August is Intersectionality Awareness Month. This is a time to recognize and appreciate all the different ways our cultural identities are in conversation with each other. We’re not just one thing: each of us possesses a variety of associations and backgrounds. From our sexuality to our race, our class background to our gender, and additional signifiers beyond, they all play an important role in how we are perceived and treated in society.
While intersectionality is an important concept, for many people it’s a relatively new one. Don’t be intimidated: while intersectionality is a nuanced idea, it isn’t complicated to grasp. We spoke with Rio Salado’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Council to gain some insights on what intersectionality is and why it matters.
What Is Intersectionality?
Coined in 1989 by professor Kimberle Crenshaw, intersectionality is a term used to describe how race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics (including disabilities) intersect and overlap with each other.
“We all have different identities, whether it’s sex, gender, class, race,” said Reina Ferrufino, Rio Salado's Executive Officer of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. “And how these identities interplay and interconnect with each other can play a structural role in putting someone in a more disadvantageous position. That’s not to say that these identities bring with them deficits, or are lacking, but rather that structurally, systemically, in society our lived experiences will be different.”
A large part of intersectionality revolves around the structural perspective Ferrufino is referring to. While our culture espouses the idea of equality, the reality is that the political, legal, educational, corporate, and social structures we inhabit can sometimes serve the needs of others differently based on their identities.
“Intersectionality is simply about how certain aspects of who you are will increase your access to the good things or your exposure to the bad things in life,” Crenshaw said in an interview.
Oftentimes it’s not even directly the result of conscious bias or a “bad actor” working within the system; it is that the system itself, after decades or centuries of working a certain way, has created obstacles that are easily surmountable by one privileged group while posing a challenge for another. Consider a building that isn’t handicap accessible because it’s never “had” to be before, or a school environment that’s exclusively dealt with heteronormative/cisgender students for its entire existence but now has LGBTQ students in its community. “But this is how we’ve always done things” can be just as much of a stumbling block to progress as outright discrimination.
This is where privilege plays an important role. Just as who we are can pose challenges to how we move in certain environments, having privilege smooths the way for us and gives us a kind of “home court” advantage. Someone from a wealthy family, for example, could have access to tutors and expensive test prep courses that can help them excel at standardized tests in a way that someone from a less fortunate background without that head-start wouldn’t be able to. A student with a diverse background at a predominantly white school may find themselves the subject of unfair scrutiny from disciplinarians and administrators and ostracized socially in ways that their white peers would not be. This is one way to think of privilege: who has less friction moving through space versus who has more.
“It’s interesting teaching students and trying to help them understand their multiple identities and how that plays into their lives,” said Rio Salado Administrative Associate Coordinator Jeanine Bessette. “You’d have some white males who would be like ‘I’m not privileged, I’m poor,’ who would struggle with the identity that gave them privilege but not recognizing that they have that privilege in the first place because they see themselves as lower class.”
As a philosophy, intersectionality strives to address these potential blind spots- that we can be disadvantaged in some aspects of life while in a place of power in others.
“There's a quote about intersectionality that says none of us can advance unless the weakest of us- the most vulnerable of us- can advance," said Student Services Specialist Dortrecia Adelis. Adelis emphasized that being too self-centered, too “I, I, I” runs counter to the spirit of intersectionality, which is all about the need for empathy.
"If I'm a cis white male and I'm not impacted by Roe vV. Wade, then it's easy for me to separate myself from the needs of women and women-presenting people who need that protection,” Adelis said.
Intersectionality asks us to imagine what it’s like to move through the world as other people, and challenges us to find ways to make that process more equitable for them. It isn’t about making you feel bad for having privilege; it’s about working to create a world where everyone has that grace and ease in every environment.
Article by Austin Brietta