University of Pittsburgh Press

Chapter Title: Kimberlé Crenshaw

Book Title: Persuasive Acts

Book Subtitle: Women's Rhetorics in the Twenty-First Century
Book Author(s): Shari J. Stenberg and Charlotte Hogg
Published by: University of Pittsburgh Press

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 Kimberlé Crenshaw

One of the most referenced terms with regard to feminism in the twenty-first cen-
tury is intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1986. While the term is
ubiquitous, its beginnings and fullest meaning are less known, something Cren-
shaw seeks to correct in this piece, published on the heels of two race-related trag-
edies. The first was the June 2015 shooting by a white supremacist of nine African
American parishioners at a South Carolina church. The second was Sandra Bland’s
death in a Texas jail cell following a disputed arrest in July 2015 (see Michelle De-
nise Jackson’s contribution to this volume). These events served as a kairotic mo-
ment for the crucial reminder that “if women and girls of color continue to be left
in the shadows, something vital to the understanding of intersectionality has been
lost.”
Crenshaw, born in 1959 and raised in Ohio, received her law degree from Har-
vard University and a Master of Laws degree from the University of Wisconsin.
A leader in critical race theory, her distinguished career also includes writings on
the law and civil rights, black feminist legal theory, and race and law. Her work
has appeared in numerous law reviews, and she also serves as a public intellectu-
al, contributing to publications like Ms. magazine, the Nation, and the New York
Times. In 1996 Crenshaw co-founded the African American Policy Forum, a think
tank focused on structural inequality, and in 2011 she spearheaded Columbia Law
School’s Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. Crenshaw’s work
has shaped national and international policy, including the equality clause in the
South African constitution.
While intersectionality is now a central tenet in feminist conversations, Cren-
shaw reminds us that it is not a new concept, hearkening to the nineteenth-century
rhetors Anna Julia Cooper and Maria Stewart: “In every generation and in every
intellectual sphere and in every political moment, there have been African Amer-
ican women who have articulated the need to think and talk about race through a
lens that looks at gender, or think and talk about feminism through a lens that looks
at race” (Adewunmi). In this piece, Crenshaw historicizes her exigence for coining
the term intersectionality: a 1976 General Motors case, in which the discrimination
suit by Emma DeGraffenreid and other black women was dismissed because the
court did not find it justifiable to combine gender and race discrimination.

109

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110 Kimberlé Crenshaw

With keen awareness of the mainstream audience of a national newspaper,

Crenshaw explains that intersectionality is a theory for addressing identity and
power as broad and systemic. It is not a synonym for “identity politics”—though it
is often reduced to such—in which a particular identity group promotes only their
interests. At every turn, she points out that the institutional and structural issues
brought forth by intersectionality must be answered through action, which is evi-
dent in movements like #WhyWeCan’tWait—the campaign to include women and
girls in President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which provides path-
ways to opportunity for boys and young men of color—and #SayHerName, which
targets police violence against black women. Crenshaw’s writing here is deliberate
but urgent, explaining the concept with care and context, and insisting that there
is no possibility for social justice without attention to intersectionality.

“Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait”

Washington Post, 2015

Today, nearly three decades after I first put a name to the concept, the term seems
to be everywhere. But if women and girls of color continue to be left in the shad-
ows, something vital to the understanding of intersectionality has been lost.
In 1976 Emma DeGraffenreid and several other black women sued General
Motors for discrimination, arguing that the company segregated its workforce by
race and gender: Blacks did one set of jobs and whites did another. According to
the plaintiffs’ experiences, women were welcome to apply for some jobs, while only
men were suitable for others. This was of course a problem in and of itself, but for
black women the consequences were compounded. You see, the black jobs were
men’s jobs, and the women’s jobs were only for whites. Thus, while a black applicant
might get hired to work on the floor of the factory if he were male; if she were a
black female she would not be considered. Similarly, a woman might be hired as a
secretary if she were white, but wouldn’t have a chance at that job if she were black.
Neither the black jobs nor the women’s jobs were appropriate for black women,
since they were neither male nor white. Wasn’t this clearly discrimination, even if
some blacks and some women were hired?
Unfortunately for DeGraffenreid and millions of other black women, the court
dismissed their claims. Why? Because the court believed that black women should
not be permitted to combine their race and gender claims into one. Because they
could not prove that what happened to them was just like what happened to white
women or black men, the discrimination that happened to these black women fell
through the cracks.

