What is Intersectionality?

Kimberlé Crenshaw is a civil rights advocate, and professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, who coined the term intersectionality in a discussion about the additional or compact erasures black women experience in conversation concerning race and gender in politics. 

In this video, Crenshaw articulates the need for a prism of analysis that addresses the impact of erasure and marginalization of people whom ly at the intersections of marginalized social identities. In this video, Crenshaw explains that the overlap between their identities offers leads to additional problems in systems and structures of discrimination and can offer result in limited opportunities, higher exposures to violence, and death.

TO REFLECT ON

• What is intersectionality, and why is it important?