Dialogue Description:

In this movement moment, the term intersectionality has entered increasingly into popular consciousness. In this dialogue, we offer a space to reflect on the histories and ongoing formation of the term, centering Black feminist thought. As a collective focused around questions and complexities we often talk about as ‘the intersections of gendered oppression and white privilege’, we want to investigate our own uses of intersectionality, paying attention to possibilities of co-optation and appropriation.

Some key questions:

In this time of increasing politicization, with many white feminists utilizing intersectionality as a framework, how can we do justice to it’s origins, specifically to center Black feminist liberation struggles? How do we articulate our individual stakes in work for collective liberation while resisting co-optation and appropriation?  What common and historical patterns of white feminism should we make conscious and disrupt — now and for the long haul? How do we engage the people in our lives coming into consciousness in this movement moment towards work for collective liberation?

About the term intersectionality (more details in the readings and video below):

Feminist and Critical Legal Scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined intersectionality as a framework in Black feminist thought, naming the ways ‘the subordination of Black women’ based in white supremacy and sexism compound one another. Black feminist Scholar Patricia Hill Collins has gone on to describe intersectionality as a tool to name ‘interlocking oppressions’. Please check out below for so much more richness around these ideas:

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Check In 

  • Weighing for a long time in relationship to WNC and its history. Are we as WNC participating in colonizing the language?
  • Drawbacks of identity politics, and simultaneous importance of holding the trauma and resilience related to identity. How to be trauma-centered in understanding identities.
  • The colonization of the term intersectionality is enacted to moving from a rhetoric of oppression to one of difference. How does, if at all, WNC do that? Disappointment in solutions listed in the blog – ‘follow leadership of POC’ as important and also how to enact in a way that is in integrity.
  • Liberal cooptation of intersectionality. How to think about power and oppression at play thru WNC.
  • Relevance to nonprofit paid work, challenges around expressing intersectionality in a way that honors its origins.
  • As a student, how to use voice, take up space and have an impact – considering the racial and gender implications of those concepts. Noticing self-judgement in spaces like dialogues. How to be accountable, while also soft and compassionate.
  • In activism and organizing spaces, intersectionality as a word thrown around a lot. Haven’t always had the tools to know how it’s being used.
  • As white people in anti-racist work, how to be in contradiction. Intersectionality as one example. ‘Decolonization is not a Metaphor’ article as a tool to consider language and practice.
  • Reference to TED Talk, we do not know the Black women’s names who have been murdered by police compared to the Black men. Unless we have a frame for something, we cannot comprehend a concept. Intersectionality as a tool to engage differently to consider Black women’s experiences of oppression. Language as a set of metaphors – the power of getting to decide how we name challenging and unjust experiences. Doesn’t hear the word ‘intersectional’ as a term often. The rhetoric is around diversity within her paid non-profit job – complexity and white supremacy within predominantly white liberal environmental org.
  • Discomfort in dialogue spaces where it feels challenging. How to keep challenging my own framework. How not to over-simplify through language.

