I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Prophetic Christianity)

by Chanequa Walker-Barnes

In contrast, Crenshaw used the term “intersectionality” to describe how race and gender (and likewise, racism and sexism) uniquely interact to shape Black women’s identities, experiences, and needs. Intersectionality recognizes that the layers of our identities are neither discrete nor separable; they are fused. Every layer is raced; every layer is gendered; and so on. Again, using the mathematical equation, we might represent this in the following way: RacialGenderIdentity = Race + Gender + Race*Gender This is an oversimplification, but it demonstrates the idea that identity is not merely additive; it is also multiplicative. Indeed, it is even nonlinear (the statistics nerd within me really wants to add some quadratic functions to that equation). In other words, as an African American woman, I share some aspects of my experience with African American men and others with women of all races, but there are also unique experiences that are part of my Blackwomanness. This means that I am not only a target of racism and sexism; I am also a target of gendered racism and racialized sexism. Other layers of my identity—especially my class, sexuality, and nationality—further attenuate my experiences of oppression and privilege. Intersectionality’s core insight, then, is “that major axes of social divisions in a given society at a given time, for example, race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and age operate not as discrete and mutually exclusive entities, but build on each ot...