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Under Debates and Criticism section on Identity Politics page

Intersectional Critiques

In Kimberle Crenshaw’s journal Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color she recognizes that identity politics as a process brings people together based on a shared aspect of their identity. Crenshaw applauds identity politics for bringing African Americans (and other people of color), gays and lesbians, and other oppressed groups together in community and progress^[1] . However, Crenshaw also points out that frequently groups come together based on a shared political identity but then fail to examine differences among themselves within their own group: “The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend differences, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite—that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences.” ^[1]

Crenshaw proposes that identity politics are useful but that we must be aware of intersectionality and the role it plays in identity politics. Crenshaw first introduces the topic of intersectionality in her article Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. The concept of intersectionality serves to better understand that certain peoples may be oppressed based on more than one aspect of their identity and that salience of any particular identity is related to context. Nira Yuval-Davis speaks of identity politics in her journal Intersectionality and Feminist Politics and explains that “Identities are individual and collective narratives that answer the question ‘who am/are I/we?” ^[2]. She goes on to support Crenshaw’s critiques that while identity politics are useful, often times groups that come together based on shared discourses of identity politics ignore certain members of the group by failing to consider certain aspects of marginal members identities ^[2]. For example, Crenshaw argues that when society thinks “black”, they think black male, and when society thinks feminism, they think white woman. When considering black women, at least two aspects of their identity are the subject of oppression: their race and their gender. Therefore, due to the intersectional aspects of their own identity, black women may not feel “at home” in the black community nor in the feminist community because within each discourse, an aspect of their identity goes ignored. Crenshaw makes a critique of Black Feminism “because it sets forth a problematic consequence of the tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis…this tendency is perpetuated by a single-axis framework that is dominant in antidiscrimination law and that is also reflected in feminist theory and antiracist politics” ^[3] .

In her article Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color, Crenshaw provides the example of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy to expand on her point. Anita Hill came forward and accused Supreme Court Justice Nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual assault; Clarence Thomas would be the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court. Crenshaw argues that when Anita Hill came forward she was deemed anti-black in the movement against racism, and though she came forward on the feminist issue of rape, she was excluded because when considering feminism, it is the narrative of white middle-class women than prevails ^[1].  Crenshaw concludes that acknowledging intersecting categories when groups unite on the basis of identity politics is better than ignoring categories all together ^[1]. In other words, Crenshaw argues that people should continue to unite on the basis of shared political identities particularly in efforts to create narratives that might help oppressed groups but should also consider intersecting categories within these groups.

One example of a group that united on the basis of identity politics and succeeded at considering the intersectional nature of their movement, is the Combahee River Collective. The Combahee River Collective published their ‘Black Feminist Statement’ in 1977. In it, the black feminist group takes into account the group’s identity as being made up of multiple interlocking oppressions and form their politics around their sexual and racial identity as black women “to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression” ^[4] . In his journal “Identity Politics then and Now” Elin Diamond cites the Combahee River Collective as "one of the foundational documents of identity politics in the US” ^[5]  and as a protest against homophobia and sexism in the black liberation movement and racism in the feminist movement.

1.   ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e} Crenshaw, Kimberle (1991-01-01). "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color". Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–1299.doi:10.2307/1229039.

2.   ^ Jump up to:^a b Yuval-Davis, Nira (2006-08-01). "Intersectionality and Feminist Politics". European Journal of Women's Studies 13 (3): 193–209. doi:10.1177/1350506806065752. ISSN 1350-5068.

3.   Jump up^ Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics." University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (1989): 139-168.

4.   Jump up^ Collective, The Combahee River (2014-01-01). "A Black Feminist Statement". WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 42 (3): 271–280. doi:10.1353/wsq.2014.0052. ISSN 1934-1520.

5.   Jump up^ Diamond, Elin (2012-03-01). "Identity Politics Then and Now". Theatre Research International 37 (01): 64–67. doi:10.1017/S0307883311000770. ISSN 1474-0672.