The Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice at Hofstra University

When Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989, the term became an integral part of Black feminism. Crenshaw refers to intersectionality as “ the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women's employment. ” Of course, intersectionality doesn’t only apply to Black women. The word intersectionality was created to convey that no identity exists independent of itself, in relation to race. This means that intersectionality is clearly a race theory that explains how race affects the oppression of other marginalized identities an individual might have.   This concept ties into the idea of strategic essentialism first introduced by the Indian literary critic and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Strategic essentialism is a tactic employed by a minority group acting on their shared identity in the public area in the interests of unity during a struggle for equal rights. Because of strategic essentialism queer people ...