What Is Intersectionality?

Let's start at the beginning. The term intersectionality was first coined by Kimberly Crenshaw, a lawyer, law professor, and civil rights activist. In nine she wrote an influential paper that identified a glaring hole in anti discrimination law. The law recognized categories such as racial discrimination and gender discrimination, but was blind to the situations in which two or more

of those categories overlapped. Take the case of de graph and Read versus General Motors, which Crenshaw cited in a TED talk as an example of where the law fell short of delivering justice. In this case, a black woman named Emma degraffin Reed was denied a job at a local car manufacturing plant, and she sued on the basis of discrimination. The judge throughout the case, citing that the plant had a record of hiring both black people and women, so she had no grounds to sue. But Crenshaw argues

the judge missed the point. Yes the plant hired black people, but those were all black men hired for industrial or maintenance work. And yes the plant hired women, but those were white women who worked as secretaries. But black women didn't fit into either of those narrow hiring categories, so they were effectively barred from employment at the plant. Since there wasn't a word yet for this overlapping of identities that combined to form new hybrid categories of discrimination, Crenshaw

invented one, and she called it intersectionality. We spoke with Crenshaw and she said intersectionality was a prism to bring to light dynamics withindiscrimination law that weren't being appreciated by the courts. In particular, courts seemed to think that race discrimination was what happened to all black people across gender and sex discrimination was what happened to all women. And if that is your framework, of course what happens to black women and other women of color is going to

be difficult to see. So In its original sense, intersectionality was a legal framework for seeing people whose identities and lived experiences are more complex and who deserve equal treatment under the law. Starting in the nineteen nineties, academics began incorporating intersectionality theory into these social sciences. Up until that point, there was a tendency to study the experiences of different racial, ethnic,

or religious groups as homogeneous blocks. We also spoke with Mary Romero, a professor of Justice studies and social inquiry at Arizona State University. She said the essentialist approach said that all Latinos are like this, without considering that there are all of these intersections of age, citizenship, sexuality, and disability,

so there's not a monolithic experience. By examining the specific experiences of Latin X people who are lgbt Q, undocumented, rich, and poor, social scientists came up with data that could be used to inform important public policy decisions like immigration. Romero said, if we're going to look at immigration policy and see the ways in which it needs to be changed, we have to take into consideration all the various conditions.

The argument would be, if you want to be inclusive and you want to be just the policy has to exist without privileging one group over another. Crenshaw may not have invented the word intersectionality as a call for social justice, but even she has come to see it that way. In her TED talk, Crenshaw spoke about violence perpetrated against black women and how this violence is often invisible in

the national discussion about implicit racial bias and policing. She asked why Michael Brown and Tamua Rice were household names but not Michelle Qusseau or Tanisha Anderson, two unarmed black women also killed by police. Again, Crenshaw explained how intersectionality provides a prism or frame in which to see people

whose experiences are often overlooked. She said, without frames that allow us to see how social problems impact all the members of a targeted group, many will fall through the cracks of our movements, left to suffer in virtual isolation. The idea of intersectionality has been taken up by a lot of progressive organizations fighting for social equity and social justice.

There's a growing recognition that not all of the members of an activist group fall into the same tidy categories or share the same experiences in the world at y W Boston, a community organization that grew out of one of the nation's oldest chapters of y w c A, they say that intersectionality is crucial to social equity work.

One post on their blog explains quote without an intersectional lens, events and movements that aim to address injustice towards one group may end up perpetuating systems of inequities toward other groups. As an example, it's cited the seventeen Women's March, which caught flak from transgender members of the movement because of its vagina centric messaging. Some slogans chanted or written on

signs or t shirts or online focused on the vagina. Further, some people both inside and outside of the march interpreted the pink hats that many protesters war as representing female outer genitalia. Y W Boston wrote, assuming that all women have vaginas or are defined by their bodies is an oversimplification that erases the experience of those who exist beyond the gender binary. By avoiding language that assumes our own experiences are baseline, we can open ourselves up to listening

to others points of view. The embrace of intersectionality by the left has led to a backlash on the right. Critics of intersectionality don't see it as a way of including or seeing a broader diversity of experiences, but as a type of political correctness on steroids. As conservative pundits like Ben Shapiro see it, The goal of intersectionality is to pit people against each other in a kind of

oppression olympics. He said in a video. Intersectionality is a form of identity politics in which the value of your opinion depends on how many victim groups you belong to. At the bottom of the totem pole is the person everybody loves to hate, the straight white male. The more memberships you can claim and oppressed groups, the more aggrieved you are, and the higher you rank. Conservative writer Andrew Sullivan called intersectionality a new religion imposed on liberal college campuses.

He wrote, intersectionalities version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you first need to confess i e. Check your privilege, and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps the sin at bay. He says that the result of this is that anyone not sufficiently quote woke is shunned and their voice silenced. Romero at Arizona State says that both campus activists and their critics

often missed the point of intersectionality. Romero says that she's definitely had students who misuse it as a way of separating the oppressed from the oppressors. Romero said, I've always corrected them by using myself as an example. There are times when I'm disadvantaged and other times when i have advantages over other people. It's very rare to find somebody

who has absolutely no advantages in any situation. Romero explains that the target of intersectionality shouldn't be an individual person, but the structure in which that individual lives, works, or studies. Is the structure designed to allow only one type of person to succeed or does it give everyone equal access? Seen that way, even the straight white male, who Shapiro says is vilified benefits from some of those intersectional policies.

For example, a straight white male who comes from a low income family, or one who has a learning disability or a disorder like a d h D or PTSD. Romero said, what's the white male's age, their class, their citizenship? As we get older. For example, we have certain structural

disadvantages that we share with people who are disabled. In the most just and equitable version of our world, we all hope that there would be policies and institutions in place that see us in the various circumstances of our lives and give us all a fair crack at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler klang Or. More on this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio.

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