Discussion

  • The contradictions: how often I use the word intersectionality to mean contradiction specifically in WNC. How do we navigate the contradiction of having one privileged id and one marginalized id, as an example? How to get specific with language?
  • When one is saying intersectionality, how to name the origins of the term? To consider resisting cooptation of intersectionality by orienting to the origins of the word.
  • Practice of defining the words I say as a way of questioning what I mean and clarifying.
  • Not taking for granted shared understanding. There are specific words that I don’t want to use without further naming. For example, certain terms like feminism and capitalism can produce a sloppiness where it is unclear what people are talking about.
  • What does it do when I use the word intersectionality? The term as a way to make systems visible, rather than obscuring them. How convoluted and debatable it has become, instead came out of a pragmatic need related to the original legal case.
  • Term intersectional served important legal precedent that did not exist without that named framework before.
  • Reminded of a conversation in another space related to the use of the word ‘community’. Desire to be smart, use buzzwords like intersectionality and community. Important to articulate what it actually means. Importance of frameworks to challenge the ways white supremacy obscures reality.  
  • How do we do all at the same time – to hold intersectionality’s origins and appreciate people’s politicization in particular white feminisms cooptation of intersectionality. How to we not become destabilized by contradiction?
  • T-shirt ‘Intersectional AF’ on a teenager on the BART – whoah!
  • As white people, we get access to things, and POC get access to things once they are legitimized by the institution. How do we create avenues for POC to get respect for their lived experiences and concepts without needing to be legitimized by broader white systems.
  • What is the potential power in using intersectionality to reveal other similar situations around identities? Does it make more sense to use it just to describe Black and women as intersections?
  • Can intersectional describe something that isn’t about gender and race, for example, identities that aren’t represented?
  • Not to stop using the term, but to use it with more specificity and clarity.
  • How to bring this language with other people I am talking with? What am I saying when I use the word intersectionality? How do we apply this awareness to spaces where there is less consensus?
  • Who gets hurt when we misuse the word intersectionality?
  • If I am trying to talk about someone else’s intersection, am I making assumptions?
  • Concern about abstraction by universalizing. Intersectionality as a tool to help us understand what is missing, especially struggles that have been very single-issue.
  • Dean Spade ‘life shortening chances’ – material realities and chronic conditions – how to bring it back to the realness. Intersectionality as a tool naming interlocking systems of oppression – at WNC, we talk about both privilege and oppression. We are attempting to use the term not to obfuscate or just name difference, but to constantly orient towards oppression and marginality.
  • Maybe we need a different word from intersectionality to describe the work that WNC does? Who is harmed: example of white women’s tears. The way that I have used it when it is just not that clear – when people with different relationships who have a complex array of identities – how do we understand all of the relationships and who is harmed? We have been socialized in systems of power that don’t allow us to see the ways we have harmed each other. Importance of naming the structures of power. Often more complex than ‘white woman’ / ‘black woman’.  
  • Articles did not clearly state ‘ don’t use the word’, instead, to really consider the word and how we’re using it. How to understand interwovenness of identities.
  • What are the origins of the language? Importance of crediting creators, and use it accurately to resist colonial possibilities. Unclear if the ways that I use it are appropriate – is there a more accurate word?
  • Kyriarchy – has anyone heard of it? What don’t we use it?
  • Unclear exactly what intersectionality means? Only for Black women? Instead, importance of using it to describe oppression, rather than difference.
  • Should we articulate the history of the word to ground?
  • What does it do when I use the term intersectionality? Depends on the context – does it help spur to action and concern, or does it make things more vague? So if it is helpful when it feels like a precise tool to make things visible, then what? How to we then capture that to mobilize energy to respond? The naming is not enough.
  • How the word diversity gets used in all white nonprofit spaces. Talking about diversity can be considered enough. Or a POC is hired, and that is considered the end of the action. Need for a constant commitment to name what is happening, otherwise white supremacy is at play constantly without getting checked.
  • Intersectionality can also be used to prevent change, to be a tool of lip service, which creates greater dissonance with action. Intervention of asking people – what do you mean by that when people speak of intersectionality?
  • How to talk about race with parents. Challenges of talking about white privilege with parents who describe having grown up poor. Considering using Prof. Crenshaw’s TED talk as a tool. Parents interpret concern around white privilege as an insult to them and how I was raised.
  • Interest in articles and resources about talking with people who identify as poor and white.
  • Appreciation for cross-class organizing WNC dialogue earlier in the spring. Since then, has tried to name my identity as a working class person. Now, concerned that I am relying too much on a marginalized identity in order to relate to people? How to hold all of our identities? Wants to be transparent and not evade.
  • Intersectionality co-opted when white people evade privilege by identifying as poor or with another marginalized identity.
  • Having a marginalized id as a tool to understand stake in collective liberation. Important to understand oppressed ids as a vehicle to move towards collective liberation. How to name in a way that does not minimize or obscure.

Take Aways

  • Clarity around how to use the term intersectionality and excited to be able to move forward with that.
  • Similar clarity for myself, although still inquiry around the word. Would like to build a section on the WNC website about how to talk with poor white people without coopting intersectionality. Also interested in potentially crafting a statement with WNC about use of intersectionality in our resources and process.
  • Thinking about unnamed and unchallenged dynamics at my nonprofit job. Appreciating WNC space where there is so much care to the issues. Struck by the all the identities we carry and how it is always complicated – how do we be in the complexity of identity politics?
  • Appreciating naming of ‘this feels clunky’ to describe use of intersectionality. How to understand our terms, like queer. How there is constant complexity that can feel inspiring. Learning in groups, rather than in isolation. Challenges of paid work spaces.
  • Appreciating the dialogue space. Trying to have clarity of language, rather than throwing buzzwords around without intention. Often feel really inarticulate, without a lot of highly intellectualized words – hard to know how to be accessible and specific, a desire for belonging and to be impressed. Feeling wrongness about things I said, or not saying things the way I want. Working to cultivate curiosity – orienting away away from right/wrong.
  • Appreciating self-reflection in the space, feels curious and therapeutic. Generative, rather than answered and tied up. Interested about different examples of how to engage with intersectionality.
  • Helpful, learned a lot. Not as embodied as would have liked. Question about what does this do – how to notice that voice?