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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
How can we hope to understand social inequality without considering race, class, and gender in tandem? How do they interact with other categories such as sexuality, citizenship, and ableism? How does an inclusive analysis of domination and privilege move us closer to solutions touching the lives of diverse populations?
In this updated edition of her popular introduction, Mary Romero presents intersectionality as a core facet of the sociological imagination. One-dimensional approaches are no longer acceptable: we must examine all systems of oppression simultaneously, and how they integrate and work with or against each other to shape life experiences. Recognizing the dynamics of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, Romero shows how social inequality is maintained or minimized in various social settings and interactions. The new edition is updated with the latest literature and theoretical insights, as well as addressing contemporary political issues and conservative backlash, from immigrant detention and abortion restrictions to attacks on Critical Race Theory.
Offering an overview of scholarly and activist tradition in the development of intersectionality as a lens to enrich our understandings of social life, this introductory text will be an invaluable and welcome resource for all students of sociology.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Series Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Detailed Contents
Preface
Introduction
1 Identifying Intersectionality
The Rubik’s Cube Metaphor
Intersectional Analysis of the Inequalities in Parenting and Childhood
Examining Parenting through an Intersectional Paradigm
Childcare for Working Parents
Parenting, Choosing Schools, and Socialization
Discussion questions
Recognizing Institutional Practices at Work
Discussion questions
State–Market–Family and Institutional Practices Shaping Family Structures
Discussion questions
Intersectional Complexities of Parenting during the Global Pandemic
Discussion questions
Summary
2 Where Does Intersectionality Come From?
Coining the Term
Early Conceptualizations of Intersectionality
Feminists in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s
Discussion questions
Women of Color Sociologists’ Theorizing of Dynamics of Power
Discussion questions
Social Constructionism
Discussion questions
Situating Knowledges
Discussion questions
Main Points
The Intersectionality Wars
Why Intersectionality Matters
3 Intersectionality in Everyday Campus Life
Discussion questions
Everyday Life Experiences of Black Deaf Women Students
Interactions with Low-Wage Employees
Discussion questions
Summary
4 Intersectionality and Social Identities: Examining Gender
Intersectionality and the Construction of Femininity and Womanhood
Historical Intersections: Domesticity under Slavery, Conquest, and Colonialism
Current Structures and Media Representations
Colorism
Discussion questions
Gender and Intersectionalities of Sexuality
Discussion question
Intersectionality and Masculinity
Gender Intersecting with Race and Class
Masculinity and Sports
Masculinity and Employment
Discussion questions
Masculinity and Sexuality
Discussion question
Summary
5 Exploring Interlocking Systems of Oppression and Privilege
Undocuqueer Intersectionality
Citizen Status, Immigration Law, and Intersectionality
Immigration Laws
Discussion questions
Immigration Policing, Surveillance, and Intersectionality
Discussion questions
The Significance of Intersecting Social Identities in Immigrant Organizing
Summary
6 Intersectional Approaches to Social Issues: The Wealth Gap, Reproduction, the Care Crisis, and Black Lives Matter
The Wealth Gap
Historical Beginnings of the Wealth Gap
Housing & Wealth Accumulation
Discussion questions
Seeking Intersectional Solutions
Reproduction as a Social Issue
History of Reproduction in the US
Reproduction Justice
Discussion Questions
The Caregiving Social Issue
Limitations to One-Dimensional Perspectives
Discussion questions
Intersectional Solutions to the Structural Issue of Caregiving
Black Lives Matter
Conclusion: Intersectionality and Social Justice
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Series Title
Short Introductions series
Nicholas Abercrombie,
Sociology
Michael Bury,
Health and Illness
Maurie J. Cohen,
Sustainability
Raewyn Connell,
Gender 4th edition
Hartley Dean,
Social Policy 3rd edition
Lena Dominelli,
Introducing Social Work
Jonathan Gray and Amanda D. Lotz,
Television Studies 2nd edition
Jeffrey Haynes,
Development Studies
Stuart Henry, with Lindsay M. Howard,
Social Deviance 2nd edition
Daniel Herbert, Amanda D. Lotz and Aswin Punathambekar,
Media Industry Studies
Ronald L. Mize,
Latina/o Studies
Chris Rojek,
Cultural Studies
Mary Romero,
Introducing Intersectionality 2nd edition
Karen Wells,
Childhood Studies
Introducing Intersectionality
2nd Edition
Mary Romero
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Mary Romero 2025
The right of Mary Romero to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First edition first published in 2018 by Polity Press
This second edition first published in 2025 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5882-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5883-4 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024934814
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Detailed Contents
Preface
Introduction
1 Identifying Intersectionality
The Rubik’s Cube Metaphor
Intersectional Analysis of the Inequalities in Parenting and Childhood
Examining Parenting through an Intersectional Paradigm
Childcare for Working Parents
Parenting, Choosing Schools, and Socialization
Recognizing Institutional Practices at Work
State–Market–Family and Institutional Practices Shaping Family Structures
Intersectional Complexities of Parenting during the Global Pandemic
Summary
2 Where Does Intersectionality Come From
Coining the Term
Early Conceptualizations of Intersectionality
Feminists in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s
Women of Color Sociologists’ Theorizing of Dynamics of Power
Social Constructionism
Situating Knowledges
Main Points
The Intersectionality Wars
Why Intersectionality Matters
3 Intersectionality in Everyday Campus Life
Everyday Life Experiences of Black Deaf Women Students
Interactions with Low-Wage Employees
Summary
4 Intersectionality and Social Identities: Examining Gender
Intersectionality and the Construction of Femininity and Womanhood
Gender and Intersectionalities of Sexuality
Intersectionality and Masculinity
Masculinity and Sexuality
Summary
5 Exploring Interlocking Systems of Oppression and Privilege
Undocuqueer Intersectionality
Citizen Status, Immigration Law, and Intersectionality
Immigration Policing, Surveillance, and Intersectionality
The Significance of Intersecting Social Identities in Immigrant Organizing
Summary
6 Intersectional Approaches to Social Issues: The Wealth Gap, Reproduction, the Care Crisis, and Black Lives Matter
The Wealth Gap
Seeking Intersectional Solutions
Reproduction as a Social Issue
The Caregiving Social Issue
Limitations to One-Dimensional Perspectives
Intersectional Solutions to the Structural Issue of Caregiving
Black Lives Matter
Conclusion: Intersectionality and Social Justice
References
Index
Preface
During the interim of the first to the second edition, intersectionality and Critical Race Theory (CRT) have gone from being a specific set of methodological and theoretical underpinnings in the academic disciplines of law and the social sciences to being a politicized battleground in the popular press, social media, and elections. Those on the right have been emboldened by Republican messages and the cult-like MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) followers of Donald Trump, who is himself involved in several trials for violating secrecy provisions and vote tampering, and has already been convicted of sexual assault and tax evasion. There are ongoing trials, and convictions, of people in the mob who broke into Congress on January 6, 2021, attacked police, and attempted to prevent a congressional vote on the 2020 election.
