Intersectionality Problems of Coloured Women - Essay Example

Crenshaw (1991) has shown in this article how the politicization of the women’s movement has changed the way violence against women could be understood (p.1241). This is explained by describing how offences like rape could be moved from the personal realm into the political (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1241). The process of politicization of the issues of marginalized groups, especially African Americans, and the women in this section of the society, is discussed here under the ideological framework of identity politics. The major conceptual issue that is being discussed is the contradiction between the two facts- race and gender being causes of discrimination and all the same being the basic premise for empowerment under identity politics. But this contradiction is addressed by taking the position that “social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of social empowerment and reconstruction” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1242). The major problem of identity politics is identified by the author (Crenshaw, 1991) as its tendency to ignore “intragroup differences” (p.1242). Violence against women is cited as an example of this and it is pointed out that “violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1242). One major lapse in feminist and race politics has been revealed here. It is shown that both these discourses happen in mutually exclusive realms whereas the social manifestations of both these identities in reality often overlap. With this preamble, the author (Crenshaw, 1991) has theoretically validated the identity of a new section, the coloured women, which can be called an intersectional identity (p.1243). Narrowing down the area of discussion into two instances of “male violence against women- battering and rape,” the author (Crenshaw, 1990) has attempted to show that “the experiences of women of colour are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism” (p.1243). In this discussion, the author (Crenshaw, 1991) also has drawn attention to how these experiences of coloured women are absent in the “discourses of …(mainstream)… feminism or anti-racism” (p.1243). But all the same, caution is invited on not to consider intersectionality as a “totalizing theory of identity” (Crenshaw, 1991, 1244). And the purpose of the work is delineated clearly as stressing the “multiple grounds of identity” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1245).

The essay is further designed as three sections in which, structural intersectionality, political intersectionality and representational intersectionality are respectively discussed. In the section on structural intersectionality, it is revealed that though the immediate cause of a violent incident against women might be gender domination, as in the case of battering, there might be other reasons as well, like the economic dependence of the woman on her husband, which is a class issue (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1245-1248). Similarly, the not-so-visible reason could be the citizenship of a woman, as in the case of immigrant women residing in shelter homes after being battered and thrown out by their husbands (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1249). From these examples and analysis, it is shown “how patterns of subordination intersect in women’s experience of domestic violence” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1249). In the instance of rape also, the author has elaborated similar examples on the same theoretical premise.

The political intersectionality of the problems of coloured women is discussed in the context that these women are located under two identity sections (race, and gender) which have some points of political conflict between them and this conflict causes new problems in the lives of coloured women (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1252). The logic of this argument is that “racism as experienced by people of colour who are of a particular gender-male- tends to determine the parameters of antiracist strategies just as sexism as experienced by women who are of a particular race-white- tends to ground the women’s movement” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1252). How both these phenomena sabotage the real empowerment of coloured women is explained through several examples.

The representational intersectionality is discussed in terms of the imagery of coloured women produced by a “confluence of prevalent narratives of race and gender” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1283). Three examples are used to show how this works- 1) The 2 Live Crew Controversy where the arrest of 2 Live Crew was prompted by culturally defined notions about violence and sexuality, 2) the selectivity involved in judging the performance of 2 Live Crew as obscene, as against the existing “mass-marketed sexual representations”, and 3) the imagery of black women that was created from this controversy, which was again prejudiced by the existing patterns of socio-cultural domination (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1283-1290). From the above inferences, it is finally concluded that by ignoring intersectionality, feminist and race theories become prone to the crime of power-prompted categorization and “vulgar constructionism” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1297). Hence the author (Crenshaw, 1991) has called for an approach in which “history and context determine the utility of identity politics” (p.1299). And it is hoped by the author (Crenshaw, 1991) that such an approach would help people who are trapped in their stereotypically defined identities to challenge them and renegotiate their positions within society more democratically. Read More