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All of the collaborators responsible for this guide are white. We benefit from the white supremacy and suppression maintained in publishing practices and academic values outlined in this guide. There are limits and hidden biases at work that stem from our privileges and perspectives. We have attempted to bring together relevant resources highlighting perspectives from scholars who are Black, Indigenous, non-Black People of Color (BIPOC), LGBT folks, people who have disabilities, and all marginalized genders. This is not an all-encompassing list of experiences. We welcome feedback and suggestions for the guide, particularly from the perspectives and experiences of people who experience this type of oppression and members of the GMU community.
And we would like to thank and acknowledge the University of Denver University Libraries for their disclaimer that guided us. https://libguides.du.edu/antiracist
Intersectionality is a way of understanding the ways social inequalities sometimes compound themselves and create obstacles that are often overlooked in conventional frameworks
The concept behind the term intersectionailty has been used by women of color movements for a long time.
Indigenous Feminism- “Indigenous feminism is an intersectional theory and practice of feminism that focuses on decolonization, Indigenous sovereignty, and human rights for Indigenous women and their families” -Jihan Gearon (artist, writer, activist)
Combahee River Collective- a group of Black lesbian socialist feminists formed in 1974. They originally coined the term “identity politics” as a way to talk about the intersections in their identities. Primary authors of the Combahee River Collective statement: Demita Frazier, Beverly Smith, and Barbara Smith.
Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in 1989 in her article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics” to talk about the difficulties within the law for talking about discrimination toward Black women. Up to this point, issues around race have historically focused on Black men while issues around gender have historically focused on White women .
In this video, Kimberlé Crenshaw discusses how she "began to use the term 'intersectionality' to deal with the fact that many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice."
Case, K. (2017). Intersectional Pedagogy: Complicating Identity and Social Justice. Routledge.
Delgado-Guerrero, M., Cherniack, M. A., & Gloria, A. M. (2014). Family away from home: Factors influencing undergraduate women of color’s decisions to join a cultural-specific sorority. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 7(1), 45-57.
Duran, A. (2019). Outsiders in a niche group: Using intersectionality to examine resilience for queer students of color. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Advance online publication.
Garvey, Jason C., Mobley, Steve D., Summerville, Kiara S., Moore, Gretchen T. (2019). Queer and Trans Students of Color: Navigating Identity Disclosure and College Contexts. Journal of Higher Education, 90(1), 150-178.
Miller, Ryan A. (2018). Toward Intersectional Identity Perspectives on Disability and LGBTQ Identities in Higher Education. Journal of College Student Development, 59(3), 327-346.
The Combahee River Collective Statement. United States, 2015. Web Archive. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
Gearon, Jihan. “Indigenous Feminism Is Our Culture (SSIR).” Stanford Social Innovation Review: Informing and Inspiring Leaders of Social Change, 11 Feb. 2021, ssir.org/articles/entry/indigenous_feminism_is_our_culture.
“Audre Lorde.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation.
“Lens of Systemic Oppression.” National Equity Project
Yoshino, Kenji. Covering : the Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2006. Print.
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