Today there is a hostile intellectual climate seldom experienced in the United States, at least since the days of McCarthy and the witch hunts. Both online and in person, individuals are being targeted and threatened for their political beliefs. The current right wing discredits intersectionality and Critical Race Theory as specific instances of what they call “woke” agendas and “cultural Marxism.” Zionists from a range of political persuasions have claimed intersectionality is antisemitic (Puar 2023). Propaganda has led people to believe CRT is being taught in grade school. Faculty have been singled out for what they teach and publish. Faculty, students, politicians, protesters, and activists have been “doxed,” meaning their photographs, personal addresses, and phone numbers, and names of family members, have been circulated on social media and in some cases on billboards (Wilson 2023). Faculty have also been attacked physically. A physical attack on a gay faculty member happened on the campus of Arizona State University where I taught for 25 years (Quinn 2023). Simultaneously, there has been an explosion of hatred and hate crimes against LGBTQ persons, people of color, immigrants, and members of non-Christian religions. As the Israel–Gaza War broke out, a 71-year-old landlord in Illinois attacked his Palestinian Muslim tenants, critically wounding the mother and stabbing to death her six-year-old son (Diaz et al. 2023). Despite the Black Lives Matter protests, African Americans continue to be assaulted and killed by police in numbers far exceeding their proportion of the US population.
It is not just in the US that xenophobia, intolerance, and hatred of the “other” are increasing. Hate crimes are increasing globally. Migrants and asylum seekers from Latin America, Africa, and South Asia are on the move, seeking to escape climate change, political violence, and war. In Australia, a proposal to recognize Indigenous people in the constitution was rejected by a substantial margin (Zhou 2023). The UK enacted a law to bar people from seeking asylum if they arrive in small boats (Syal & Stacy 2023). It has also threatened to send refugees to Rwanda, no matter what country they hail from (Adam 2023). Anti-immigrant protests occur in Eastern and Southern Europe; France has barred the wearing of abayas in school (Goksedef 2023).
Attacks on people perceived to be different are not limited to higher education or activists. State bans have been levied against specific books in public and school libraries. Resources used by primary school teachers with frameworks that are inclusive of marginalized groups, particularly those written by or about members of the LGBTQ communities and people of color, and about the history of the United States that “might make students uncomfortable,” have been banned as well (Lieberman et al. 2017). Two pillars of civil rights in the United States have been removed by the Supreme Court: Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed various practices prevalent in states with histories of denying Black people the vote, was voided. Gerrymandered districts, poll taxes, and other impediments to voting rights were implemented almost immediately. The Supreme Court recently also voided “affirmative action” policies which had sought to increase student diversity on campus and hire faculty from marginalized groups. University projects perceived as promoting inclusivity, multiculturalism, or diversity have lost public funding – especially in states with conservative majorities. “Wokeness” was a term created to acknowledge social inequalities such as racism, sexism, and LBGTQ discrimination. It has been turned upside down and used as a weapon by right-wing politicians who claim to be silenced and canceled by the ideology. They argue wokeness is an attempt to delegitimize US history and its institutions.
The backlash occurred with the rise of authoritarian leaders. Accompanying the right-wing politics was the normalization of white supremacy, which lessened the inhibitions some might have had in acting upon hatred of feminists, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ, and the disabled. This backlash was stoked by Trumpism, which legitimated “protectionism, isolationism mingled with militaristic bluster,” science-denial claims of fake news in response to evidence-based facts, anti-immigration sentiment, police brutality, and racist, sexist, and homophobic activism (Murib 2020: 295). The Covid pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 became a flash point of cultural warfare. The Trump administration fueled hate crimes aimed at Asians by referring to Covid as the “Chinese virus” (Rogers et al. 2020). Wearing masks to protect against the virus became a badge of political identity. Trump’s speeches advocated police brutality and violence against political opponents; he urged police officers to use force when dealing with peaceful protesters (ABC News 2017). Following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, tear gas and rubber projectiles were used more frequently to disperse protesters, including the photo op at St. John’s Church in Washington, DC, that Trump staged after he had demanded governors deploy the National Guard against the peaceful demonstrators police had cleared (Colvin & Superville 2020). He encouraged the use of police in addressing the homelessness problem (Levin 2019) and called for the FBI to investigate Black protesters as “black identity extremists” (Fearnow 2019). Not just Trump supporters, but Congress and the highest courts in the land have discredited CRT and intersectional analyses of the historical and structural roots of domination and subordination. Understanding human systems theory is seen as a threat.