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Kimberlé Crenshaw 111

It was in thinking about why such a “big miss” could have happened within the
complex structure of anti-discrimination law that the term “intersectionality” was
born. As a young law professor, I wanted to define this profound invisibility in rela-
tion to the law. Racial and gender discrimination overlapped not only in the work-
place but in other arenas of life; equally significant, these burdens were almost
completely absent from feminist and anti-racist advocacy. Intersectionality, then,
was my attempt to make feminism, anti-racist activism, and anti-discrimination
law do what I thought they should—highlight the multiple avenues through which
racial and gender oppression were experienced so that the problems would be eas-
ier to discuss and understand.
Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity
and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the
term brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim
them as members, but often fail to represent them. Intersectional erasures are not
exclusive to black women. People of color within LGBTQ movements; girls of col-
or in the fight against the school-to-prison pipeline; women within immigration
movements; trans women within feminist movements; and people with disabili-
ties fighting police abuse—all face vulnerabilities that reflect the intersections of
racism, sexism, class oppression, transphobia, able-ism and more. Intersectionality
has given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their
visibility and inclusion.
Intersectionality has been the banner under which many demands for inclu-
sion have been made, but a term can do no more than those who use it have the
power to demand. And not surprisingly, intersectionality has generated its share
of debate and controversy.
Conservatives have painted those who practice intersectionality as obsessed
with “identity politics.” Of course, as the DeGraffenreid case shows, intersec-
tionality is not just about identities but about the institutions that use identity to
exclude and privilege. The better we understand how identities and power work
together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are
to fracture.
Others accuse intersectionality of being too theoretical, of being “all talk and
no action.” To that I say we’ve been “talking” about racial equality since the era of
slavery and we’re still not even close to realizing it. Instead of blaming the voices
that highlight problems, we need to examine the structures of power that so suc-
cessfully resist change.
Some have argued that intersectional understanding creates an atmosphere of
bullying and “privilege checking.” Acknowledging privilege is hard—particularly
for those who also experience discrimination and exclusion. While white women
and men of color also experience discrimination, all too often their experiences
are taken as the only point of departure for all conversations about discrimination.

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112 Kimberlé Crenshaw

Being front and center in conversations about racism or sexism is a complicated

privilege that is often hard to see.
Although the president’s recent call to support black women was commend�-
able, undertaking intersectional work requires concrete action to address the bar-
riers to equality facing women and girls of color in US society.
Intersectionality alone cannot bring invisible bodies into view. Mere words
won’t change the way that some people—the less-visible members of political con-
stituencies—must continue to wait for leaders, decision-makers, and others to see
their struggles. In the context of addressing the racial disparities that still plague
our nation, activists and stakeholders must raise awareness about the intersection-
al dimensions of racial injustice that must be addressed to enhance the lives of all
youths of color.
This is why we continue the work of the #WhyWeCantWait campaign, calling
for holistic and inclusive approaches to racial justice. It is why Say Her Name con-
tinues to draw attention to the fact that women too are vulnerable to losing their
lives at the hands of police. And it is why thousands have agreed that the tragedy
in Charleston, SC, demonstrates our need to sustain a vision of social justice that
recognizes the ways racism, sexism, and other inequalities work together to under-
mine us all. We simply do not have the luxury of building social movements that
are not intersectional, nor can we believe we are doing intersectional work just by
saying words.

For Further Reading

Adewunmi, Bim. “Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality: ‘I Wanted to Come Up with an Everyday

Metaphor that Anyone Could Use.’” New Statesman, 2 Apr. 2014, [Link]/life
style/2014/04/kimberl-crenshaw-intersectionality-i-wanted-come-everyday-metaphor-any
one-could.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. On Intersectionality: Essential Writings. New Press, 2019.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé, et al., editors. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.
New Press, 1996.
“Faculty Profiles: Kimberlé W. Crenshaw.” Columbia Law School, n.d., [Link]/fac
ulty/kimberle-crenshaw.
“Faculty Profiles: Kimberlé W. Crenshaw.” UCLA Law, n.d., [Link]
-profiles/kimberle-w-crenshaw/.
“Intersectionality Primer.” African American Policy Forum, 17 Jan. 2013, [Link]/2013/2013/01/
intersectionality-primer?rq=A%20Primer%20on%20Intersectionality.

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