PROF ANTHONY MARCOS

Intersectionality, a term brought to existence by Kimberly Crenshaw (1989), is a considerably new way to view social identities and discrimination. It is the interconnection of various personal characteristics like gender, age, race, ethnicity, social status and more, mostly to marginalize or oppress people. One good example is the inequality that black women from low socioeconomic status suffer when they try to get a job but because of their identity it is almost impossible. Also Hispanic young men are seen as uneducated, or criminals. Another major example is Chrenshaw’s (2016) argument about violence towards black women in her TED talk called “The urgency of intersectionality”. She explains how black women’s situation of violence is not being published or known as much as black men’s situation because they are not as important as men in society. Intersectionality could be the reason of many injustices in the workplace, public spaces, and society in general, but people are not aware of this problem. And for a problem to be solved, it has to be recognized first. It is more common for people to say they base their judgment in one specific identity like only race or age or level of education, but they don’t realize or recognize that it is more complex than that; and that they are actually judging a person for multiple characteristics at the same time. In this investigation, I decided to use “Will recognizing the presence of intersectionality reduce inequality in society?” as my research question.

Literature Review

Different Approaches to Intersectionality

As I previously mentioned, intersectionality is the overlapping of identities used to create some type of discrimination or judgment. But it is important to mention that most of the time people focus more or just in one of the identities not only because of ignorance or lack of honesty but because it is the most prominent one. For example in one study mentioned in the reading “An Intersectional Analysis of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender (LGBT) People’s Evaluation of Anti-Queer Violence”, the author explains that the violence that the LGBT community people suffer is not just because of their sexuality but because of their gender but they are not aware of this. They are not “doing” right their gender; but still most people think the discrimination towards that community is just because of their sexuality. The action of not noticing all the reasons behind the discriminant act can make it harder for the LGBT community to fight against it.

Wrong Approaches

At some level, inequality perpetrators are not only sexists, or homophobic people or people who believe in patriarchy. Feminists, and anti-racists can also be considered perpetrators of inequality because indirectly they are only focusing in one issue instead of looking at the bigger picture. Why haven’t I heard the term Intersectionalist? I am not saying that being a feminist or an anti racist is wrong but if people keep approaching inequality from one perspective only, it will never end.