Simple mechanical systems and cybernetic systems are taught in specialized disciplines – engineering and computer science. Social systems theories such as colonialism, Marxism, Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality are to be banned. Even the sociological understanding of systems put forth by classical theorists such as Durkheim, Weber, and Talcott Parsons is minimized. This served to re-normalize racism, sexism, homophobia, and inequality. Critics, judges, and politicians misrepresent structural frameworks as anti-white and anti-democratic. Conservatives, as well as many liberals, argue that only a color-blind society can resolve past racial discrimination. Frequently, the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, and Kamala Harris as the 49th vice president of the United States, are hailed as evidence of the end of racial inequality. Facts that color-blind approaches do not address are the legacies of white supremacy and patriarchy that are deeply embedded in the political, economic, and social structure of the US.
Attacks are largely fueled by intentional misconceptions distorting intersectional theory and methods as inherently pitting people of color against white people and women against men. Political conservatism argues that intersectionality places people of color and non-heterosexual people in privileged positions, receiving special treatment and embracing themselves as oppressed and as victims. Many conservatives view intersectionality as not only naming a hierarchy of oppression but viewing white straight cisgender men as offensive. For instance, Andrew Sullivan (2017) argued intersectionality was like a religion that:
posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained – Through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., “check your privilege,” and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay.
Misunderstanding intersectionality as focusing on issues of identity and representation led Sullivan to assume the term to have an inherently divisive nature. However, the concept isn’t against anyone; it provides both theories and methodologies for a comprehensive/inclusive analysis of the structural, historical, and systemic features maintaining discrimination and inequality in the face of attempts at social change.
Two years of Covid exacerbated social and economic disruption and changes in everyday activities; it exposed social inequalities, and the ways different families, communities, and nation states were impacted. Interruptions occurred in how we work, play, learn, and interact with others. It did not take intersectional theory for many Americans to became aware of the lack of affordable healthcare, the absence of a living wage for all workers, high rent costs, costly childcare, consequences of the gender wage gap, and employment without sick pay, vacation, or savings. Working parents experienced a range of challenges in addressing childcare, schooling, and remote learning, making visible differential public resources in various communities. The domination and oppression of patriarchy exposed the occupational segregation in the labor force: the downturn in the labor market hit female-dominated sectors such as service, leisure, and hospitality much harder than male-dominated sectors such as construction.
During this period, the signs of our environmental crisis became more visible in the form of fires, floods, hurricanes, excessive cold and heat waves, and climate refugees. Unlike previous pandemics and environmental disasters, crises in the 2020s impacted the global north as well as the rest of the world. While the global north may have more resources to respond, these conditions hit families, communities, and nations around the world regardless of class, race, gender, sexuality, age, citizenship, or physical abilities. The ways in which individuals and communities intersected along structural inequalities shaped the intensity of suffering, struggles, and challenges. That comprehension is what CRT and intersectional research methods study. It is precisely because of these worsening social problems that CRT and intersectional understandings are so desperately needed.
Introduction
Intersectionality’s focus on social inequality has its roots and development in social justice research and struggle. As an activist project, intersectionality provides analytical tools for framing social justice issues in such a way as to expose how social exclusion or privilege occurs differently in various social positions, and it does this by focusing on the interaction of multiple systems of oppression. It is important to emphasize, however, that the concept is not just about poverty and those of lower socio-economic status. Intersectionality also helps us to understand privilege, riches, and access to higher education. It is a useful concept for understanding what the media have been calling the “1 percent.” Access to inherited wealth, admission to Ivy Leagues (especially as a legacy student), and social networks of upward mobility form just as much “an intersection” as the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) and the father-and-son construction union or plumbing business.
In the early 1980s, the phrase “race, class, and gender” was popularly referred to as the “holy trinity” in the social sciences; a growing number of researchers in the sociology of race and gender called attention to the explanatory power gained by analyzing interactions among these three systems of oppression and privilege. Research demonstrated that the inclusion of systems of power and social location were central to understanding everyday social interactions between individuals in society. Black feminists were at the vanguard of developing this new approach which challenged older theories that analyzed only one social category, for instance gender, without acknowledging that the experience of gender is not the same for a white woman as it is for a Black woman or a woman of color. In studying class inequality, intersectionality insisted that both gender and race power relations were instrumental in comprehending the dynamics of class oppression and privilege. Race, class, and gender had long been treated as variables in sociological research. Intersectionality criticized the notion that these were simply variables to be controlled for. It also criticized the emphasis on only one of these power systems, without considering the other two, as “essentialist.”
Clearly, neither racism, sexism, nor classism in the US can be fully explained by, for example, only analyzing the circumstances of elderly married poor Black women in the rural South. Treating the experience of this group as representative of all Black people, or all women, or all poor people is an essentialist view. Critical race scholars contributed to the understanding of systems of class oppression by documenting the ways in which race had always been a primary division in law, economics, and education in the US – and all other multicultural countries with histories of colonialism, conquest, and immigration. Thus, neither class nor gender dynamics can be explained without figuring out the impact that racial differences have on oppression and/or privilege that individuals and communities experience. Without considering the interaction of systems of oppression and privilege, one might assume that racism, sexism, or classism is the same experience regardless of your position in society. As social science came to recognize the different ways members of society experience oppression and privilege, it became important to explain how multiple systems of power interact in different times and locations.
In the past few decades, an increasing number of sociologists have come to accept that an intersectional approach is the key to understanding how inequality, privilege, and oppression work. More sociologists came to recognize the limitations of one-dimensional approaches to social inequality. Class alone does not explain all aspects of poverty or housing segregation. Gender alone cannot account for wage disparities and occupation segregation. Race by itself does not provide a complete understanding of health disparities or college retention rates. Intersectionality, as an intellectual project, delves deeper into the nuances of social equality by pushing researchers to analyze the various manifestations of inequality. The holy trinity has been complicated by additional power systems: sexuality, ableism, ethnicity, citizenship and age play important roles in social identity and economic status – their reproduction and maintenance.
