On Intersectionality and Intellectual Empathy

Intellectual empathy requires that we know and understand our own tendencies, biases, blind spots, and social identities, as well as others:

This means knowing about ourselves and knowing as much as we can about other people’s circumstances, particularly people whose circumstances are different from our own. (Linker, pp. 13)

It is essential that we bring intellectual empathy into conversations that pertain to social identities, as these are often fought with tension, defensiveness, and stereotypes. We can think of social identities as being

…the ways people define themselves and others in terms of their memberships in social groups. (Linker, pp. 2)

Whether you would have chosen your “groups” or not, you’re an automatic member in many as a result of simply being born. These social groups can include race, ethnicity, gender, generation, citizenship, special interests, class and more. Because we each carry many social identities, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality also comes into play here. As a reminder, she defines intersectionality in this way:

Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects.

It’s not just that someone is a man, a Muslim, Middle Eastern, or a doctor, with each social identity existing in isolation, but that they are all of those things at once. With the lens of intersectionality, we are better equipped to look for the collisions and intersections of power; doing so within the framework of intellectual empathy helps us more deeply consider the lived realities of those various intersections.

Intuitively, we might find ourselves associating some identities, like “male” and “doctor” as denoting more authority, education, wealth, and status. This is not to say that those are actually superior status’, but to recognize that many of us live in a culture that has historically preferenced the male gender within the workplace, as well as the pursuit of higher education, especially within fields like science and medicine.

Depending on what country, and even region, that we live in, we may see social identities like “Muslim” and “Middle Eastern” as adding even more privilege and advantage, or as decreasing privilege and advantage. Depending on the point in history we’re looking at, we might also see increases and decreases. For example, many Americans who hold the social identities of being Muslim and of Middle Eastern descent experienced rapid shifts in perception after 9/11, even if nothing else about them personally changed.

If this person (Middle Eastern, Muslim, male doctor) existed, we can see that some assumed privilege (male doctor) may be offset by other social identities that bear the weight of prejudice, discrimination, and “otherness” (Middle Eastern, Muslim). We might imagine that within his family and the Muslim religious community he is respected and contains a great deal of power, but that at the airport or with his patients he may (or may not) see considerable changes in how he is privileged and perceived.

We should also be able to understand that all of this happens within a variety of contexts and intersections that he holds little power over, which is true for each of us. As a result, we have an opportunity to engage his intersectional identities with empathy rather than with assumptions, defensiveness, or anger.

We can understand that each social identity brings its own special advantages and disadvantages, power or diminishment in power, privilege or lack of privilege. These things are not static; understanding one intersection at one point in time does not provide information about someone that will never again shift or change. Depending on historical reality, social norms, and present context, privilege, power, and advantage can and do shift and change.

For example, a Muslim man in a mosque, surrounded by fellow believers, will have a different level of advantage and power than a Muslim man in a Jewish synagogue or a Christian church would hold. The intersections of his gender and religion are not enough to automatically provide an advantage; they must also intersect within a particular context that privileges them.

A white American male may have increased privilege or power in the Fortune 500 company he is the CEO of, but were he to attend a Feminist Studies course at the all-female Wellesley College, he would find those social identities to be stumbling blocks that decrease his advantage exponentially.

In most societies, you’ll find that certain social identities have preferred status and are treated as being “the norm”. The more intersections you personally possess with normalized social identities, the more power you likely hold, whether acknowledged or not. Since the founding of America, a preferred social identity whose intersections have consistently created a vast amount of privilege and power is that of WASP, as shared by Mobei Zhang:

The acronym WASP — “white Anglo‐Saxon Protestant” — denotes the upper class or elite group with disproportionately affluent economic and political advantages in American society. From the American Revolution to the 1930s, the WASPs, especially those with a clear ideology of close, upper‐class ties, dominated America in all social aspects, in major areas like politics, economy, and culture. Nearly all immigrants before the 1950s were assimilated under an Anglo‐conformity model.

I’m American and white. I grew up in a Christian home and accepted the Christian faith. My ancestors are English, Norwegian, and Swedish. Those are powerful intersections that offer me advantage and privilege in a society in which having a WASP identity moves you that much closer to being affluent and elite. That’s a historical reality that I can’t ignore.

Of course I have other identities too. I grew up rural. I’m married. I’m female. I’m college-educated. I’ve dealt with depression. I have PCOS. So far, I’ve been infertile. I’m middle class.

All of these intersect, for better and worse, in various contexts throughout my life. For me, intellectual empathy and intersectionality is about looking at those intersections, and recognizing where some of my own social identities are consistently, systematically preferenced or privileged over others, as well as which ones are not. I can look to history, and to social norms, and to my own lived reality to understand more deeply what is happening, for me and for others, and to consider ways to bring about change.

Scope and context are important factors to consider here as well. For our previously mentioned CEO at Wellesley College, he might notice that his intersections disadvantage him while in the Feminist Studies class, while also considering that he only attends night class 2 hours a week for one semester, and he can choose to drop out if he wishes. He can contrast that against the privilege those intersections may garner him during his 60 hour work week, and consider what it might be like if those ratios were flipped — if the class was his 2 hours of weekly sanctuary from a 60-hour workweek in which his social identities seemed to be constantly held against him.

In this case, intellectual empathy and intersectionality are NOT meant to be about shame and blame. They are truly about opening our minds and hearts to lived realities that differ from our own in order to better understand what is really happening in our world, and hopefully to equip us to be part of creating change.

If I can see that the social identity of “female” has, at times, diminished my own advantage or power, I must also see that my femaleness is always intersecting with my WASP-ness, which can serve to counteract that single social identity for either gains or decreases in overall advantage. All of that serves as an invitation for me to learn more about how those same intersections in others play out differently than my own.

When we refuse to interact with someone else’s intersectional identities, we lose the valuable perspective they might have offered. Every way of being and identifying can serve as a gateway to increased understanding, empathy, and compassion…but only if we allow those intersectional identities to have a place at the table.

In Intellectual Empathy: Critical Thinking for Social Justice, scholar and author Maureen Linker shares that:

It has been my experience that when intellectually empathic dialogue about social identity and difference occurs, all of our thinking is enriched, and together we move in a direction towards critically solving the problems that we collectively face.

Let’s move together in a new direction, fueled by intellectual empathy and intersectionality.

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With I Am Intersectionality, I hope to provide thought-provoking resources that will help us understand more about our own personal intersections, and what those intersections mean in the historical and social moment we are living in today. If you’d like to get an occasional email with articles and resources on intersectionality, sign up here!