Intersectionality And Class | Scoop News – Scoop.co.nz

Monday, 11 October 2021, 12:05 pmArticle: Fightback

By BRONWEN BEECHEY

The conceptof intersectionality originates from a 1989 article byKimberl Crenshaw, a law studies professor and one of thefounders of Critical Race Theory. While Critical Race Theory(CRT) has become one of the latest spectres haunting theright-wing in the US, it originated in the 1980s and 90samong a group of legal scholars, including Crenshaw, whotook issue with the liberal consensus that discriminationand racism in the law were irrational and that once theirrational distortions of bias were removed, the underlyinglegal and socioeconomic order would revert to a neutral,benign state of impersonally apportioned justice.Crenshaw and other CRT founders argued that racism was notan aberration that could be legislated out of existence,highlighting the continuing economic inequality betweenwhites and minorities, and the lack of minorityrepresentation in supposedly colour-blind institutionssuch as universities. Instead, Crenshaw wrote,discrimination continued due to the stubborn endurance ofthe structures of white dominance in other words, theAmerican legal and political system was inherentlyracist.

The concept of intersectionality came from theideas debated in CRT. Crenshaws 1989 article,Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A BlackFeminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, FeministTheory and Antiracist Politics, published in theUniversity of Chicago Legal Forum, centred on threelegal cases that dealt with issues of both racial and sexdiscrimination. Each case, Crenshaw argued, demonstrated thelimitations of a single-issue analysis of how the lawconsiders racism and sexism.

For example,DeGraffenreid v General Motors was a 1976 case wherefive black women sued General Motors over its senioritypolicy. General Motors never hired black women until 1964,and so when seniority-based layoffs occurred after arecession in the early 1970s, all of the black women werelaid off. The women argued that General Motors senioritypolicy was discriminatory on both racial and gender grounds.However, the court refused to consider the two categoriestogether, stating in the words of the judge that blackwomen could not be considered as a separate, protectedclass, as to do so would open up a Pandoras box ofminorities who would demand protection by thelaw.

Crenshaw argued that the 1976 case and othersignored the specific challenges facing black women as agroup. She wrote:

The point is thatBlack women can experience discrimination in any number ofways and that the contradiction arises from our assumptionsthat their claims of exclusion must be unidirectional.Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, comingand going in all four directions. Discrimination, liketraffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction,and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in anintersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from anynumber of directions and, sometimes, from all of them.Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in theintersection, her injury could result from sexdiscrimination or racediscrimination.

In a 2017 interview,Crenshaw said that Intersectionality is a lens throughwhich you can see where power comes and collides, where itinterlocks and intersects. Its not simply that theresa race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class orLBGTQ problem there. Many times, that framework erases whathappens to people who are subject to all of thesethings.

Intersectionality is also linked with thedevelopment of identity politics, a concept that was firstarticulated in a public statement by a black feminist socialwork, the Combahee River Collective. The statementhighlighted the need to develop a politics that wasanti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist,unlike those of black men. Itconcluded:

Our politics evolve from ahealthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our communitywhich allows us to continue our struggle and work. Thisfocusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the conceptof identity politics. We believe that the most profound andpotentially most radical politics come directly out of ourown identity, as opposed to working to end somebody elsesoppression.

Identity politics wascriticised by many on the left, on the basis that itencouraged an inward-looking focus that elevated differencesbetween activists and emphasised the importance of livedexperience over the development of solidarity betweendifferent groups. It was also criticised for creatinghierarchies of oppression where the more types ofoppression an individual suffered from, the higher theirstatus. Others pointed out that identity politics wasco-opted by the mainstream political parties, allowing themto present progressive legislation on womens rights andLGBT+ issues while continuing their austerity policiestoward workers and the poor. Intersectionality can be seen,at least in part, as a response to the limitations ofidentity politics, although the terms are sometimes usedinterchangeably.

