Intersectionality

Feminist Perspectives on the Philosophy of Race

What does it mean to be a woman? If we try to answer this question by asking what qualities, dimensions, traits, or even essences all women have, we fail from the start. One of the major challenges of feminist philosophy has been to consider women's identity within a diverse and multicultural context. Women as a group diverge from each other on a number of axes of identity: disability, sexuality, age, and class, to name a few. One area of difference that emerges between women is the category of race.

It is not uncommon for many women of color to disavow feminism, as they find it difficult to align themselves with a movement that they feel does not speak for all but only for a particular type of woman, generally White and economically advantaged. Responding to the historical lack of sensitivity among White feminists, and the accompanying critiques of mainstream feminism by many African, Latin, Asian, and Native American thinkers, one of the major theoretical outcomes of feminist thought has been the concept of intersectionality. Intersectionality reveals the overlapping identities of race, gender, and other marginalized identities and the ways in which feminism has historically rendered invisible the unique experiences and identities of women of color.

In 1991 the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who would become the court's second African American justice (succeeding the first), were marked by controversy over allegations of sexual harassment. Anita Hill, an attorney who had worked under Thomas when he held administrative positions at two federal agencies, testified at the hearings that Thomas had made lewd sexual comments to her that constituted sexual harassment. At the time, the rhetoric of White feminism failed to represent the unique perspective of Hill, who is Black (see Flax 1998 ). Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality to describe how race and gender overlap in ways to construct the unique experiences of Black women, argues that Hill was “rhetorically disempowered,” caught between the competing arguments by, on one hand, feminists who opposed Thomas's nomination using the discourse of rape, and, on the other hand, those who supported the nomination using the discourse of antiracism, with Thomas himself describing the hearings as a type of lynching ( Crenshaw 1995 ). Questions of race and gender yielded competing categories of identity, for both Thomas and Hill. The concept of intersectionality highlights the overlapping layers of identities that shape people's lives.

Patricia Hill Collins's groundbreaking work in Black feminist thought enhances our understanding of intersectionality by introducing the concept of a “matrix of domination,” the interconnected oppressions embedded in social structures ( [1990] 2009 ). Collins makes a distinction between intersectionality, which she understands as the overlapping of oppressions based on race, sexuality, ability, gender, and so on, and this matrix of domination: the latter allows the tracking and analysis of power relations emergent within institutions and bureaucracies. Intersectionality shows us that Hill was subject to misogynist and racist subordination, and hence her experience of oppression was distinct from both White women and Black men. The matrix of domination presents us with an analysis of the power relations and institutional practices that were marshaled to undermine Hill's credibility. A professionally successful woman of color made sexual harassment allegations against a man of color who had been her workplace superior: those most concerned about discrimination against women and workplace sexual harassment found themselves in opposition to those most concerned about the nation's racial progress that Thomas's appointment to the court represented. As some saw it at the time, her claims against Thomas, who denied the allegations, were unprovable and not credible; as others saw it, because she was a woman of color in a subordinate position, and Thomas was a man in power, her voice was drowned out by an oppressive system.

Extract from: Bardwell-Jones, Celia. "Feminist Perspectives on the Philosophy of Race." Philosophy: Feminism, edited by Carol Hay, Macmillan Reference USA, 2017.

Reading List

Alcoff, Linda Martín. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands: The New Mestíza/La Frontera. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute Books, 1987.

Bailey, Alison. “Locating Traitorous Identities: Toward a View of Privilege-Cognizant White Character.” In The Feminist Philosophy Reader, edited by Alison Bailey and Chris Cuomo, 344–355. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.

Bartky, Sandra Lee. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Cannon, Katie Geneva. Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community. New York: Continuum Press, 2003. First published 1995.

“Cherokee Women Scholars' and Activists' Statement on Andrea Smith.” Indian Country Today, July 17, 2015. https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/cherokee-women-scholars-and-activists-statement-on-andrea-smith/ .

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2009. First published 1990.

Collins, Patricia Hill. “What's in a Name? Womanism, Black Feminism, and Beyond.” Black Scholar 26, no. 1 (1996): 9–17.

Combahee River Collective. “A Black Feminist Statement” [1977]. In Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, 3rd ed., edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim, 116–122. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” In Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, edited by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Goanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas. New York: New Press, 1995.

Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon, 1998.

Espiritu, Yen Le. “Race, Class, Gender in Asian America.” In Making More Waves: New Writing by Asian American Women, edited by Elaine H. Kim, Lilia V. Villanueva, and Asian Women United of California. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997.

Flax, Jane. The American Dream in Black and White: The Clarence Thomas Hearings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.

Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1983.

