Intersectionality

Intersectionality

The Thousand Oaks Mall is located in one of the wealthiest areas in the United States and is the family friendly alternative to the high end fashion stores of Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and Malibu existing just a few miles south. The mall campus clearly displays wealth in the elaborate decorations, higher end flooring and other building materials, and outdoor seating areas centered around an elaborate firepit. A few of the stores are out of my price range, but I have been here many times, scouring clearance racks at my favorite stores and indulging in free samples from See’s Candy. On this particular evening, I was here for a social event: happy hour at the Lazy Dog restaurant with some coworkers in honor of my new intern. Although fully abled, my coworkers and I worked at a disability advocacy organization.  Our new intern was born with cerebral palsy – this disability does not affect intellectual functioning but primarily contorts and contracts muscular development. In our intern’s case, her lower body was primarily affected, and she had weak upper body strength, which meant that she used a wheelchair.

It was a Friday night, and the mall parking lot was packed. I was giving the intern a ride and had picked this location not only for its accessibility but also for the lower happy hour prices. Since, I did not have a blue placard for parking in an accessible place, I was forced to park perpendicularly to the only free parking space I could find in order to create a safe space for the intern to transfer from the front seat of my car into her wheelchair. After unfolding the wheelchair and positioning it next to the front passenger seat, I locked one of the breaks and held firmly while the intern transferred. Unfortunately, my neglect of locking the other break coupled with a clumsy transfer created a sudden shift in the wheelchair; the intern landed suddenly and swiftly on the ground in the parking lot, unable to rise to her feet. Although I tried to lift her, she easily outweighed me by fifty pounds and remained stuck on the ground.

Over the next fifteen minutes, the two of us helplessly peered around the parking lot, waiting for someone to stop and help. At least a dozen cars drove by, many slowing down because they wanted the parking spot I was blocking. No one stopped. I had picked this location specifically because it was wheelchair accessible and wealthy enough to be (in my mind) safe for someone with a disability. The minutes eked by slowly and painfully as more and more people stared from their cars without stopping to help. In the past, when I was in trouble or inconvenienced, people usually helped even when I did not want or need their assistance. Now when someone was literally grounded, people just drove by. My companion was white, female, and lower class, but her main distinctions from me were the presence of a wheelchair and an oddly shaped body. These crucial differences seemed to be the reason people persisted in ignoring us. Finally, a woman and her husband came hurrying up. She was a compassionate nurse, and it took all three of us to lift my companion back into her chair. I felt offended and abandoned, but the intern shared that these sorts of experiences had happened to her many times.

These long minutes in the mall parking lot underscored the validity of intersectionality for me. Were one to look at our demographic information, the intern and myself would be remarkably similar. Yet, her societal experience was completely changed by her disability; by associating with her, I too experienced a complete different reaction to distress. Every human being’s identity is comprised of multiple groups, the main ones centering on race, gender, sex, religion, ability, age, and so forth. In “The Complexity of Identity”, Beverly Tatum postulates that each of these groups is either dominate or subordinate within society at large (2013). Yet, our experience in life is never centered on merely one group. Intersectionality maintains that all of these groupings interact together to influence our human experiences and positions in society. We can be simultaneously dominant and subordinate, such as an Arabic male. It is this “overlapping” of “various forms of discrimination” that is the hallmark of intersectionality, in contrast to many social justice movements which isolate the experiences of one particular group and present group experiences as being parallel rather than simultaneous (African American Policy Forum, n.d.).