The concept of intersectionality wasquickly picked up by other academics, who applied it toqueer theory, feminist legal theory and numerous studies onrace, gender and sexuality. Over time, it began to appearoutside academia. In 2015, intersectionality was addedto the Oxford English Dictionary, and shortly after the termbecame widely, though not always accurately, used inmainstream media. It quickly became associated with NorthAmerican feminist campaigns such as Me Too and the 2017Womens March on Washington. As a result,intersectionality was added to the vocabulary ofright-wingers as a term of abuse, along with politicalcorrectness, cancel culture and privilegechecking. It was variously described as a new castesystem, a conspiracy theory of victimisation, andrepresenting a form of feminism that puts a label on you.It tells you how oppressed you are. It tells you whatyoure allowed to say, what youre allowed tothink.

Interestingly, a number of conservativecommentators have acknowledged that intersectionality as anidea or legal concept is valid. Right-wing commentator BenShapiro, who has described intersectionality as reallydangerous, told Vox that the originalarticulation of the idea by Crenshaw is accurate and not aproblem The issue for conservatives is the application ofintersectionality beyond the academic sphere, where it isperceived as an attempt to invert an existing hierarchy ofoppression so that white, straight, cisgender men are on thebottom. In response, Crenshaw points out that her aim is notto replicate existing power dynamics but to remove thosepower dynamics altogether. She adds that There havealways been people, from the very beginning of the civilrights movement, who had denounced the creation of equalityrights on the grounds that it takes something away fromthem.

Less predictably, intersectionality has alsobeen criticised by left-wing and Marxist commentators. Thesecritiques are focused on the role of class, which isrecognised in intersectional theory as a form of oppression,but not given any more importance than other forms such asrace, gender or sexuality; whereas Marxism traditionallyviews class as the primary form of oppression. Some of thesearguments have been crudely reductionist, arguing that anydiscussion of race, gender and sexuality is a diversion fromthe class struggle. These arguments seem to assume that theworking class is composed primarily of white men, asituation that has not existed for at least the past 30years, if ever.

Other Marxist scholars, such asBarbara Foley, Eve Mitchell and Asad Haider, recognise theimportance of anti-racist, feminist and queer issues, butargue that these identities are largely a product ofcapitalist social relations. According toFoley:

...the ways in which raceand genderas modes of oppressionhave historically beenshaped by the division of labor can and should be understoodwithin the explanatory framework supplied by class analysis,which foregrounds the issue of exploitation, that is, of theprofits gained from the extraction of what Marx calledsurplus value from the labor of those who produce thethings that society needs.

EveMitchell describes intersectional theory as in part, aresponse to the marginalisation of women of colour in the1960s and 1970s feminist, Black Power, and other anti-racistorganisations. She states:

It isimportant to note that identity politics andintersectionality theorists are not wrong, but they areincomplete. Patriarchal and racialized social relations arematerial, concrete and real. So are the contradictionsbetween the particular and universal, and the appearance andessence. The solution must build upon these contradictionsand push on them...Embracing womanhood, organizing on thebasis of blackness, and building a specifically queerpolitics is an essential aspect of our liberation. It is thematerial starting point ofstruggle.

However, both Mitchell andHaider argue, the essential next step is to move beyondorganising around identity and towards an understanding thatsolidarity between all those oppressed by capitalism is theonly way to defeat it.

Other Marxist commentatorsargue that there is no incompatibility betweenintersectionality and Marxism. Sofa Saio Gradin, a queernon-binary Marxist, writes:

Radicalqueerness and anti-racism are not forms of identitypolitics; and class struggle is not free from questions ofidentity. All forms of social life are already coded byclass, race, gender and disability, so there are no forms ofpolitics or struggle that exist outside these structures ofsocial power. The claim that intersectional critiquesdistract from the real struggle or are divisive isbased on a fundamental misunderstanding of bothintersectionality and socialism: the question is not whetherthe two can be integrated, buthow.