Frye, Marilyn. Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism. 1976–1992. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1992.

Grande, Sandy. Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. “Love and Gold.” In Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. New York: Holt, 2002.

Hune, Shirley, and Gail Nomura. Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

Lee, Emily S. “The Ambiguous Practices of the Inauthentic Asian American Woman.” Hypatia: A Journal for Feminist Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2014): 146–163.

Liu, Eric. The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker. New York: Random House, 1998.

Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.

Lugones, María. “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System.” Hypatia: A Journal for Feminist Philosophy 22, no. 1 (2007): 186–209.

Lugones, María. Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppression. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

Lugones, María. “Purity, Impurity, and Separation.” Signs 19, no. 2 (1994): 458–479.

Lugones, María. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia: A Journal for Feminist Philosophy 25, no. 4 (2010): 742–759.

Mayer, Lorraine. “A Return to Reciprocity.” Hypatia: A Journal for Feminist Philosophy 22, no. 3 (2007): 22–42.

McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” [1989]. Independent School 49, no. 2 (1990): 31–35. http://people.westminstercollege.edu/faculty/jsibbett/readings/White_Privilege.pdf .

Medina, José. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Mohanty, Chandra. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.

Moraga, Cherríe. “La Güera.” In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, 2nd ed., edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, 28–34. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983.

Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. 2nd ed. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983.

Moya, Paula. “Chicana Feminism and Postmodernist Theory.” In Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, 3rd ed., edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim, 571–588. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge Press, 2015. First published 1986.

Ortega, Mariana. “Being Lovingly, Knowingly Ignorant: White Feminism and Women of Color.” Hypatia: A Journal for Feminist Philosophy 21, no. 3 (2006): 56–74.

Ortega, Mariana. “‘New Mestizas,’ ‘World-Travelers,’ and ‘Dasein’: Phenomenology and the Multi-voiced, Multicultural Self.” Hypatia: A Journal for Feminist Philosophy 16, no. 3 (2001): 1–29.

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Pérez, Laura E. Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century.” In Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Barbara Smith. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983.

Roiphe, Katie. The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.

Rosen, James. “Playboy Interview: Dick Cheney.” Playboy, March 17, 2015. http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-dick-cheney .

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978.

Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

Schutte, Ofelia. “Cultural Alterity: Cross-Cultural Communication and Feminist Theory in North-South Contexts.” In Women of Color and Philosophy: A Critical Reader, edited by Naomi Zack. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000.

Smith, Andrea. “Native American Feminism, Sovereignty, and Social Change.” In Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, 3rd ed., edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim, 321–331. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Sotomayor, Sonia. “A Latina Judge's Voice.” La Raza Law Journal 13, no. 1 (2002): 87–93. http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/blrlj/vol13/iss1/12 .

Spelman, Elizabeth V. “The Ampersand Problem in Feminist Thought.” In Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1983.

Sullivan, Shannon. Living across and through Skins: Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism, and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Trask, Haunani-Kay. “Feminism and Indigenous Hawaiian Nationalism.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 21, no. 4 (1996): 906–916.

Trask, Haunani-Kay. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999.

Trask, Haunani-Kay. “Settlers of Color and ‘Immigrant’ Hegemony: ‘Locals' in Hawai‘i” Amerasia Journal 26, no. 2 (2000): 1–24.

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Uno, Kathleen. “Unlearning Orientalism: Locating Asian and Asian American Women in Family History.” In Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology, edited by Shirley Hune and Gail Nomura, 42–57. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

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Yamada, Mistuye. “Invisibility Is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman.” In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, 2nd ed., edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, 35–40. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983.

Zack, Naomi. “The American Sexualization of Race.” In Race/Sex: Their Sameness, Difference, and Interplay, edited by Naomi Zack, 145–156. New York: Routledge, 1997a.

Zack, Naomi. “Mixed Black and White Race and Public Policy.” Hypatia: A Journal for Feminist Philosophy 10, no. 1 (1995): 120–132.

Zack, Naomi. “Race, Life, Death, Identity, Tragedy and Good Faith.” In Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, edited by Lewis R. Gordon, 99–110. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Zack, Naomi, ed. Race/Sex: Their Sameness, Difference, and Interplay. New York: Routledge, 1997b.

Critiques of Intersectionality in Feminism

In her comprehensive 2014 essay “The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist Theory,” philosopher Anna Carastathis outlines several different kinds of critiques leveled against intersectionality from within feminist theory. One type of critique is that the social world is insurmountably complex, with endless differences, and intersectionality seems to suggest that certain differences (such as race, class, and gender) should be salient in the analysis of overlapping oppressions. But in real life, it isn't always obvious whether a woman is being discriminated against because of her gender, her race, her class, or some other difference, like her accent. In any case, the experience of oppression can be so complex that it defies reduction to these systemic categories of oppression. In addition to this, intersectionality seems to struggle between collapsing oppressions at the intersection or separating them into a list (Carastathis 2014, 309). The first critique of intersectionality is that it remains beholden to monistic categories of oppression that oversimplify the complexity of experience.

