Intersectionality and Race
When applied to the realm of ethnic and racial studies, intersectionality can help us face up to the fundamental challenges of acknowledging perceived difference within and between ethnic groups. Intersectionality can be especially helpful when considering gender variations within and between different ethnic groups. The reality of lived experiences among different ethnic groups across the globe—as with “difference” among women—has become a central concern for academics working within, for example, the broad subject areas of ethnic and racial studies, as well as gender studies. It is easy to appreciate why this is the case in both disciplines: It connects to the problem of exclusion and marginalization of certain topics and voices from debates that should have been more inclusive and accessible to different minority concerns and interests (Bonnett 2003). This is the juncture where intersectionality has a critical role to play; it puts “difference” and, for want of a better expression, “outsiderness” at the heart of discussions on identity, inequality, and exclusion, and also foregrounds the serious question of power relations in terms of how different groups of people can position themselves in such debates and stake a claim in a more just and fair society.
Moreover, intersectionality aims to penetrate the multiple layers of oppression. One such practical way of ensuring this occurs is perhaps best captured by the scholar Mari J. Matsuda, who said that we have to always “ask the other question”:
The way I try to understand the interconnection of all forms of subordination is through a method I call “ask the other question.” When I see something that looks racist, I ask, “Where is the patriarchy in this?” When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, “Where is the heterosexism in this?” When I see something that looks homo-phobic, I ask, “Where are the class interests in this?” (Matsuda 1991, p. 1189)
This simple and immediately recognizable strategy has instant appeal. How is “race” gendered? How is sexuality related to social class? Such critical thinking forces us, in a way, to “make the familiar strange” and allows for an interdisciplinary, as well as intersectional, approach to complex questions of oppression. Indeed, it is noted that “difference” takes on specific material forms in this regard. The impact of class and gender, for example, on ethnic identities needs to be appreciated in terms of how different communities (for example, Roma and Sinti groups across central and eastern Europe or Arab Americans in contemporary US society) communicate their identity and experiences to others, as well as advance their struggles for socioeconomic recognition and political and human rights.
As in gender studies, the exclusion of economically disadvantaged women and women from minority ethnic backgrounds from more mainstream feminist debates has long been recognized. But intersectionality offers, potentially, the opportunity to alter this and to capture, in a sense, what Deborah King (1988) has referred to as the “multiple jeopardy” perspective on analyzing the impacts of gender, class, and “race”: that is, with every new category comes another layer of potential social, economic, and political disadvantage and oppressive practices. Further, influential feminist scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins (2000b) and Floya Anthias (1998) have proposed that the focal point has to be the moment—where “X” marks the spot, so to speak—when gender, class, and “race” can politically unite to challenge and destabilize existing racist and patriarchal power relations and connect to form a new set of progressive values and norms that do not, as a rule, disadvantage or exclude those who are most vulnerable to the dominating and unequal conditions imposed by neoliberalism and globalization.
Clark, Colin. "Intersectionality." Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, edited by Patrick L. Mason, 2nd ed., vol. 2, Macmillan Reference USA, 2013.