I want to add to recent threads on intersectionality by taking you on a tour through Crenshaw’s essay, and highlight why at least I think it is somewhere between trivially true material (that contributes nothing academically) or mostly untestable strings of words.
Now just in case all the blue checks come out to tell everyone why I don’t understand it, I’m going to screenshot important sections for them to follow along. At the very least, we will come to explore why the militant defense of this work is very odd.
First- many people want critics to “define intersectionality” sort of as a smug test. But it’s complicated because Crenshaw uses it in different ways, both in a structural and political sense, but also as a lens through which to tackle identity issues. We’ll get to each. 
However, the main jist is rejecting the notion that most political issues can be analyzed on a single-axis framework (e.g., racism cannot be tackled independently of patriarchy, etc.), particularly as some categories interact to produce novel effects.
When you see modern claims like “climate change cannot be solved without tackling inequality, sexism, racism, etc” this is directly inspired by an intersectional lens, not a terrible abuse of 30 year old concepts.
First, we will get to identity politics. Those who advocate for more identity politics will recognize the words below, that explicitly advocate against removing the social significance of identity categories and seeing it as a source of empowerment and mobilization.
At the outset, I will say that those of us who do not endorse identity politics will have a difficult time endorsing intersectionality, even in its “original” form. Crenshaw is clear the problem (at least at the time of her writing) is *not enough identity politics*
I will suspend my skepticism in this thread, but note that many people (whom are also accused of not understanding anything), have identified this to be in conflict with liberalism. In a separate essay, Jennifer Nash (who is mildly critical of intersectionality) has this to say
Link here: philpapers.org/archive/NASRI.…
To continue on identity politics, Crenshaw spends time on the criticism of social categories and the postmodern take on how power still shapes socially constructed group experiences (something critics also are just making up?)
Crenshaw stresses categorization can be an exercise of power, but also empowering and she advocates for defending this identity politics, seeing a statement like “I am Black” (emphasizing black) to be stronger than “I happen to be black” (i.e., a human in a certain circumstance).
So to summarize so far, in intersectionality, identity groups are (or have the potential to be) “coalitions.” In fact, we need an intersectional lens to make sense of those coalitions. Buckle up.
Most of Crenshaw’s essay is now devoted to examples or anecdotes for why intersectionality needs to be the new lens of analysis. For example, here she talks about her observations of shelters for battered women
Note that Crenshaw doesn’t elaborate on what she observed, but that many people who show up at this shelter are low income, are colored, don’t tend to have a stable support network of family and friends, etc. Immediately, I have concerns. How do you quantify some of these?
I don’t deny that the people who show up at shelters for battered women in minority communities will feature people dealing w many issues. This isn’t a “lens” or a theory of anything. It’s not novel as of the 1990s, either.
In a “theory” like gravity/evolution, there’s an attempt to unify& organize ideas and concepts, build on that foundation to solve smaller and more refined problems. Here, it is “all-or-nothing,” that shelters for example can’t ignore housing discrimination or class oppression.
I’m unconvinced by this, even putting aside the issue of how we separate these problems (how does a white women in poverty and five kids stack up against a black women who is doing okay but found a man who hit her?). Intersectionality just assumes & essentializes its hierarchies
But the case hasn’t been made that we need to look at many variables even when fixing a true multivariate problem. Shelters & intervention centers serve a useful function even if they don’t fix everything. Intuitively, fix-everything is impractical and leaves no one satisfied.
Think about it. What institution considers a large fraction of all the things that go into identity & social problems (like local housing biases, poverty, race, gender, religion, child care, class, or carbon emissions). What would that even look like? How is it implementable?
Crenshaw qualitatively discusses correlations, the closest thing to a statistical point in the essay, e.g., that even for a given class, women of color experience life differently than a white woman. But how?
This isn’t necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t tell us how we distinguish where a WOC doesn’t experience things differently, how we can tell, how large of an effect this is, etc. There’s no analysis at all, it “just is.” Again, Nash has highlighted the lack of attention to methods.
Crenshaw discusses challenges of immigrant women (obviously, usually WOC), sensibly pointing out issues they face , e.g. risk being deported when unjust constraints of work and marriage are put in place. This isn’t wrong, but trivially true and not a theory of anything.
