Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw Should Be a Household Name

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is one of the most influential Black feminist theorists in the United States, a founder of critical race theory, full-time Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia University, civil rights advocate, and scholar of gender and race, who developed the theory of intersectionality. She founded Columbia Law School’s Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies to examine how social structures and related demographics and elements of identity, such as gender, race, and class, interact on multiple levels to give rise to social inequality. Crenshaw is also the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum, a think tank dismantling structural inequality, and the Honorary President of the Center for Intersectional Justice.

Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989 to describe how characteristics like race, class, and gender “intersect” and overlap with one another. Her work forever changed the way we view feminism and issues like environmental justice.

In an interview with Columbia Law School, she shared, “Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things.”

References

Coaston, Jane. The Intersectionality Wars. (2019). Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination

Steinmetz, Katy. She Coined the Term ‘Intersectionality’ Over 30 Years Ago. Here’s What It Means to Her Today. (2020). TIME. Retrieved from https://time.com/5786710/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality/#:~:text=Intersectionality%20is%20simply%20about%20how,people's%20lives%2C%20it's%20under%20attack

Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later. (2021). Columbia Law School. Retrieved from https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later