Intersectionality is a valuable tool for many reasons, not the least of which is to remind us that dominant groups and people in power often secure their power by fomenting contention over subordinate group distinctions—in other words, denying or ignoring the intersectionality of subordinate groups. One example of this is race relations within the United States. In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Era of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander contends that throughout the history of the United States, powerful white men used race to secure their power, pitting poor white men (“Crackers”) against African-Americans so that they would not ally to overthrow the upper economic class. After slavery was legally outlawed, these powerful men enacted convict laws that essentially re-enslaved freedmen in appalling working conditions. The ruling class assuaged the anger and frustration of poor white men further impoverished by the Civil War by lifting them just slightly above African Americans—the absolute bottom class (2010). Social commentator Audre Lorde offers a similar critique of the 1960’s: “…white America—racist and liberal alike—was more than pleased to sit back as spectator while Black militant fought Black Muslim, Black Nationalist badmouthed the nonviolent, and Black women were told that our only useful position in the Black Power movement was prone” (2007).

Intersectionality also warns us of the dangers of race neutral policy. The concept of “colorblindness” or the irrelevancy of a person's skin color to their treatment and experience as a human is perhaps most famously touted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his well-known “I Have a Dream” speech. This speech is taught to most children in public education schools today, which is one indication that overt racism is no longer tolerated in our society. Yet, Alexander repeatedly emphasizes Dr. King’s warning: “…racial caste systems do not require racial hostility or overt bigotry to thrive. They need only racial indifference” (p 14).  Race neutral policy (or “colorblindness”) can easily turn into a default excuse for apathy. People’s hearts are more difficult to change than systems, but lasting change will be accomplished when men treat each other as having inherent value because of their humanity instead of race, gender, or even accomplishments. This is the stance taken by Patricia Williams, who wrote a piece included in Readings for Diversity and Social Justice entitled "The Emperor's New Clothes" in which she posits: "While I do want to underscore that I embrace color-blindness as a legitimate hope for the future, I worry that we tend to enshrine the notion with a kind of utopianism whose naiveté will ensure its elusiveness" (p. 116). In other words, claiming that one does "not see color" and "treats everyone the same" denies the inherent privileges and oppression experienced by different races. 

With its emphasis on structural privilege and oppression, intersectionality is a crucial theory for social justice work. Yet that very emphasis may limit it as a social theory. Human beings certainly institute and experience distinction without experiencing structural dichotomies. Children in particular are excellent at exposing the “otherness” of individuals who do not conform to group norms, even for something as simple as not being aware of a popular television show. Intergroup theory was presented in my undergraduate instruction in Communications as a social theory examining individual behavior within groups (Tajfel & Turner, 1986).  Although it does also focus on stereotypes and prejudices, the broad premise of intergroup theory is that we are all members of hundreds and hundreds of “groups”—a group being simply two or more people who share something in common. During a communication interaction, one group identity generally prevails. Thus, when one attends a church service, the prevailing group would be religious affiliation. When one attends the family function following the church service, the prevailing group is the specific family or perhaps “mom” or “son.”

The largest group is human beings. Then major groups are broken down in order of common identification such as gender, age, ethnicity, religion, profession, politics, etc. Yet, in contrast to intersectionality, groups can be as specific as people who play World of Warcraft or people who like Thai food. When we interact with people, we are usually unconsciously interacting within the context of a handful of group identities. 

Intergroup theory is a helpful complement to intersectionality because it helps us to remember that people are capable of creating connection and distinction based on almost any characteristic, not just the groups which have evolved into structures of privilege and oppression.  Intersectionality benefits from this reminder of the overlapping complexity of human experience.

References

African American Policy Forum. (n.d.). A primer on intersectionality. Columbia Law School.

Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in an era of colorblindness. The New Press.

Lourde, A. (2007). Sister outsider: Essays & speeches by Audre Lorde. Berkeley. Crossing Press.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behaviour. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 7–24). Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.

Tatum, B. D. (2013). The complexity of identity: “Who am I?” In M. Adams, W. Blumenfield, C. R. Castaneda, H.W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, & X. Zuniga (Eds.), Readings for Diversity and Social Justice 3^rd (p. 5-7). New York: Routledge.

Williams, P. J. (2013). The emperor’s new clothes. In M. Adams, W. Blumenfield, C. R. Castaneda, H.W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, & X. Zuniga (Eds.), Readings for Diversity and Social Justice 3^rd (p. 116-121). New York: Routledge.