Among the social sciences, sociology has been a leader in developing the concept of intersectionality, both in theory and in research methods. Sociologists began using intersectionality to frame teaching as well as research addressing social inequality. For instance, growing numbers of scholars are contributing to disability studies by examining the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Sociologists specializing in the sociology of immigration are incorporating race and gender, to understand how racism has shaped immigration legislation and law enforcement. Research in the sociology of family includes the intersection of systems of inequality – sexuality and citizenship, alongside race, class, and gender. While intersectional approaches in sociology are gaining wider acceptance, not all fields of study embrace the concept or consider that only focusing on one category is an essentialist approach to the sociological imagination. Many sociologists embracing intersectionality are engaged in conversation with interdisciplinary programs and committed to social justice research.
The word “intersectionality” is frequently used as a noun describing inclusivity in social justice movements, organizations, and campaigns. In student services and human resources, the word appears alongside “diversity,” “multicultural,” “tolerance,” and “difference.” However, “intersectionality” has a particular meaning and use in sociology. I developed this book as an invitation to engage students and inform them about the significance of intersectionality as a concept to help a sociological imagination. As C. Wright Mills explained, the sociological imagination is the power to connect private troubles with public issues. In each of our lives, thinking about the interactions of race, social class, and gender in everyday life and in the political and economic arena does exactly that. My hope is that this book stimulates students’ curiosity about the many complexities of systems of privilege and oppression we encounter daily.
To begin, I will introduce intersectionality by drawing from experiences we are all familiar with – parenting and childhood. While not all of us are parents, we do recognize the ways our own childhood may not have always reflected the family life depicted in sitcoms or experienced by our friends. What happens when we attempt to plan programs aimed at children, but we do not recognize diversity? What limitations are there to providing childcare and other assistance to parents if we assume that all families are the same and have the same needs? Why do some parents and children always seem to fit in, while others always appear as misfits?
Chapter 1 introduces intersectionality by examining the complexities of the interaction of race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and age in the diversity found in parenting and childhood. The discussion of parents and children sheds light on why an intersectional approach is significant and what we miss in attempts to capture universal truths in sociology. I introduce how systems of power are apparent through social policies and the institutional practices in the law, education, and economy that oppress or privilege certain types of sexuality, citizenship status, class, and gender positions. Examining differences in parenting during the pandemic illustrates the significance of intersectionality in understanding the impact of institutional structures maintaining systems of inequality. Subsequent chapters break down the major components of intersectionality, social identity, and interlocking systems of oppression, and apply the perspective to everyday life and social issues. However, before tackling these topics, I turn to the question, “Where does intersectionality come from?”
Chapter 2 traces the critiques of one-dimensional approaches to explaining social inequality. Black feminist scholars and activists writing in the 1970s and 1980s called attention to the way they were excluded from the Black Power Movement, which primarily defined race from the position of Black working-class males, and a Feminist Movement that defined gender primarily from the position of white middle-class women. Scholars traced the roots of race, class, and gender intersectionality to Black women’s writing by Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, and Anna Julia Cooper as early as the 1830s. Early writing and speeches contained a critique of political platforms that did not articulate their social position at the intersection of all three systems of inequality – gender, race, and class. This chapter chronicles the major contributions to the development of intersectionality within sociology, which also highlights why certain concepts emerged as scholars aimed to understand social inequality. Most importantly, the concept “intersectionality” was born from activism and social justice struggles such as the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements. Scholars joined with these to develop frameworks that incorporated marginalized voices. I include an overview of the “intersectionality wars” involving the use and definition of the concept as it has become mainstreamed into various disciplines.
I then explore ways of using intersectionality in a sociological approach to everyday life. Chapter 3 focuses on everyday life experiences on campus. I illustrate the complexities of lived experiences through the narratives of deaf African American college students, and working-class women, predominantly women of color, employed as janitors. I draw from Reshawna Chapple’s (2012) and Becky Petitt’s (2008) dissertations to analyze how the intersectionality of everyday life functions on university campuses. Both scholars’ ethnographies capture experiences of everyday life that usually go unnoticed and unacknowledged. Chapple’s and Petitt’s research identifies social practices and rituals experienced by Black deaf college women and women custodians to demonstrate the ways in which systems of social inequality are reproduced and maintained.
Social identities are the key aspect of mapping an intersectionality perspective. A visual way of conceptualizing intersectionality is by imagining a multidimensional graph with axes of gender, race, class, citizenship, ableness, age, sexualities, and the like. These characteristics are part of our identity and everyday experiences. Even if one doesn’t want to be identified in this way, it is often impossible to control how others see you. Moreover, these identities are not fixed but fluid: which ones are central at any moment depends on the time and setting. How family members see you is different from how you are perceived by classmates, fellow workers, teachers, or managers. Thus, in a suburban high school class where all the students are white and the same age and social class, gender or sexual identity are more likely to be the central elements identifying your alliances. Similarly, in a mixed crowd protesting about civil rights, age, race, and social class may be very important axes.
To further illustrate the interaction of systems of oppression and privilege on identity, I will focus on gender identities (which we do not experience apart from our class, age, sexuality, or ableness). Chapter 4 provides a framework for understanding why a young masculine middle-class Black man’s gender is not socially constructed in the same way as that of a young poor homeless white man. While both may share a heterosexual masculine identity, when confronted by police in the inner city investigating a robbery, the social construction of their male identity is likely to place the Black male in harm’s way. However, entering a business office, the Black middle-class male is more likely to gain entrance without any disturbance because his social class is primary. This chapter provides the tools for analyzing these experiences and recognizing power structures intersecting and shifting as we move from one social setting or one point in time to another. By examining gender through an intersectional lens, I will show the ways that one identity may be salient in one social setting and another in a different setting; and at the same time, multiple identities are experienced simultaneously. This chapter prepares us to return attention to a more comprehensive overview of systems of oppression and privilege that were briefly presented in chapter 1.