In her 2020 book, Marxism andIntersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality underContemporary Capitalism, Ashley Bohrer also argues thata thorough analysis of capitalism requires insights andtools from both Marxist and intersectional traditions.She adds, in a recent interview:

Wecant understand race (in its gendered, sexualised,ability-laden senses) without understanding that the modernnotion of race was invented in a capitalist world, that weall experience race in a capitalist world. There is noseparating any of these categories from capitalism and thereis no separating capitalism from race, gender, sexuality,ability or nationality.

The role ofintersectionality in Aotearoa New Zealand is particularlyrelevant in a nation that Marxists describe as acolonial-settler state. Like Australia, Canada and theUnited States, Aotearoa New Zealand was settled by Europeansas part of an imperialist project, where the colonisingnation (England) displaced and often physically extinguishedthe indigenous population with the aim of seizing itsresources. Later waves of migration brought othernationalities in, particularly Pacific Islanders who wereused as a cheap labour force following the post-Second WorldWar boom. As a result, a large percentage of the workingclass in New Zealand (if not the majority) are Mori,Pasefika or other ethnicities such as Chinese or Indian.This has given class struggle an intersectional dimension.To give one example, the support of unions for theoccupation of Takaparawhau/Bastion Point in the 1970s wasinstrumental in ensuring that, even after the occupation wasviolently ended by police and army, construction was notable to proceed.

The effects of the current COVID-19pandemic in Aotearoa NZ also can be seen through anintersectional lens. The most affected community in the waveof the delta strain has been the Pasefika community. This isdue to several factors. Firstly, many of the essentialworkers who have been working through the lockdowns medical staff, retail workers, supply chain and transportworkers are Pasefika or Mori and therefore at greaterrisk. These workers are low paid and generally live insubstandard, overcrowded housing. It is also customary inPasefika and Mori cultures for elderly family members tobe cared for at home by relatives, meaning that COVID-19(particularly the Delta variant) spreads rapidly and affectsboth the old and the very young.

The importance of thechurch to the majority of Pasefika families has resulted insuper-spreader events at large church services, and somechurches have shared anti-vax conspiracy theories amongtheir followers. Historical memories of the Dawn Raids andracism has created an understandable distrust of government;and there are many in the community who have overstayed workvisas and are reluctant to go to vaccination or testingcentres (although there is no restriction on eligibility dueto immigration status).

Added to this is the chronicunderfunding of health services, particularly in SouthAuckland where the majority of Pacific peopleslive.

The low vaccination rate among Mori can alsobe explained by the legacy of colonialism, where Mori weredispossessed of their land and food sources, had theirlanguage and culture suppressed and lost thousands todiseases introduced by the settlers. Mori in rural areashave limited access to health services and transport.Disinformation about vaccines has also had an impact,feeding into general distrust of government and healthpolicies that have disadvantaged and discriminated againstMori in the past.

Taking an intersectional approachmeans supporting efforts by Mori and Pasefika communitiesto organise vaccination and testing at marae, churches andother sites where community members feel comfortable, and todevelop resources in their own languages to encouragevaccination and counter disinformation. It means supportingefforts by Mori and Pasefika to counter food insecurity.It means calling on the government to increase benefits andwages and build more public housing. And it means supportingthe fight against climate change, which in many areas isalready being led by Pasefika and Mori youth.

TheCOVID-19 pandemic is showing us that capitalism is preparedto sacrifice millions of lives to keep its profits coming.The majority of those lives are those of the poor and peopleof colour. At the same time, there have been countlessexamples of solidarity in responding to the pandemic. Thissolidarity can be built upon a basis of understanding thatdifferent people experience oppression in different ways, aswell as understanding the common cause of that oppression a system that considers certain lives to be expendableso that the rich can survive.

This was written forFightback's magazine issue on class. Subscribe to themagazine here.

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Intersectionality And Class | Scoop News - Scoop.co.nz