Intersectionality Explained
If you’re on social media or are interested in left-wing politics, you have doubtlessly heard of the term “intersectionality.” And if you know anything about current right-wing commentators or politicians, you will know that they seem to think intersectionality is a left-wing conspiracy in which liberals want to “oppress” white people and put non-white and non-male people on top of the social hierarchy. However, this is not at all what intersectional activists hope to accomplish through their work. Let’s break down the term.
Though the idea of intersectionality has existed for a long time (the idea was championed by people like Sojourner Truth), the term was coined by the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, who wrote a paper called “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.” In this paper, Crenshaw pointed out the lack of attention made in courts to the unique struggles that Black women face. In cases where employers targeted Black women during layoffs or other events, she observed that the courts tended to view prosecution based on racial discrimination or gender-based discrimination as the only viable options. She stresses the importance of making sure that courts understand that Black women can be targeted based on race and sex. In Crenshaw’s own words, she invented the concept as a “prism to bring to light dynamics within discrimination law that weren’t being appreciated by the courts.”
While intersectionality has been recognized in legal academia since 1989, it was virtually unknown to the general public until the 2017 Women’s March, through which the term “intersectional feminism” was popularized. In their Guiding Vision and Definition of Principles, the march’s organizers wrote about the importance of “recognizing that women have intersecting identities and are therefore impacted by a multitude of social justice and human rights issues.” As an example of what the organizers meant, the gender wage gap shows that Black and Latina women earn 63% and 54%, respectively, of what men as a whole earn, while white women earn 75%. However, if one just looked at the incomes of women of all races, they earn approximately 80% of what men earn. Tying this back to what Kimberlé Crenshaw described in a legal setting, courts who don’t acknowledge intersectionality in discrimination of any kind won’t fully grasp the extent to which intersections of identities creates unique situations for the oppressed person. If someone looking at the gender wage gap only saw that women as a whole make 80% of what men make, they would not realize that Black and Latina women struggle far more economically than a white or Asian woman does.
The current climate justice movement also heavily emphasizes intersectionality. The climate justice advocate Leah Thomas stated the importance of cultivating a new environmentalist philosophy, which has “anti-racism and environmental justice embedded deeply within [it].” The most well-known (and most attacked by the right) current example of intersectional environmentalism is without a doubt the Green New Deal. This Congressional resolution is based on Roosevelt’s New Deal which helped to bring the United States out of the Great Depression. The New Deal had lasting beneficial effects, such as social security, as well as lasting negative effects, like redlining. Now, instead of facing a financial disaster that had devastating and multi-faceted effects everywhere in the country, the world is facing an environmental disaster that will also have far-reaching consequences in all areas. The Green New Deal is designed to address the climate crisis in an intersectional way; addressing the ways in which the climate crisis will affect people of different identities differently. And unlike the New Deal, it plans to leave nobody behind.
As previously mentioned, conservatives attack the term and the idea of intersectionality through a highly warped perspective of what it actually means. Ben Shapiro, for example, believes that intersectionality’s end goal is to establish, as he calls it, “a hierarchy of victimhood,” in which straight white men fall to the bottom because they have more privilege. The goal of intersectional activists, however, is to eliminate all hierarchies. The reason that Black women’s struggles deserve particular attention in court is not because they are inherently better than anyone else, but because their intersecting identities of Black and female make how they are oppressed different from, say, a Black man or a white woman.
And what’s the stance of the Democratic nominee and his running mate on intersectional issues?
In terms of environmentalism, progressive organizations like the Sunrise Movement heavily criticized Biden for his initial climate plan — until halfway through July. He upped his plan’s budget from $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion, laid out a 15-year plan to get rid of fossil fuels in power plants, and promised to invest 40% of the money earned from a clean energy economy into marginalized communities who have experienced decades of environmental racism, among other progressive goals. And now that Kamala Harris, who is a staunch supporter of the Green New Deal, is Biden’s VP pick, climate justice plays an increasingly important role in the campaign.
The Biden campaign also made a contribution to intersectional feminism when the nominee announced his pledge to pick a woman as a running mate, and then his promise to pick a woman of color. This was considered a monumental decision and one that assured voters of his campaign’s commitment to intersectional issues. Despite what critics of Kamala Harris’s career might say, her nomination is a major advancement in intersectionality in American politics.
Intersectionality is nothing novel, but its recent explosion in popularity is not surprising during the Trump era when disparities of all kinds continue to grow and the effects of which are felt in countless areas of American society. Intersectionality is a powerful call for the just and equitable society that everyone deserves.