The question posed in chapter 5 is: “How are systems of oppression and privilege interlocked?” To answer that question, I focus on immigration and the social construction of citizenship. Examining the history of immigration legislation in the US makes evident how citizenship is socially constructed. It is important to recognize that citizenship status is complicated. Having a birthright to citizenship, becoming a naturalized citizen, having the right to live and work in the country but without full citizenship rights, or being undocumented with no rights – these different citizenship statuses are linked to power systems interacting with forms of racial, class, gender, and sexual denomination and disability. Examining the legal history of citizenship and immigration in the US makes apparent the interconnection between systems of white supremacy and the complexity of systems of oppression surrounding citizenship, such as nationality, sexuality, gender, and age. For example, there was a time when Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Greeks were not considered “white,” and Blacks were considered three-fifths of a citizen. Examining the policing of citizenship by laws, the state, and other citizens will illustrate the practices and rituals used to produce and maintain privilege and oppression.
Chapter 6 further explores the type of sociological imagination that intersectionality brings to the study of social interaction, institutions, and society by analyzing social issues. How does intersectionality examine social issues differently from one-dimensional approaches that consider each social identity as a variable to be controlled for, or simply add race and gender together rather than all the complex multiple identities of lived experience? Why is this perspective important in understanding social issues? I approach the answers by using contemporary social issues: the wealth gap, abortion, the care crisis, and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement. One might assume the wealth gap to be solely a class issue. However, an intersectional approach illuminates ways in which social class alone does not explain the wealth gap between rich and poor. Analysis needs to consider the history of gender, race, and citizenship that determined property rights and inheritance laws. An intersectional approach to abortion expands the issue to incorporate a larger reproduction framework that includes the choice to have or not to have children, and the right to parent children. Without these options, “abortion as a choice” remains an exclusive approach to the issue. I then explore the care crisis which recent sociological literature tends to present as a relatively new social issue concerning families in the last two decades. However, an intersectional perspective demonstrates that issues currently classified as “the care crisis” date to an era before middle-class white women entered the labor force, and these issues were exacerbated during Covid. I end this chapter discussing the Black Lives Matter Movement and its use of intersectionality.
The final chapter summarizes important points of intersectionality and highlights the significance of an intersectional sociological imagination in searching for solutions to social inequality.
It is important to note that “gender,” “race,” and “class” – as well as many other terms we will refer to in this book, such as “sexuality” and “social justice” – are themselves not fixed concepts. They do not have universal, undifferentiated meanings, and much sociological work involves breaking these ideas down to explore what they mean in different settings as social constructions. For instance, the sociology of gender teaches us that it is simplistic to treat gender as a crude categorization of “male” or “female.” Scholars of race have shown that racial categories do not exist in “nature,” but are social identities assigned to individuals and groups with real outcomes in their life experiences and opportunities. There is a long history of sociological work which tries to define what “class” is and how we measure it: is it about income, is it about tastes and lifestyle, etc.? And the same is true for many of the terms used in this book. This book does not explore each individual concept but what it means to put these categories together – but do bear in mind throughout that each of these social categories is fluid, contested, and open to debate.
My goal in writing this book is to introduce intersectionality to students beginning their journey into the field of sociology. I also hope to inspire our future scholars and activists to use an intersectional approach in their research on social inequalities and strategies for building social justice coalitions.
I am indebted to the scholars cited in this work for leading the way with their scholarship. Early in my career, I was fortunate to have many conversations with Judith Rollins, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, and Myra Marx Ferree, all of whom helped me further develop my intersectional work. I gained many insights on intersectional approaches during my involvement with LatCrit from 1998 to 2009 and I appreciate the many law professors who shared their work and commented on my law review article. My conceptualization of the Rubik’s cube developed from LatCrit’s programmatic innovation of “rotating centers” and “shifting bottoms.” I thank Enobong Hannah Branch and Light Carruyo for inviting me to be a discussant for a panel on Intersectionality at the 2009 American Sociological Association annual meeting. This began my work with Jonathan Skerrett, who has been a tremendous and patient editor to work with. Along the journey to writing the first edition, Zulema Valdez invited me to co-edit a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies on “Intersectionality and Entrepreneurship.” The project pushed me to read new literature and consider new ways scholars used the concept and the reshaping of their method and analysis. Thanks, Zulema, for the invitation to collaborate. Reshawna Chapple and Becky Petitt, your intersectional analyses of higher education are inspiring! I am grateful to Aldon Morris, Matthew Hughey, Patricia Lengermann, and Gillian Niebrugge for their scholarship, which helped reclaim the early history of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Anna Julia Cooper’s activist scholarship that began our sociological understanding of interlocking systems of oppression. I thank Eric Margolis for his encouragement and support, especially his willingness to postpone holiday and summer vacations so I could devote more time to research and writing. I appreciate his careful reading and suggestions that greatly improved the final project. He enriches my daily life.
1Identifying Intersectionality
In 1992, Ms. Foundation launched their project “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” as an effort to counter the impact of sexism, sex discrimination, and gendered occupational segregation. Planned activities aimed to build young girls’ self-esteem, expose them to male-dominated professions, encourage them to enter highly paid and prestigious fields, and boost girls’ self-confidence by exposing them to women employed in nontraditional professions. In 2003, the Ms. Foundation incorporated boys into their educational program “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day,” which occurs on the fourth Thursday in April in the US and around November 7 in Canada. By 2007, the program became a separate foundation and has since made efforts to be more inclusive, by incorporating children living in residential programs or shelters, and has expanded partners to include both corporations and organizations devoted to children.
