‘I saw the backlash coming’: civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw on America and race. She coined the term ‘intersectionality’ and helped to develop critical race theory, now her life’s work is under attack by Washington’s war on ‘woke’.
Posted by Eilemthxx
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>In legal terms, the problem came into focus when Crenshaw came across a 1976 case in which an African American woman was denied the ability to bring a discrimination claim against her employer on the grounds that the law could recognise race or gender, but not both at once. Her experience – specifically of being discriminated against as a Black woman – fell through the cracks and the case was thrown out of court. In 1989, Crenshaw identified this form of compound discrimination and gave it a name: intersectionality. Around the same time, she was part of a group of scholars developing what would become critical race theory, a broader attempt to understand how racism is a structural part of the legal system.
SS: I was unaware of the origins of the term itself, but now I see why CRT has focused much on the legal system specifically. The article highlights a lot of the blowback to Black and Women′s rights that had occured among institutions and individuals alike, including by black men.
I was in college during peak woke and I told anyone who would listen back then that this backlash was going to happen. It’s not even so much that I disagree with intersectionality, but by framing society as a zero sum struggle between racial and gender groups it in effect made racism rational from a self interest perspective which alienated the white moderates who still made up the largest voting block in the country.