Living on the Crossroads: Why Intersectionality is Important to Me as a Black Woman
By: Kibe Bellege, IST, Tanzania.
Let’s get something clear. I am a Black woman. I am a pro-Black feminist. My experience as a Black person is inexplicable without talking about my experience as a woman. You cannot explain my experience as a woman without talking about my identity as a Black person. I am not either, and I do not lean into one identity more. These identities intersect, and you cannot separate them because it uniquely shapes how I deal with discrimination.
And that, folks, is what we call intersectionality. Intersectionality, which was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1990, is the understanding of how different social identities (race, gender, social class, etc.) intersect and create unique experiences of oppression. I learned this term around 2020, but over the course of this period, I have seen the increasing need for intersectionality to be more openly discussed in spaces. I truly believe that if we took the time to understand the unique ways oppression can manifest and attack groups in their own unique ways, we would be a step closer to achieving our goals.
One of the things that I have realised is how both of my communities, the pro-Black and feminist community, like to act as if they are fighting two separate battles, when in reality, they are both fighting towards a similar goal. The patriarchy and white supremacy are linked. With the patriarchy, it is very clear that the patriarchy does not accept all men to take positions of authority. If you are disabled, you will not be accepted. If you are poor, you do not get a seat at the table. If you are a man of color, don’t even think about it. It’s a similar thing with white supremacy, where it looks to have white people dominate, but if you are not the ideal (which would be rich, male, and cishet), you will also face the brunt of their harmful ideologies. Both of these frameworks work together to place a specific subset of the population on top: rich, cishet, Christian, conservative, white men. This shows the relationship that these frameworks have. So, if they are linked, and you are trying to break any of these frameworks, you cannot dismantle one of them without dismantling the other because of this relationship. This further implies that for feminist and pro-Black activists to reach their goals, they will need to work together to dismantle this. But there is an issue with this, one that, being a Black woman, is easy for me to see but not so easy for others.
If we are going to dismantle the oppressive structures that discriminate against us, we need to address the antiracist and sexist aspects of our own communities. And we can easily see the anti-racist and sexist aspects of these communities when we look at the treatment of Black women in these spaces. When we look at the pro-Black community, it becomes very clear how patriarchal these spaces tend to be. Most of the well-known apartheid leaders and civil rights leaders are male. Most of the biggest contributors to movements such as Black Consciousness, Black nationalism, and Pan-Africanism are male. Because of the patriarchy, women were often excluded from these spaces, meaning that they had little say in the foundation of these movements, even if Black women made massive contributions. When building up these movements, they are going to talk about issues that are important to them and their struggles. So, even if black women are always supporting them, the movements don’t always work to address the struggles that are unique to black women, such as gender-based violence in Black communities and the reactions surrounding this. And the same goes for the feminist community. Most well-known suffragists were white. They were also racist, excluded Black women from participating in marches, and did not care about garnering voting rights for women of color. Most suffragists did not care to understand the experience that black women and poor women had with the patriarchy, especially considering that they mainly came from middle-class and white backgrounds. Because of white supremacy, women of color were often excluded from these spaces, meaning that they had little say in the foundation of these movements, even if Black women were a part of this movement from day one. When they built the feminist movement, they, being white women, advocated for issues that they deemed important. And because the patriarchy harms Black women differently from how it harms white women, a lot of Black women felt as if the feminist movement did not benefit them. There is a drift between these communities, and this drift is evident when we look at the group that lies between the two (Black women). So, how do we solve this drift so that we can fight towards our goal?
Intersectionality. Because of the link that oppressive frameworks have with each other, it is clear that we cannot just attack them from one perspective. If we are keen on destroying these frameworks, we need to be able to learn from one another and come together to attack. And this can only happen if we engage in dialogues to talk about issues such as this and take accountability for the ways our own communities and our own beliefs have caused harm, even if it’s meant with good intent. This is not an attack on either of these communities! I love being a pro-Black feminist, and I will continue to educate myself and others on topics I find dear to me. But we cannot move forward without addressing the issues.
As always, because of the space allocated to this column, I could not really get into the nitty-gritty of this issue, but I strongly recommend that you go out and do research on your own to have a deep understanding of this issue.
Actual Work
The way we think about identity is so black and white when in reality, our experience with identity is shaped by various factors. This is the issue Kimberle Crenshaw saw in society. Being a Black woman, she recognized that our oppression is usually ignored in both feminist and pro-Black spaces, even if we offer a well-rounded perspective to these spaces. This is exactly why she created the term “intersectionality.” Intersectionality, which was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1990, is the understanding of how different social identities intersect and create unique experiences of oppression. Through understanding intersectionality, we can help to identify our problems and fight for the right causes.
The first thing we need to understand is that the patriarchy and white supremacy affect us in different ways. Even if the patriarchy targets all women, due to the link between the patriarchy and white supremacy, we are going to see white women and black women being oppressed in different ways. The same applies to the oppression that black men and black women face, and how they both differ due to the patriarchy. If we can understand this, we can understand how much we need to understand intersectionality, as it can help fix some key issues in both communities.
With both the feminist and pro-Black community, we see some voices usually lacking in these spaces: Black women’s voices. Consider this. Due to the intersecting identities white women and black men have, they have usually been at the forefront of these movements. The feminist movement has not had the best track record with advocating for all women’s rights, evident in the sidelining of women of color. Various pro-Black movements, whether it was the Civil Rights Movement or the fight against apartheid, still had the patriarchy deeply instilled in them, evident in the lack of leadership Black women were granted. When you build a movement and exclude the voices you were supposed to highlight within the movement, you fail to properly address all the ways your community gets attacked. That’s why, when the second wave of feminism hit, many women of color did not feel as if the issues targeted any of their problems with the patriarchy because the experiences that shaped the second wave were from white, middle-class women. That’s why Black women in pro-Black spaces are usually forced to sideline their oppression with the patriarchy to combat white supremacy first, even if the result would not change their situation. Through understanding these issues, we have identified the problem.
So what’s next? Dialogue. Discussion. We must listen to each other more often, especially listen to the voices that have been drowned out. By allowing ourselves to take the backseat and hear each other, we will learn and collaborate on the best solutions to fix the oppressive systems that hurt us all.