Originally, the foundation designed the program to enrich the educational experience of children by exposing them “to what a parent or mentor in their lives does during the workday” (http://daughtersandsonstowork.org). For sheltered children of the well-to-do, the world of work is often a hidden and mysterious realm – one that keeps their mothers and fathers working late into the evening, or demanding overnight travel. However, for girls and boys whose parents are among the women and men laboring in the low-paid service sector or the underground economy, going to work with mom and dad is more likely an everyday experience and one that will probably lower self-confidence, reduce expectations, and damage self-esteem.
Some mothers and fathers have a long history of taking their children to work – sponsored not by the Ms. Foundation but by low wages and the lack of after-school care. This was immediately evident to me in my research on the children of domestic workers. One interviewee from this research project, Olivia, recounted going to work with her mother as a small child. Her mother worked as a live-in maid but, eventually, she negotiated room and board for weekend work and did paid day-work as a housecleaner throughout the gated community her employers resided in. Olivia’s childhood memories of going to work with her mother contain stories of learning rules, which she had to do quickly.
My mother took me to work with her. After a while, I started to realize that I was being taken every day to somebody else’s house. Everybody’s house had different rules. My mother says that she constantly had to watch me. She tried to get me to sit still, and I’d be really depressed, and I’d cry, or I wanted to go see things. She didn’t want me to touch anything. She was afraid that I was going to break something. The first thing that I learned was “No touch. No touch.” “Don’t touch. Don’t touch.” “Don’t touch this. Don’t touch that.” I told everybody, “Don’t touch.”
I interviewed other adult children of domestic workers who recalled going to work with their mothers during the summer and holidays when school was not in session. Sometimes they accompanied their mothers in lieu of staying home alone, but, many times, they went to work alongside them. Sometimes their mothers’ employers recruited their sons to do yard work and their daughters to babysit. However, like other immigrants and parents of color employed in minimum-wage dead-end jobs, their mothers did not want to make their employment attractive to their children, nor did they want their children to be ashamed that their parent(s) worked hard to make ends meet. Immigrant Mexican fathers were employed as landscapers, construction workers, underground miners, or shop mechanics working around toxic chemicals, in male-dominated occupations that offer higher wages than most female-dominated occupations but that can be extremely dangerous jobs. Fathers do not want their daughters working under hazardous conditions and frequently encourage their sons not to follow in their footsteps.
As in the stories I collected in my interviews, there are boys and girls in cities across the United States who wait at the end of the service counter until their moms finish their shift at cleaners’, restaurants, and beauty salons. In immigrant and refugee neighborhoods, girls and boys too young for work permits may help their parents doing piecework in their homes; they work as food vendors in the evening and on weekends, or wait for their mothers in sweatshops, garment factories, or nail salons at the end of the school day. Often these same children serve as important interpreters for their parents, negotiating working conditions and pay with mono-English-speaking employers or clients (Park 2005). In tobacco-growing states in the US (HRW 2014) and corn-producing areas in western Quebec, Canada (Kielburger & Kielburger 2011), children as young as 12 and 13 years accompany their parents to the farms during the summer to work the fields, just as they did generations ago.
Children working in agriculture were exempted from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Since 2021, companies have turned to migrant children to fill their labor shortage, resulting in children falling asleep in class, missing school, and being seriously injured when working in dangerous conditions. During a ten-month period between 2022 and 2023, the Department of Labor investigated 765 child labor cases involving 4,474 children under 14 working at numerous companies – including the Packers Sanitation Services Inc. slaughterhouse in Nebraska, McDonald’s franchises in Louisiana and Texas, and factories in Alabama contracted with Hyundai and Kia – deboning chicken sold at Whole Foods, and packaging cereal at Hearthside Food Solutions in Michigan. Rather than eliminating the practice of child labor, over 10 states have introduced or passed bills weakening child labor laws, which includes paying youth employees less than the state’s minimum wage, extending work hours for minors, removing restrictions against hazardous work, and lowering the age for food and liquor service (Goodkind 2023). Most of these working children are the accompanied minors migrating to the United States from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
Even in 1992, celebrating a “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” made sense in the US if we assumed that the experiences of boy and girl children and their parents are universal, and only gender shapes and influences their childhood. However, assumptions around universal experiences of childhood and parenthood ignore the ways in which class, race, and citizenship privilege some, and disadvantage other families, neighborhoods, schools, and workers. Only by denying these significant differences can one expect all girls and their parents to experience “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” and related activities similarly. Only by assuming that parents share the same gender-segregated working conditions, income, and status in their occupations can an educational program aimed at exposing children to career opportunities advocate that children accompany their mothers and fathers to work. From its inception, the program focused on sex stratification and sex discrimination in the labor force and assumed a universal experience of girlhood and parenthood. Fundamentally, the “Take Our Daughter [or even our sons] to Work” program is flawed by the assumptions not only that parents taking their daughters to work will expose them to higher-paying male-dominated careers, but that gender socialization is the major or sole source of social inequality that limits children’s aspirations, ignoring class privilege, immigrant status, or disability. While occupational segregation by gender continues to be a salient characteristic of the labor force, there are other forms of oppression intersecting in paid employment.
I will examine parenting and childhood to identify the insights intersectionality provides into the everyday activities and experiences people are familiar with. One place to begin is by identifying the barriers, obstacles, and disadvantages some parents confront while caring for their children. The ability to fulfill society’s social expectations is largely constrained or enhanced by parents’ economic, educational, and other social positions, which in turn determine access to privilege or the degree of oppression they encounter.
