Extra Credit, Kimberlé Crenshaw Response

On March 5, I attended a lecture given by Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw titled “The Intersectional Paradigm: Race and Gender in Work, Life, and Politics.” She began by speaking about the word intersectionality, a word that she brought into existence. People often say that intersectionality can do this or doesn’t do that, and Dr. Crenshaw responded to this by saying that intersectionality is an analytical tool, and does what people deploy it to do. The word exists out of the need to define how identities cross, and no preexisting set of issues defines intersectionality. Dr. Crenshaw focuses on the experiences of people of color, specifically Black people, and even more specifically, Black women. She told an interesting story about Harvard Law School’s effort to create diversity within their faculty thirty years ago. The team that wanted to integrate more women ended up including only white women, and the team that wanted to integrate more people of color ended up integrating only Black men, effectively removing Black women from the equation completely. Dr. Crenshaw calls this phenomenon Intersectional Erasure, in which the dominant representative of women is always a white woman, and the dominant representative for people of color is always a Black man. Because of this, issues experienced by Black women and girls are often overlooked. Policies meant to benefit marginalized people don’t cater to these issues. For instance, My Brother’s Keeper, Obama’s policy to help Black boys and young men is not inclusive of Black women, even though Black women face many of the same issues. Dr. Crenshaw’s advice for moving beyond Intersectional Erasure is to 1. Go beyond the myth. 2. Ask the other question. 3. Talk to the excluded. And 4. Develop the public will. It is important to recognize how identities intersect and affect peoples’ experiences, and I think Dr. Crenshaw’s lecture was so important in bringing that to light.