When thinking about social inequalities, it is useful to conceptualize race alongside other characteristics. Intersectionality is the observation that one’s class, race, sexuality, age, and ability can all define and complicate experiences. The concept of intersectionality can be traced back to pre–Civil War America, when Sojourner Truth made her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, addressing the exclusion of Black women from the fight for women’s rights. However, the term intersectionality was officially coined by critical race theorist and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) in the context of discussing Black feminism. Crenshaw argued that the experience of being a Black woman could not be understood in independent terms of either being Black or being a woman; instead, it needed to include interactions between the identities, which often reinforce one another. Intersectionality discredits the notion that one single aspect of identity—race, for example—can capture the multidimensional nature of people’s experiences of oppression. In other words, intersectionality emphasizes the ways in which identities pertaining to features such as race, gender, and class interact to impact people’s lives.
Anthropologist Faye Harrison, coeditor of African-American Pioneers in Anthropology (1999), has done extensive work on intersectionality. She argues that “race is always lived in class- and gender-specific ways” (Harrison 1995, 63). For instance, the lived experience of a woman of color will be different from that of a White woman. Even though they both experience oppression from patriarchal systems, a woman of color has the added intersection of race, impacted by her identity as a woman.
Much of the work on intersectionality has come out of a critique of the original feminist movement, which sometimes generalized women’s experiences as monolithic (Hill Collins 2000; A. Y. Davis 1981; McCall 2005; Sacks 1989). Feminist and women’s studies scholar Chandra Mohanty (1984) criticized the White-middle-class-based approach of previous feminist authors, arguing not only that women of color don’t need White women to save them but that their experiences are vastly different. By incorporating race with gender and class, feminist scholars have illustrated how experiences of race are dynamic.
In the collection of studies of race, class, and gender that occurred around the turn of the 21st century, anthropologist Leith Mullings (2002) developed the concept of the Sojourner syndrome to capture the interlocking ways in which race, class, gender, and resistance to oppression shape Black women’s bodies and biology. The Sojourner syndrome emphasizes that race, class, and gender are not necessarily multiplied to mean more oppression, but they change the ways people experience oppression. In the Harlem Birthright Project, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study racial disparities in health, Mullings uses the Sojourner syndrome to argue that Black women, because of intersecting structural inequalities, are forced to do more work than either their White female or Black male counterparts, which increases their stress levels and negatively impacts their health.
Another way intersectional identities can compound oppression is captured by the term misogynoir. Misogyny is the socialized prejudice against women and feminine characteristics. Misogynoir, a term coined by queer Black feminist Moya Bailey, describes the anti-Black racist misogyny that Black women specifically experience. Misogynoir is the intersection of the systems of sexism and racism experienced by Black women. More recently, Bailey has written about Black women’s digital resistance to misogynoir on YouTube, Facebook, and other online platforms (2021).
In addition to creating challenges to the status quo, intersectionality can also inspire creative opportunities for new perspectives and new role models. On January 20, 2021, former senator Kamala Harris was inaugurated as the 49th vice president of the United States. Not only is she the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in US history, but her ethnic and racial background makes her the first Black American and the first Asian American person to hold this office. When she broke these “glass ceilings” (barriers to promotion that often affect women and members of minority groups), she was celebrated as a role model for many. There is even an unofficial Twitter fan group that calls itself “The #Khive Movement” as well as other pro-Harris groups inspired by her example (e.g., Mamas for Momala). Her supporters frequently cite her background as an inspiring triumph that allows for new voices representing diverse groups in our society.
Overall, the Biden administration has pledged to have “the most diverse cabinet in American history” (see the “Biden Diversity Tracker”). On October 28, 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Sara Minkara as the US special advisor on international disability rights. In this foreign policy role, Minkara, who lost her eyesight at the age of seven, will promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities, again representing diverse voices of historically underrepresented groups.
Profiles in Anthropology
Dr. Yolanda T. Moses 1946–
Personal History: Yolanda Moses was born in Washington, DC, but spent most of her childhood in Southern California. An active participant in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, she was inspired to pursue a doctoral program in anthropology after meeting Margaret Mead.
Area of Anthropology: Dr. Moses is currently professor of anthropology and associate vice chancellor for diversity, excellence, and equity at the University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on the origins of social inequalities, relying on both comparative ethnographic and survey methods. She has examined gender and class disparities in the Caribbean, East Africa, and the United States. Dr. Moses’s most recent research has focused on issues of diversity and change in universities and colleges in the United States, India, Europe, and South Africa.
Accomplishments in the Field: Dr. Moses has served as president of the American Anthropological Association (1995–1997), the City University of New York’s City College of New York (1993–1999), and the American Association for Higher Education (2000–2003). She received the Donna Shavlik Award for leadership and mentoring of women from the American Council on Education in 2007 and the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association in 2015.
Importance of Her Work: Dr. Moses has received numerous grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment of the Humanities. These grants have been awarded for projects examining the experiences of faculty who are women of color, questions of leadership and diversity in higher education, and, more broadly, race and human variation. She is a coauthor of Race: Are We So Different? and was influential in the RACE Project, a national public education project on race and human variation sponsored by the American Anthropological Association.
The content of this course has been taken from the free Anthropology textbook by Openstax