The Rubik’s Cube Metaphor
A helpful metaphor we might use is that of a Rubik’s cube, which has six faces each covered by nine stickers. This visual of six solid colors – white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow – arranged in various combinations in which each face turns independently to mix up the colors, helps in conceptualizing different intersections. A Rubik’s cube may be useful to conceptualize the rotating mix of identities and shifting systems of domination which result in certain social identities being more salient than others at a given time and place. This image builds on LatCrit’s programming method for conferences that uses the concepts of “rotating centers” and “shifting bottoms” to recognize marginalized groups in different times and over time when analyzing social problems, in order to expose and combat interlocking systems of injustice. Depending on the circumstances, outsider communities differ as centers rotate and bottoms shift (Valdes & Bender 2021). A Rubik’s cube serves to illustrate these rotating centers and shifting bottoms to conceptualize intersectionality as we conduct sociological analysis. While the metaphor does not fully capture the fluidity of systems of domination, it may be useful in visualizing multiple layers of domination and the intersection of systems of oppression.
The Rubik’s cube might also serve to demonstrate ways in which sociologists use an intersectional approach to analyze the social dynamics of multiple identities interacting with societies’ social hierarchies. Of course, actual lived experience is not static, but our analysis requires us to identify social identities and the interaction between different systems of inequality. We begin by recognizing each system of inequality as represented by one of the different colors (though the intersectional Rubik’s cube is not necessarily limited to six systems). Once we assign a color to race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and abilities, we can begin to analyze the intersection of different dimensions of an individual’s personhood. They are all social identities that increase privilege or disadvantages and position one’s access to opportunities. Our positions in various social settings determine the systems of inequality we face and the intersection of individuals’ statuses.
Begin to consider the combinations of race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and age. What obstacles do gay middle-class Latino fathers face in volunteering at their daughters’ first-grade activities? How does this differ from the situation of a heterosexual working poor white mother who is single? What are the different ways in which parents experience their daughters’ school’s expectation that they volunteer? How do systems of inequality privilege some parents and disadvantage others? Intersectional analysis involves identifying social identities or social hierarchies and examining the systems of inequality that dominate particular social settings and social relationships. Power relationships in settings differ between individuals and groups, and at times privilege race, but, in another setting, class privilege is more pronounced. Intersectional analysis requires uncovering power, privilege, and opportunity structures and examining their link to social identities.
Intersectional Analysis of the Inequalities in Parenting and Childhood
A single-axis analysis of inequalities experienced by parents or children only examines one category of a person’s identity and results in a limited, one-dimensional, and incomplete understanding of inequality. It is impossible to understand the effects of gender, age, and class as the sum of “-isms.” For example, we do not understand the constraints a poor grandmother might face in caring for her grandchildren by adding up sexism, ageism, and classism (i.e., sex + age + class). This grandmother experiences all aspects of her identity simultaneously, rather than separate dimensions summed up. One-dimensional approaches have the consequence of creating specific aspects of personhood as the norm, such as being a middle-class grandmother. These approaches erase important differences in the experiences of being a grandmother that occur when class interacts with gender and age. Consider, too, the experiences of 12-year-old children in school. Obviously, not all 12-year-old children experience the same personal rewards in school. White middle-class 12-year-olds may relate better to traditional textbooks based on their experiences of family life. Some working-class immigrant children of color may not relate to textbooks that describe a nuclear family with a father who leaves to work dressed in a suit carrying a briefcase. If these immigrant children are from a non-English-speaking country, it will be difficult for them to confront teachers speaking only English. It is essential to untangle the effects of many dimensions interacting simultaneously. Children who share the same social class but not the same religion, race, or sexual orientation are not going to have experiences identical to those of other children the same age. The different social identities people have in society are complex, but intersectionality provides a standpoint for making sociological sense of broad categories of people.
Race, class, gender, and sexuality differences have real consequences in people’s lived experiences and life chances for acquiring access to healthy food, quality education, excellent healthcare, and housing that provides a safe environment. If parents can afford to live in affluent neighborhoods, they are likely to have local grocery stores that carry fresh fruits and vegetables. Others live in what are termed “food deserts” – frequently, they shop at the corner store that does not have fresh produce. Increasingly, the working poor are isolated in suburbs, lack personal vehicles, and are faced with inadequate public transportation to get to shopping centers to purchase food. Affluent-neighborhood schools receive more funding, hire teachers that are more experienced, have the latest computer and science technology to offer students a college-preparatory curriculum and provide course materials that confirm their white privilege. Upper- and middle-class parents can access good health and dental care and do not experience the inefficiencies in the healthcare system. The working poor find access limited to overcrowded emergency rooms. This is true for many poor workers who are white. Populations of the working poor who are Asian, Muslim, African American, or Latino/a face additional discriminatory treatment based on phenotype or dress.
Understanding parenting and childhood through the lens of intersectionality presents a more nuanced understanding of social inequalities. Intersectionality makes visible dynamics of privilege and subordination in changing circumstances. For instance, an African American father driving his daughter to a private school before heading to his office on Wall Street will probably not encounter the sexism, racism, or classism that an African American mother faces while taking her daughter on the subway to an inner-city charter school before heading to her job as a dockworker. Race alone cannot explain their differences. Gender alone cannot describe their circumstances, nor can class. Being an upper-middle-class Black father is not the same racial experience as being a working-class Black mother. Similarly, their daughters’ experiences, if explained by only one or two of their social identities, are not complete. In addition, they share other social positions, such as being a citizen and non-disabled, among others.
Now, consider focusing on sexuality and intersectionality. Gay fathers, lesbian mothers, or transgender parents experience a legal system that questions or denies their rights as parents, particularly custody or joint custody rights when divorcing straight partners. Low-income LGBTQ parents are frequently discriminated against when they participate in school activities designed for white middle-class heterosexual parents. If one or both parents are men or women of color, these social identities position them differently on the axis of privilege or subordination and they would also be concerned about protecting their children from homophobic forms of racism they may experience when engaging with family members, classmates, teachers, and others. Forms of discrimination experienced in their neighborhoods, families, and workplace depend upon access to race, class, and gender or citizenship privileges.
