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 3rd (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 3rd (p. 116-121). New York:
Routledge.