Another critique leveled against intersectionality has to do with its normative goal of inclusion. Carastathis asks, “Can intersectionality deliver on the promise to transform feminist theory and politics by centering the experiences of multiply oppressed groups?” (2014, 311). The question calls to our attention the worry that by naming the multitude of differences that contribute to interlocking oppressions, intersectionality leads to fragmentation rather than inclusion. Black feminist philosopher Naomi Zack argues in her 2005 book Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave Theory of Women's Commonality that intersectionality has in fact given up on the feminist goal of inclusion. For Zack, intersectionality has had the effect of fracturing, rather than consolidating, feminist demands amongst women. Zack believes that the purpose of feminism is to create “universal advocacy for women's interests,” and she claims that intersectionality is not inclusive insofar as “members of specific intersections of race and class can create only their own feminisms” (2005, 2). For Zack, intersectional feminisms can't create and/or develop into knowledge that is amenable to inclusive universal goals.

One way to contend with Zack's view that intersectionality creates more division than inclusion might be to ask why inclusion is supposed to be the highest feminist value. For many marginalized groups, including queer people, inclusion into the mainstream is not the driving goal. Lorde, for instance, believed that being curious and loving toward difference is key. For Lorde, if division has been a tactic of the oppressors (“divide and conquer”), so too is the assimilation of differences into dominant cultural norms. Who, after all, gets to decide the identity upon which solidarity is built? Intersectionality offers an answer: as long as internal structures of oppression exist, those with more power will make decisions about inclusion that privilege and maintain their power. This is both a cynical view and a historically descriptive truth. Social justice today is driven by intersectional politics and its attendant coalitions. Many feminists would view the return to a universal goal as a return to identity politics that privileges the assimilation and erasure of difference in the name of the dominant oppressed class (“woman”). Cressida Heyes describes this problem of essentialism in identity politics when she says, “Just as dominant groups in the culture at large insist that the marginalized integrate by assimilating to dominant norms, so within some practices of identity politics dominant sub-groups may, in theory and practice, impose their vision of the group's identity onto all its members” (Heyes 2016). This is precisely the impetus for intersectionality: to reveal and critically engage internal structures of oppression within liberation movements. It is up for debate whether this is done in the name of inclusion or social justice.

Hunt, Grayson. "Intersectionality: Locating and Critiquing Internal Structures of Oppression within Feminism." Philosophy: Feminism, edited by Carol Hay, Macmillan Reference USA, 2017.

Reading List

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Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. First published 1990.

Carastathis, Anna. “The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist Theory.” Philosophy Compass 9, no. 5 (2014): 304–314.

Cho, Sumi, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall. “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis.” Signs 38, no. 4 (2013): 785–810.

Collins, Patricia Hill. “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought.” Signs 14, no. 4 (1989): 745–773.

Combahee River Collective. “A Black Feminist Statement” [1978]. In All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies, edited by Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith. 2nd ed. New York: Feminist Press, 2015.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–167.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–1299.

Garry, Ann. “Who Is Included? Intersectionality, Metaphors, and the Multiplicity of Gender.” In Out from the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy, edited by Sharon L. Crasnow and Anita M. Superson, 493–530. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Gines, Kathryn. “Race Women, Race Men, and Early Expressions of Proto-Intersectionality, 1830s–1930s.” In Why Race and Gender Still Matter, edited by Namita Goswami, Maeve M. O'Donovan, and Lisa Yount, 13–26. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014.

Goswami, Namita, Maeve M. O'Donovan, and Lisa Yount. Why Race and Gender Still Matter. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014.

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Heyes, Cressida. “Identity Politics.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Summer 2016. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/ .

Heyes, Cressida. Line Drawings: Defining Women through Feminist Practice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

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Lorde, Audre. “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions.” Bulletin: Homophobia and Education 14, nos. 3/4 (1983): 9.

Lugones, María. Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

May, Vivian M. “‘Speaking into the Void’? Intersectionality Critiques and Epistemic Backlash.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2014): 94–112.

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Zack, Naomi. Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave Theory of Women's Commonality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

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Feminist Perspectives on the Philosophy of Race

Critiques of Intersectionality in Feminism

INTERSECTIONALITY: CRITICISMS

INTERSECTIONALITY AND RACE