Another example would be intersectionality and citizenship status. During periods of strong anti-immigrant sentiment, racialized Latino parents encounter frequent citizenship inspection and humiliation in front of their children as they attempt to participate in school activities. This is compounded in interaction with police officers and access to social services available to other families. Latino families who have been citizens for generations are frequently profiled as undocumented and treated with disrespect. Undocumented immigrant parents with US-born children risk their livelihood and deportation if they participate in school activities or even drive their children to school. Thus, US-born children of undocumented parents may never experience a family trip or vacation because their parents avoid being in public together out of fear of deportation – if one parent was deported, the other must remain to care for their family (Lopez et al. 2022). Jobs for poor working-class males, such as landscaping and construction, expose them more to law enforcement than their wives, who may be working in the homes of the middle and upper-middle classes as domestics and nannies. Gay and lesbian immigrants of color are likely to confront more barriers in reuniting with deported partners or sponsoring their relatives. The migrant children working in factories and construction mentioned earlier in the chapter are exploited as underage undocumented cheap labor.
The intersectionality of class, gender, race, and citizenship differences shapes people’s experiences every day, and limits and constrains the choices they can make. It is a form of psychological reductionism to limit discussions to individual choices; individual choice blurs social structures and hierarchies of power which privilege or subordinate parents in different ways. While individuals do have agency, social institutions constrain and limit their choices. Identifying and examining these institutions reveal the ways that social identities interact, and the privileges and oppressions within which choices are made. Seeing parenting, or even childhood, as a universal activity overlooks the unequal circumstances individuals face as family members living within different intersections of religion, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender, and disability. In the next section, I will explore the significance of intersectionality in identifying the range of differences found in research on parenting.
Examining Parenting through an Intersectional Paradigm
Parenting is an activity mothers and fathers engage in with their children that is generally recognized as “universal,” but research shows that the specific types of tasks they carry out are frequently not at all identical. In the US, mothers are the chief caretaker, even when employed outside the home; and fathers are most commonly the main breadwinners. Mothers are more likely to be the parent who makes sure the children bathe and provides them with clean clothes, as well as the parent who stays up at night caring for a sick child (Coltrane 2000; Gottzén 2011; Musick et al. 2016). Fathers frequently spend their time with their children playing (Segal 1990), tending to participate in fun time rather than the everyday tasks that involve feeding, cleaning, laundry, or shopping (DeVault 1991). Fathers do excel at assuming responsibility for their children’s sports (Gottzén & Kremer-Sadlik 2012; Knoester & Randolph 2019). However, parents further perform gender identities through their involvement with these sports – mothers tend to volunteer as team moms, and fathers as coaches or assistant coaches (Messner 2009). Coaching or supervising their sons and daughters in sports activities is a more public type of childcare than that of team moms. The increased popularity of “family values” further enhances gendered approaches to parenting. Here, men’s roles are perceived as those of protectors, providers, and leaders while women are caregivers – both roles are represented as natural, universal, and unchanging (Coltrane & Galt 2000). While gender goes a long way in explaining differences between mothers’ and fathers’ activities, intersectional perspectives offer a more complex and nuanced understanding of parenting.
What type of parenting occurs in families with only fathers? Think about the way parenting changes when not divided between mothers and fathers. Men in single-father households do not limit their interaction with their children but engage in all the gendered activities traditionally characterized as “mothering,” without the assistance of women (Doucet 2006). This finding suggests that “mothering” and “fathering” are gender performances and are not inherent characteristics of either men or women. Thus, gender performance appears to motivate the continuation of the traditional division of household labor between husbands and wives (Shelton 1992). However, traditional gendering roles in caretaking are far from a fixed experience. Interestingly, working-class fathers tend to take a more egalitarian approach to parenting than middle-class fathers (Shows & Gerstel 2009). There are increasing numbers of stay-at-home dads, which further challenges traditional gender roles (Chesley 2011; Collins 2017). However, recent research finds that both fathers and mothers increasingly spend more time with their children since the 1960s (Sayer et al. 2004; Doepke & Zilibotti 2019). In the case of race and ethnic differences, Latino fathers are more active with their children (Tamis-LeMonda et al. 2009; Leavell et al. 2012) and, in dual-wage families (where both mother and father are in paid employment), are more likely to do more household work (Pinto & Coltrane 2009). African American fathers of sons do more caregiving, visiting family and friends, and physical play than those with daughters (Leavell et al. 2012). African American fathers employed full-time do a larger portion of household labor than those who work part-time or are unemployed (Shelton & John 1993). The patterns are the same among white fathers.
Different systems of parenting interaction become visible when considering the intersection of sexuality. Gay and lesbian families may or may not engage in similar gender performances in parenting. The division of labor among gay couples with children tends to divide the primary housework from childrearing, which may be a form of “degendering parenting” (Silverstein et al. 2002; Tornello et al. 2015). Mothering and fathering outside heterosexual norms, gay men and lesbians are less likely to assign tasks rigidly and are more flexible in the division of labor, including childcare. Lesbian mothers who adopt children engage in more egalitarian practices than lesbian mothers who create biological families (Ciano-Boyce & Shelley-Sireci 2002). LGBT parents and families are more likely to engage in more gender-fluid socialization and less likely to impose gender conformity (Averett 2016; Rahilly 2022). Additional differences appear if you consider that gay and lesbian families do not generally share the same class privileges as heterosexual couples, which also shapes the options involved in making decisions about family roles. As men, gay fathers are likely to earn more than lesbian mothers, and thus have more options such as working fewer hours or hiring a nanny (Downing et al. 2012). White lesbian couples do not appear to exhibit different employment patterns, decision-making processes, parenting, or division of care and household work from white middle-class heterosexual couples (Biblarz & Savci 2010). However, Black lesbian couples tend to have different parenting roles if there is a biological mother (she is the one to do more housework and childcare and to have a greater role in decisions about raising the children). Nevertheless, couples do share the role of provider because they value financial independence (Moore 2008).