Crenshaw spends time on issues faced by non-English speaking women at shelters, who may be turned away for lack of resources. This is a problem.The fix is arguably better shelter management, not a theoretical lens to tell us this is different than an English speakers experience
Anecdotes such as this, a Latina in crisis but denied shelter, are indeed frustrating. But again, no social analysis. No stories of white women in those spots. No discussion of other shelters who have been more accommodating. I thought this was a “lens,” not story time.
You may say, “well, for better management, we need to consider more issues the people face.” It’s also lazy and useless. This is how resource allocation works. You have to focus on something, often proximate, and provide within reason. This is intellectual only for first graders.
Crenshaw then gets into political intersectionality, kicking things off by pointing out that different groups often have different, and even opposing interests. That you can’t just tackle racism and patriarchy alone, as you risk denying the validity of the other.
I don’t know where to begin with this. It’s fairly obvious that people have many interests, they may be economic, job-related, reflect religious values, or current health needs, environmental passions, etc. Did we need a lens to tell us this?
It’s not immediate obvious how exactly WOC and white women (or black men) have opposing interests, in general. Admittedly, I have a hard time suspending the skepticism I promised to suspend here: this is very essentializing, simple, and ignores individual interests.
It also conflates ignoring an issue with reproducing it. It may be the case, e.g., tackling carbon emissions in a certain way that lowers living standards in communities can affect women. This is part of how complex problems work. Were social researchers in 1990 out of Idiocracy?
The reader is left with a burning desire to know how to actually manage an issue (e.g.,how can a feminist interrogate race, class, disability, etc)? Again, what does this mean? It reads like word salad from a high school essay, desperately making a sensible point about complexity
Crenshaw goes on for paragraphs making a big deal out of her inability to obtain data held by the LAPD. Someone told her the stats might be misused to reinforce stereotypes, and all that. Honestly, this sounds like a made-up “anonymous source” in a student newspaper.
Notice you can do this with anything. Even if you’re a white man. You have a problem, maybe not very educated, can’t get complete solutions, data is hard to come by, local resources don’t solve all of your problems, etc. Is there a point here worth 20,000 citations?
Crenshaw goes on to cite someone who said black men aren’t policing black women enough, i.e., communities of color *need* patriarchy (did Crenshaw really nutpick?). Obviously, this is stupid, but the whole essay is such anecdotes & examples you can apply to anything.
On this theme, WOC are likely to not call police due to community ethics of intervention, or that in Asian circles family honor is a priority, something harmful to women seeking support. I don’t deny these cultural differences. Does/Did anyone?
It’s unfortunate, but people who have never heard of intersectionality are aware too. Notice that the paradigm is setup to maximally victimize WOC, when of course black men may be victims of police violence, Asian men may be restricted in their “roles” due to culture, etc.
So, it’s some poorly cited stories, cherry picked anecdotes and observations by Crenshaw. Who cares, right? The impact of this "scholarship" cannot be downplayed. 20k citations! It's all over the social sciences and elsewhere.
It has been described by Crenshaw as an urgently needed “frame” to even see how a WOC facing problems should even be cared about
A “major paradigm” of research in women’s studies, and a “theoretical” approach lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/nc…
A “major paradigm” of research in women’s studies, and a “theoretical” approach lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/nc…
So, back to the question..why is criticizing this model so annoying to Social Justice twitter? It's not a very good paper, let alone a useful "theory," but even if it were it's clearly a pretty simple one. Generally this kind of paper would be ignored or iterated upon.
So, how did we go from some anecdotes about minorites in battered shelters to "if your feminism isn't intersectional, it's bullshit." To be fair to Crenshaw, she hasn't said the more extreme stuff, but she hasn't fought it and many of these conclusions emerge as a consequence.
To conclude, again, I am skeptical intersectionality provides anything (intellectually or practically) of use, and what it gets right is self-evident and known well before Crenshaw, even if legal loopholes or problems with organization did and still exist. It's just really bad.
The simple answer is that intersectionality is not a serious intellectual item, but exactly what it is sold as: a lens. It's a way of viewing the world (essentially, an ideology), just as people see God's plan in a death or a new promotion. People defend lens' more than ideas.
