What is Intersectionality?
It’s a term that’s thrown around in various circles, but what does it actually mean when it comes to progressive movements, and why is it important?
The term in its current usage, though it had existed for decades before this, is grounded in the black feminist movement and was popularised by American academic Kimberlé Crenshaw, who wrote an article in 1989 about the sex and race discrimination which black women face. Using three legal case studies (DeGraffenreid v General Motors, Moore v Hughes Helicopter and Payne v Travenol) she argued how black women faced oppression on more than one front — being black and being women — which the courts refused to recognise. The court’s statement from DeGraffenreid v General Motors is quite telling: “The plaintiffs are clearly entitled to a remedy if they have been discriminated against. However, they should not be allowed to combine statutory remedies to create a new ‘super-remedy’ which would give them relief beyond what the drafters of the relevant statutes intended. Thus, this lawsuit must be examined to see if it states a cause of action for race discrimination, sex discrimination, or alternatively either, but not a combination of both.”
Because General Motors hired black men and white women the company had not fallen afoul of race and/or sex discrimination, the court held. In other words, General Motors could not be held liable for race discrimination because they hired black people, or sex discrimination because they hired women. The fact they only hired black men and white women was a detail the court not willing to consider as recognising discrimination on two fronts, the court said, would create the risk of preferential treatment, or creating a “super remedy”. And so, the black female plaintiffs were locked out of receiving justice.
This, in short, is what intersectionality is about. A way of thinking that recognises that different types of oppression do not exist in isolation, but can intersect and exist in tandem in any one person. And when a person faces multiple oppressions, their experience and position within social justice movements changes with it creating the need for new remedies to properly address these issues. In the case of black women, simply combining anti-racist and feminist movements is not sufficient as both movements were (and to some extent still are) exclusionary. Intersectionality, therefore, creates the need to look for creative solutions for people at the crossroads of multiple oppressed identities.
Crenshaw widened her critique of the application of the law to the anti-racist and feminist movements in general as both movements, again, failed to recognise the unique position of black women. Anti-racist movements, chiefly in the US context focussed on black men, whereas the feminist movement failed to recognise the racism that black women, and women of colour more broadly, face in society. Addressing racism and sexism in isolation, whilst it helps some groups (and in this case black men and white women), does not account for black women who find themselves at the intersection race and gender.
In a recent (2016) Ted Talk, Crenshaw spoke about her framework and the issue of police brutality against black people in the USA. Her exceptionally moving talk drew attention to an often forgotten aspect of police brutality: police violence against black women. “The awareness of the level of police violence that black women experience is exceedingly low”, she said. Despite Crenshaw’s framework gaining ground in mainstream academia as well as mainstream usage, her talk goes to show the need to address intersectional issues is still extremely pertinent. The talk is very moving and particularly sobering. Trigger warning: issues of violence against women are addressed.
Since Crenshaw, intersectionality has been broadened away from black feminism to reveal the unique position of people who find themselves in more than one marginalised group. For example, BAME gay men have to deal with racism as well as homophobia; Muslim women face islamophobia as well as misogyny; trans disabled people face transphobia and ableism. Dealing with homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia and so on individually will help people of that particular group, but focusing solely only on one group leaves out those who find themselves in other groups also. Within these specific movements are an array of voices that need to be heard. For example, the LGBTQ movement is largely dominated by white middle-class cis gay men, but BAME, working class, disabled and trans people are also part of the movement and these voices, too, need to be centred. It becomes vital for specific groups fighting for equality to recognise there exists no one size fits all approach: different people have different needs.
Intersectionality is not, however, a magical cure to solving issues around equality and diversity. Rather, it is a necessary framework for acknowledging and understanding that multiple oppressions can be at play in any one person transforming their experience of oppression. As Crenshaw says in her 2016 Ted Talk, “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.” It is therefore crucial that movements are introspective and examine who are being left out or adversely affected.
Intersectionality as a term may be gaining more mainstream usage and acceptance on a theoretical level, but without practical application theoretical acceptance counts for little. It will remain simply as today’s trendy buzzword, and as with all trends, they die out.
References:
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989: Iss. 1, Article 8.
