Intersectionality and Kimberlé Crenshaw

Intersectionality Overview

• Kimberle Crenshaw's article examines how race and gender are treated as mutually exclusive categories, particularly in antidiscrimination law, feminist theory, and antiracist politics.
• Crenshaw uses the experiences of Black women to highlight the limitations of single-axis frameworks in addressing multidimensional discrimination.
• A single-axis framework marginalizes those with multiple burdens, obscuring claims that cannot be understood through discrete categories of discrimination.
• This framework distorts analyses of racism and sexism because race and sex become grounded in experiences of privileged group members, failing to capture more complex phenomena.
• Intersectionality, recognizing that experiences of disadvantage stemming from the combination of race & sex, is greater than the sum of racism and sexism.
• Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy due to reliance on experiences not accurately reflecting the intersection of race and gender.
• Crenshaw discusses the feminist critique of rape, separate spheres ideology, and public policy debates about female-headed households in the Black community to illustrate how intersectionality is missed.

Antidiscrimination Framework and Doctrinal Response

• Examining how courts frame Black women plaintiffs' stories reveals the problem of intersectionality, as the interpretation becomes part of the experience.
• Three Title VII cases are examined to illustrate difficulties in judicial treatment of intersectionality.

DeGraffenreid v General Motors

• Five Black women sued General Motors, alleging the seniority system perpetuated past discrimination against Black women.
• General Motors did not hire Black women before 1964, and Black women hired after 1970 lost jobs in a seniority-based layoff.
• The district court rejected the suit, stating Black women are not a special class protected from discrimination, refusing to combine statutory remedies.
• The court reasoned there was no sex discrimination as General Motors hired women (white women) before 1964, and the legislative history of Title VII did not indicate a goal to create a new class of 'black women'.
• Acknowledging combined race and sex discrimination implies boundaries are defined by white women's and Black men's experiences, protecting Black women only when experiences coincide with either group.

Moore v Hughes Helicopter, Inc.

• The plaintiff alleged race and sex discrimination in promotions and introduced statistical evidence establishing a significant disparity between men and women, and Black and white men, in supervisory jobs
• The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's refusal to certify Moore as class representative because Moore had never claimed before the EEOC that she was discriminated against as a female, but only as a Black female.
• Antidiscrimination doctrine narrowly fails to embrace intersectionality, but the experiences of white females is central in the conceptualization of gender discrimination
• The court saw Moore's attempt to specify her race as being at odds with the standard allegation that the employer simply discriminated "against females by implication
• A white woman's claim of discrimination as simply a statement that but for gender, they would not have been disadvantaged by the ruling and decision

Payne v Travenol

• Black female plaintiffs brought a class action suit on behalf of all Black employees, alleging race discrimination at a pharmaceutical plant.
• The court refused to allow the plaintiffs to represent Black males, narrowing the class to Black women only.
• The district court found extensive racial discrimination and awarded back pay and constructive seniority to the Black female employees, but still refused to extend the remedy to the black men
• Antidiscrimination doctrine often creates a dilemma for Black women, forcing them to choose between articulating intersectionality or stating a claim not excluding Black men.

Contradictions and Limitations

• Courts have proved unable to deal with intersectionality by various reasons and rational
• Challenges stem from presumptions of class conflicts and discrimination
• There is a contradiction from criticisms from offering Black women a fair trial and appropriate representation in court

Traffic and Intersectionality

• Black women can experience discrimination in ways that are both similar to and different from white women and Black men.
• Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white women's experiences or share similar experiences with Black men.
• Double discrimination, or the combined effects of practices that discriminate on race and sex, is also possible
• But sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black women-not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women.

Doctrinal Treatment Significance

• Black women are regarded either as too much like women or Blacks
• The compounded nature of their experience is absorbed into the collective experiences of either group or black.
• Black women’s Blackness or femaleness sometimes places their needs and perspectives at the margin of feminist and Black liberationist agendas.
• Discrimination is wrongful proceeds from the identification of a specific class or category
• Either a discriminator intentionally identifies this category, or a process is adopted which somehow disadvantages all members of this category
• Because of race or sex, its almost implicitly lawful

A Basement Analogy with Intersectionality

• Imagine a basement that contains all people who are disadvantaged
• People are stacked-feet standing on shoulders-with people being disadvantaged by the full array of factors, who are at the bottom up to the top where their are people disadvantaged by only one, singular factor
• There is a ceiling and above it only those non-disadvantaged, with a hatch that leads to being admitted from the basement
• Black women who cannot conclusively say that "but for" their race or "but for" their gender they would be treated differently, are not invited to climb through the hatch
• Instead, they are told to wait in the unprotected margin until they can be absorbed into the broader, protected categories of race and sex.

Feminism and Black Women

• Feminist theory and politics borrow from Black women's history, like "Ain't I a Woman," as a refrain, not fully appreciated because the context is seldom examined.
• In 1851 Sojourner Truth declared this statement, and as such, challenged Sexist imagery used by male critics, to justify the disenfranchisement

Contemporary Feminists

• Contemporary white feminists inherit Truth's challenge to their forbearers and not against Truth's challenge to patriarchy
• It’s difficult sacrificing racial privilege to strengthen feminism, which renders them susceptible to Truth's critical question that often include or speak to Black women
• Claims are made that "women are," "women believe" and "women need" are inapplicable or unresponsive to the needs, interests and experiences of Black women.
• The value of feminist theory is diminished to Black women as it evolves from a white racial context that is seldom acknowledged

Objectivity

• Not only are women of color in fact overlooked, but
• Exclusion is reinforced when white women speak for and women
• But for gender, there are many of the same cultural, economic and social characteristics
• Feminist theory attempts to describe women's experiences through analyzing patriarchy, sexuality, or separate spheres ideology, and then overlooks the role of race
• Feminists ignore how their own race functions to mitigate some aspects of sexism and moreover, how it often privileges them over and contributes to the domination of other women
• Feminist theory remains white, and its potential to broaden and deepen its analysis by addressing non-privileged women remains unrealized

Separate Spheres

• Theory finds that in feminist separate spheres, there is a limited theory on Black women and little insight into domination.
• Experiential base from from that are white, are not overgeneralized at best in statement