Merf. Thinking is Hard.intersectionality was not “invented” (if you will) as a way to understand “privilege.” It was created as a way to make varying communities visible *and create justice* accordingly.
in other words. rather than: a white man has more privilege than a black man or a white woman has more privilege than men of color and we know this because of intersectionality—
it is: in our community, we’ve decided that desegregation is the way to address in equality. but if we shift our lens to look at the needs of a black woman who is pregnant and poor—will desegregation help her? or does she need a different solution? Or a more complicated solution? like desegregation AND the creation of local economies that she can more easily survive in?
intersectionality at its *core* is about *justice*—and that focus on justice means that it is organically focusing on solutions through making the multiple needs of shifting communities visible—and recognizing that one person is a part of multiple communities all at the same time.
it existed as a critique of and a solution to almost every single leftist “movement” in the US—which almost universally focused on one single solution as the answer to injustice for all (think: ending patriarchy as the solution for feminists, desegregation as the solution for the black community, destroying capitalism as the solution for the white community, ending slavery as the solution for abolitionists, etc)
intersectionality at it’s *core* is one of the only movement based theories that recognizes that the US is something that can not be reformed. we need to build something new. and to build something new, we need to build something that has space to make the needs of all of our communities visible and *important*.
(Source: iinventedeverything, via crossedwires)
