Soc 201 Exam 3Intersectionalities• Defined: social systems of race, class, and gender interlock to simultaneously provide individuals both disadvantage and privilege• Theory and method• Helps shape understanding of inequalities• No category is mutually exclusive • We all cross many different domains of race, class, gender, age, sexuality, nationality, etc…which differentially shape experiences and understandings of the world• Systems of oppression are linked in an interlocking system and inform and define one another • If researchers don’t recognize this fusion, generalizations and essentialisms ensue which do not provide the entire picture and many times, provide an incorrect oneHistoryDidn’t talk about differences between women, but there are significant differences between women• Feminist theory, primarily among women of color• Critique: gender-based and race-based research failed to account for experiences at lesser points of intersection (e.g., black women)• Dominant, hegemonic second wave feminism• Critiques:• Tended to generalize and essentialize women  housewives (Example: Betty Friedan)• Based in a socially dominant idea of either/or binaries (Example: Sherry Ortner)• Ignored differences among women  only talked about white heterosexual women (Example: Nancy Chodorow)• Combahee River Collective• Formed in late 1970’s  recognize and unify needs of black women• Black Feminist Statement (1983)  absence of black women in the feminist movement• Identity politics• Recognition of differences between women• First time that they revealed differences between women• Crenshaw: intersectionalitiesMethods (can be used as a method): not additive, locations are intersected  unique experiences in all contexts, simultaneously both privileged and oppressed at the same time• Anticategorical approach:– Deconstructs categories• Categories have no foundation in reality  language creates categorical reality rather than the other way around– Inequalities are rooted in relationships that are defined by race, class, sexuality, and gender– Only way to eliminate oppression in society is to eliminate the categories used to section people into differing groups– Poststructuralist– Don’t need categories• Intercategorical approach:– Adopt existing categories to analyze relationships of inequality among social groups and how they change over time– All approaches share the fact that relationships among social groups have inequalities  want to understand the changing relationships among the groups– Not the intersection of race, class, and gender in a single social group that’s of interest but the relationships among the social groups defined by the entire set of groups constituting each category– Quantitative approach– Need categories, will be maintained• Intracategorical Approach:– Women of color critique– Midpoint (INBETWEEN) between anticategorical & intercategorical approaches– Recognizes the shortcomings of existing social categories and questions how they make distinctions– Does not completely reject the importance of categories (like anticategorical approach)  recognizes the social categories to understand social experience– Attempts to reconcile these contrasting views  focuses on people who cross the boundaries of constructed categories– We have categories, we should challenge them and find out why they existPremise of Intersectionality• Tried to conceptualize the way the law responded to issues when both race and gender discrimination were involved• Jobs deemed appropriate for blacks and jobs deemed appropriate for women  virtually none available for black women– African-American men in the factory  no jobs for women because of gender discrimination– Women were placed in the secretarial pool or front office  only white women were seen as appropriate as secretaries or personal assistants • Black women’s claims of race and gender discrimination in hiring rejected– Court thought that if women were given leave, it would be a super remedy  something more than everybody else receives• Single axis framework– Feminist theory and antiracist politics both exist on single-axis framework  obscures/ignores experiences of those at intersection of race and sex– Treats racial and sexual discrimination as mutually exclusive  think of all women as white and all blacks as men  erases experiences of those at the intersections• Feminist framework– Evolved from a white racial context  overlooks differences by race. – Not only are black women overlooked in feminist theory  that exclusion is reinforced when white women speak for/as all women– White women have an “authoritative, universal voice”  ignores how their own race privileges them over other women and eases some sexism encountered• Race framework (antidiscrimination policies)– Defined by white women’s and black men’s experiences– Black women are only protected by having similar experiences to one of the two groups, not their intersection or as ‘black women’ generally– Discrimination policies are narrowly tailored to embrace a small set of circumstances• Feminist theory and antiracist policy need to be altered and rethought to take intersectionality into account, otherwise black women are excluded• No more top-down approach– Need to de-marginalize the center and focus on black women– All other needs would be recognized  the most disadvantaged can reveal all other needs Matrix of Domination (Hill Collins)• Black feminist thought has created a paradigmatic shift (a shift in thought patterns)  it rejects additive approaches to oppression– Does not start with gender and then add other variables such as race, class, sexual orientation, disabilityAetc. – Sees these distinctive systems of oppression as being part of one overarching structure of domination, where these systems are dependent on one another– Instead of arguing about who experiences the worst oppression, intersectionality focuses attention on how systems of oppression interconnect in different peoples’ livesRacism in Toyland (Williams)• Racial inequality influence where we choose to shop, how we shop, and what we buy through• Hiring policies that favor certain workers• Advertising aimed at specific racial/ethnic groups• Race as status characteristic• Whites usually have