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Intersectionality as a Framework RRS 480

Spring 2022: Week 2

Agenda ❖ Author Context ❖ What is intersectionality? ❖ Overview of the reading ❖ Reminder: forum due Sunday by 11:59pm

Kimberle Crenshaw

Author Context: Kimberle Crenshaw “Kimberle Crenshaw is a pioneering scholar and writer on civil rights, critical race theory, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. In addition to her position at Columbia Law School, she is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Crenshaw’s work has been foundational in critical race theory and in “intersectionality,” a term she coined to describe the double bind of simultaneous racial and gender prejudice. Her studies, writing, and activism have identified key issues in the perpetuation of inequality, including the “school to prison pipeline” for African American children and the criminalization of behavior among Black teenage girls. Through the Columbia Law School African American Policy Forum (AAPF), which she co-founded, Crenshaw co-authored (with Andrea Ritchie) Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, which documented and drew attention to the killing of Black women and girls by police. Crenshaw and AAPF subsequently launched the #SayHerName campaign to call attention to police violence against Black women and girls...”

Source: Crenshaw’s Columbia Law School bio

What is intersectionality? ● Originally coined in 1989 by Dr. Crenshaw to “denote the various ways in which race and

gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women's employment experiences” (Crenshaw 1244). ○ Overview of original article* where term was coined: Crenshaw looked at 3 court cases where

employers discriminated against Black women workers. The courts claimed they didn’t discriminate against women b/c they had white women workers & they didn’t discriminate against Black people b/c they had Black men workers. Crenshaw needed a framework to explain that the Black women workers in the cases were being discriminated against b/c of both their gender and race simultaneously.

○ She wanted to illustrate that “the intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women's lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately” (Crenshaw 1244).

● “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.” ○ Source: Crenshaw’s Columbia Law School bio

*Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex, 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw

original use of intersectionality in 1989 focused on the intersection of sexism and racism in the lives of Black women

Intersectionality has since been expanded to think about how multiple axes of oppression intersect in the lives of a variety of people

Images from: Crenshaw’s TED Talk

What is intersectionality?

Clip from Kimberle Crenshaw’s TED Talk in 2016 “What is: Intersectionality” by Kat Blaque

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, & Violence against Women of Color ● Originally published in 1991 in the Stanford Law Review

● In this article, Crenshaw delves deeper into the term intersectionality. This is not where the term was originally coined -- Crenshaw first used the term in her 1989 article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.”

● In “Mapping the Margins,” Crenshaw discusses violence against women of color as a product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism. She concludes by suggesting that intersectionality can be used to discuss other axes of oppression.

● Significance of this article: Crenshaw was making an intervention in the scholarly literature on feminism and on antiracism and calling on folks to expand the framework by applying it to various other contexts. She argues that a lack of an intersectional framework results in negative material conditions for women of color

Mapping the Margins (cont’d) ● Brief summary, in Crenshaw’s words: “Focusing on two dimensions of male

violence against women — battering and rape — I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourses of either feminism or antiracism. Because of their intersectional identity as both women and of color within discourses that are shaped to respond to one or the other, women of color are marginalized within both” (1242-1244)

● Article is organized into 3 sections (see page 1245 for Crenshaw’s descriptions) ○ Structural intersectionality ○ Political intersectionality ○ Representational intersectionality

Part 1: Structural Intersectionality ● Crenshaw discusses how racism and sexism create structural injustices in the

lives of women of color who are survivors of sexual violence. These structural issues, combined with a lack of an intersectional framework, result in dangerous material conditions for women of color who experience violence

● Examples Crenshaw uses to show this: ○ Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments of 1986

■ Amendment in 1990 included a waiver for domestic violence ○ English language requirement at women’s shelters ○ Funding problems + burnout of counselors who support survivors of color

Part 2: Political Intersectionality ● Crenshaw “highlights the fact that women of color are situated within at least two

subordinated groups that frequently pursue conflicting political agendas” (1251-2) ○ Feminist efforts center white women and ignore race ○ Antiracist efforts center men of color and ignore gender/patriarchy ○ Women of color often left having to compromise or be excluded completely

● Examples Crenshaw uses to show this: ○ LAPD denied her access to domestic violence statistics ○ Women of color refusing to call police for domestic violence ○ White women survivors centered in discussions/representations of sexual violence while

women of color dehumanized or ignored ■ White women centered in women’s shelter policies → Latina woman and son denied

shelter ■ CBS 48 Hours episode

○ Central Park jogger rape case vs. cases involving women of color

Important note: intersectionality can be life-saving “The problem is not simply that women who dominate the antiviolence movement are different from women of color but that they frequently have power to determine… whether the intersectional differences of women of color will be incorporated at all into the basic formulation of policy. Thus, the struggle over incorporating these differences is not a petty or superficial conflict about who gets to sit at the head of the table. In the context of violence, it is sometimes a deadly serious matter of who will survive — and who will not” (Crenshaw 1265)

Representational Intersectionality ● Crenshaw focuses on how women of color are represented and talked about

in popular culture and how these representations lack an intersectional approach

● Example Crenshaw uses to show this: ○ 2 Live Crew obscenity case in 1990

■ Prosecution of the group was not actually about protecting Black women, but Black women were used as a means to an end: the racist targeting of the rap group

■ Defense of the group trivialized the misogyny represented in the group’s lyrics