In certain circles, it has become fashionable of late to slip the words “intersectionality” and “intersectional” into sentences to diminish the nouns around them, as Andrew Sullivan does in a recent piece in New York Magazine, titled “A Glimpse at the Intersectional Left’s Political Endgame.”
While this is understandable, it’s also a bit unfair, trivializing a theory that, at least initially, was both well reasoned and well intentioned. The term was first coined by lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to explain how various types of bigotry mix together, forming new kinds of bias. The quintessential example is sexism and racism. While mid-century misogyny kept white women in the home, she argued, it pushed black women into other people’s homes, working as domestics. In other words, black women faced not only a double burden but a unique burden—forced into the marketplace by the color of their skin but denied jobs outside the home because of their sex. Caught in the intersection of sexism and racism, they got hit by both simultaneously.
Read Full Article »