This abstract is summarized by IPR from the original journal article published in the University of Chicago Legal Forum.
In this seminal work, Kimberle Crenshaw introduces the concept of “intersectionality,” the intersection and interconnectedness of identities, such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.
Crenshaw focused on three legal cases that dealt with the issues of both racial discrimination and sex discrimination: DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, Moore v. Hughes Helicopter, Inc., and Payne v. Travenol. In each of these cases, courts did not allow Black female plaintiffs to allege discrimination on the basis of both race and gender. Crenshaw argued that this narrow perspective of discrimination posed “conceptual limitations” of “single-issue analyses.” In these particular cases, the concept of intersectionality posits that black women are both black and female, and thus subject to discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and possibly a combination of the two.
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Citation:
Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989). “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989: Iss. 1, Article 8.
Available at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
