Intersectionality

Being a woman of color suppressed by the oppressive racist structure that discriminates against you in matters of education, employment and practically all spheres of existence, the story does not end here. This oppression is compounded by the stronghold of the patriarchal black man at home. He exercises his frustration against the racist system by exerting control and violence over the black woman in the household. Childcare, domestic and sexual labor is difficult to emancipate from as the additional burden of poverty and financial-dependence bind women to the oppressive household. This is where a single category of “race”, “class” or “sex” becomes inadequate to understand the problems faced at the intersection of different forms of oppression that produce distinct and complex experiences for the people involved. As Kimberle Crenshaw’s article explains, intersectionality is a useful way to understand intra-group differences that are often ignored or conflated by identity politics.  

Crenshaw draws attention to the need for intersectionality. Many people often conflate intersectionality with identity politics and believe that the only matter is that of representation - a white woman cannot speak for black women as a feminist because she does not have the physical features that conform to black identity. However, intersectionality makes us see the implications on power structures and practical consequences for groups located at the intersection of different forms of oppression. She explains how a singular understanding of oppression is too narrow and will result in the replication of other structures of oppression. For example, feminism as a whole tends to reproduce the subjugation of women of color by not understanding or tackling the problem of racism. “Women of color are differently situated in the economic, social, and political worlds,” and such generalizing discourses often tend to ignore the distinct needs and problems of women of color. Crenshaw then grounds this claim in reality when she gives examples of counselors offering rape crisis services are supposed to use most of their funding for matters other than rape that eventually end up catering much more significantly to the needs of white and not black women. Moreover, the example of the battered women’s shelter not assisting a client without a translator demonstrates how, with the client being imagined as a white woman by the administration, the needs of the black women were massively sidelined. Conflicts like these draw emphasis on critical issues of power. “The problem is not simply that women who dominate the anti-violence movement are different from women of color, but that they frequently have power to determine, either through material or rhetorical resources, whether the intersectional differences of women of color will be incorporated at all into the basic formulation of policy.”  Thus, these instances make us realize how the ignorance of the needs of people located at the intersection of various structures of oppression can ultimately influence matters as significant as life and death. Without intersectionality, people at the margin are likely to remain inadequately represented and further oppressed.  

People at the margins are not always ignored in these discourses. When they are incorporated, however, their inclusion is often “tokenistic, objectifying, voyeuristic”, which, for Crenshaw,“is at least as dis-empowering as complete exclusion”. This is where the example of an episode of the CBS news program 48 hours on domestic violence hits the point home. Out of the 7 women that it featured, the account of the black woman was the most graphic and impersonal. It reproduced notions of victim blaming. It reinforced racist stereotypes of black people being violent and barbaric. Thus, where problems of black women are not ignored as “minority problems”, their tokenistic portrayal ultimately serves the purpose of reproducing the oppressive structures. Intersectionality, thus, gives a voice to the silenced. 

However, intersectionality is often criticized for limiting collective action. The myriads of structures of oppression produce a complex matrix of identities where people are seen too diverse to be able to relate to the experiences of the other. Learning from Crenshaw's analysis, we can respond that intersectionality allows the creation of different coalitions for collective action. Multiple coalitions relating to similar experiences of oppression may be formed. This can ensure that various different interests of different groups are represented. Additionally, critics, particularly post-modernists, raise the point of the erasure of categories of identity altogether in order to uproot the issues of discrimination. Intersectionality merely reinforces and entrenches such categories. However, not talking about categories cannot lead to their erasure or change their understanding in the people’s mind. Neither will it reduce the specific experiences of people at the intersections of oppression. Reclaiming identity can be more empowering for people rather than denying its existence because identity exists at the heart of a human being’s existence as an individual and community. Thus, “through an awareness of intersectionality, we can better acknowledge and ground the differences among us and negotiate the means by which these differences will find expression in constructing group politics”.