Intersectionality, Race-Gender Subordination, and Education

Abstract

In this chapter, we unpack intersectionality as an analytical framework. First, we cite Black Lives Matter as an impetus for discussing intersectionality's current traction. Second, we review the genealogy of "intersectionality" beginning with Kimberlé Crenshaw's formulation, which brought a Black Studies provocation into legal discourse in order to challenge existing antidiscrimination doctrine and single-axis theorizing. The third, and most central, task of the chapter is our account of intersectionality's utility for social analysis. We examine some of the issues raised by the metaphor of the intersection and some of the debates surrounding the concept, such as the tension between fragmenting and universalizing perspectives mediated by the notion of "strategic essentialism." Fourth, we review how education researchers have explained race and gender subordination in education since Ladson-Billings and Tate's Teachers College Record article. We conclude with some remarks concerning future research on intersectionality. I n the summer of 2014, as accounts of brutal and unjustified police killings of Black people circulated across social media and mass media in the United States, a new social movement came to prominence (Freelon, McIlwain, & Clark, 2016). Black Lives Matter (BLM, also called the Movement for Black Lives) emerged from a July 2013 Twitter hashtag and became a mass movement in the wake of the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Like other American social movements that have arisen to protest group subordination, BLM 759071R REXXX10.

Feeling Race: Theorizing the Racial Economy of Emotions

“…Notwithstanding that thinking intersectionally “can be a distinct advantage when trying to understand how particular inequities are re/made in places,” the approach does not deter analysts from concentrating on the “primacy of racism” (or patriarchy or capitalism) (Gillborn 2015:283). RE may be perceived and experienced intersectionally, but the analytic “dynamism between interlocking social systems does not preclude beginning from racial analysis” (Harris and Leonardo 2018:16). The intersectional analysis of emotions is a productive development in the field, but as Bilge (2013) cautions, one must be vigilant about the “whitening of intersectionality.” In Bilge’s (2013:413) view, “race in intersectionality (work)” must be re-centered as this is “vital in the face of widespread practices that decenter race in tune with the hegemonic postracial thinking.” “Domesticating intersectionality” to gain academic acceptance violates what Crenshaw (1991), Collins (1990), Lorde (1984), and other pioneers of this approach intended: “intersectionality as a tool of analysis and resistance ” (Harris and Leonardo 2018:17; emphasis added).…”

Household wealth and adolescents' social-emotional functioning in schools

“…Second, as the US grapples with the racial/ethnic dimensions of the wealth divide (Taylor et al, 2011; Saez and Zucman 2016), we welcome further inquiry into social-emotional competencies through an intersectional analytical framework. Specifically, that framework would investigate complex interrelations among class/wealth, race/ethnicity, and multiple social identities as they affect educational outcomes (Bowleg, 2012;Harris and Leonardo, 2018).…”

“…We also acknowledge the class-reductive limitations of this tradition which tends to overlook complex intersections among race/ethnicity and social class(Harris and Leonardo, 2018;Yosso, 2005). Although our models include race, gender, English learner status, and disability status as covariates, the analyses may obscure the intersection of race and class as determinative of educational inequalities.…”

Addressing racial inequalities within schools: Exploring the potential of teacher education

“…Bigelow (), for example, finds that Islamophobia intersects with racial and ethnic discrimination in schools as she documents the injurious racialization of Somali students produced by racist and anti‐Muslim sentiments expressed by both students and teachers in schools. Intersectionality—another tenet of CRT—must be better incorporated in future research on microaggressions and in scholarship on educational subordination in general (Harris & Leonardo, ).…”