Why Intersectionality Does Not Call For Victimization.
One noun and two suffixes. A term that is frequently heard in today’s media, yet one that is barely understood.
Intersectionality.
A concept that is often seen as the unproportional privilege of minorities. A theory of victimization. A label that tells you what you’re allowed to say and think.
But it isn’t the term itself that has caused the controversy that it has brought about; rather, many object to the implications and consequences of this concept, afraid of the new racial and cultural hierarchy some individuals believe it promotes.
Intersectionality does not call for victimization nor for the development of a new racial hierarchy. Rather, it calls for the demolishment of these hierarchies altogether.
Intersectionality was a term coined in 1989 by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw a current UCLA and Colombia University professor, lawyer, civil rights advocate, and scholar. It was created to describe the overlap between race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics.
After studying government and Africana studies at Cornell in 1981, she realized that the gender aspect of race was an immensely underdeveloped concept. Although the concept of “intersectionality” was being discussed in regards to people’s identities and shaping experiences, the term was not formally recognized.
Almost 30 years, ago Crenshaw wrote a 31-page paper in the University of Chicago Legal Forum, titled “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.”
The paper centers on 3 legal cases that dealt with discrimination related to both race and sex. DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, Moore v. Hughes Helicopter, Inc., and Payne v. Travenol.
In this paper, Crenshaw writes about the overlap of traditional feminist ideas and antiracist policies overlapping to create an intersectional experience for black women. In the paper, she writes, “any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.”
In essence, Crenshaw uses these cases to cultivate the concept of overlapping discrimination. When an individual faces multiple forms of discrimination, such as being Black and female, the individual is subject to discrimination on the basis of both, not just one.
For example, in the 1976 case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, 4 black women sued General Motors for a policy that exclusively affected Black women, as Black women could not be hired until 1964. Thus, the policy didn’t fall under either race or gender.
“Courts seem 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.”
While many who championed intersectionality early on were Black women, the theory has become crucial to understanding a wide range of differences, including sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, age, class, and more.
Yet, Crenshaw’s concept of “intersectionality” has become more mainstream in the last several years. As the term soon caught on, the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015 defined it as:
intersectionality (n): The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage; a theoretical approach based on such a premise.
As the term gains prevalence in our ever-evolving society, the meaning is becoming more and more unclear and the concept has become increasingly polarized. It has become associated with certain religions, beliefs, and sexualities. Specifically, intersectionality has become immensely controversial between left and right-wing individuals.
At this point, intersectionality has evolved into three different concepts. One is an academic and theoretical study started by Kimberlé Crenshaw, another taken upon by activists and reformers, and a third taken upon by those responding to the activists and reformers.
However, many cease to understand the concept itself, especially as various groups and the media construct their own meaning of intersectionality in order to prove a point or justify an action.
Intersectionality does not promote the victimization of certain groups, rather, it calls for a deep understanding of American society, power systems, and institutions. As Crenshaw’s former student, Kevin Monfu, put it, it is purely “interested in the deep structural and systemic questions about discrimination and inequality.”
Intersectionality is not a liberal idea. It is not one that should be weaponized and polarized. It does not advocate for black women to be on top of the racial hierarchy.
Intersectionality simply states that a woman experiences the world differently than a man. A person of color experiences the world differently than someone who is not. And a woman of color experiences the world differently than those whose identity falls under a single category. And these categories are not limited to females or people of color.
In 2017, an article published in the “Intelligencer” argued that intersectionality was a religion. It states that “[Intersectionality’s] version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others….The sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required.”
As Ben Shapiro said “[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 concept of intersectionality developed by Crenshaw says nothing about those whose identity doesn’t fall under more than one of these buckets. It has nothing to say about a straight, white, man. It is simply a critique of our structural and institutional practices that cease to recognize the differences in discrimination that individuals face.
Mainstream media has taken the concept of intersectionality to be far-flung from Crenshaw’s own understanding of it. Intersectionality has manifested itself on college campuses and protests as a hierarchy of victimhood, in which white men are at the bottom.
Yet, the point of intersectionality is not to replicate existing power dynamics and cultural structures.
Intersectionality does not aim to give people of color over white people. Through intersectionality, we have the ability to eradicate the existing power dynamics altogether and change the structures that underlie our politics, law, and culture.
Without looking through an intersectional lens, events and movements aiming to address injustice towards one group may end up unevenly perpetuating forms of inequity towards other groups.
By encouraging conversations about such topics and bringing light to issues that individuals whose identity falls under various categories may face, we can begin to provide pathways for individuals to create change that targets inequity at its root and is not building onto an existing racial and cultural hierarchy, but instead, is aiming towards the eradication of it altogether.
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