, to concretize the concept:. Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another.

Her head had been bashed in by her pimp. Gas flares illuminate the pump jacks in the distance. Just up the road, she says, is where a woman was imprisoned in an RV for several months by a gang of drug dealers. Then we pull into the parking lot of the Grand Williston Hotel, once notorious for the broken lock on its back door that allowed johns to come and go unnoticed by front-desk personnel.