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Cultural Appropriation
Intersectionality is a phrase coined by race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1980s to capture the fact that people in U.S. society are oppressed for multiple, often overlapping reasons. People can be oppressed because of their race, class, gender, or sexual orientation, as well as for countless other reasons. This means that a white, disabled man might be as poor as a black, non-heterosexual, able-bodied woman, but the forces in society that keep them poor are different. Like Crenshaw, Oluo thinks that all these sources of inequality need to be dismantled before social justice is achieved. In other words, the fight for social justice has to be intersectional: it has to consider the multifaceted ways in which people face oppression and have privilege relative to one another.
Intersectionality Quotes in So You Want to Talk About Race
The So You Want to Talk About Race quotes below are all either spoken by Intersectionality or refer to Intersectionality. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Introduction Quotes
As a black woman, race has always been a prominent part of my life. I have never been able to escape the fact that I am a black woman in a white supremacist country.
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Ijeoma Oluo (speaker)
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1
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Oluo’s punchy opening sentences of So You Want to Talk about Race set the tone for her argument and clue the reader in to several important claims that she will make as the book progresses. In phrasing her opening as such, Oluo informs the reader that she is both black and a woman: this already shows that her discussion about race is intersectional, meaning that it’s inherently tied to other aspects of her identity, like her gender (later, she will also reveal that she is able-bodied and queer). Thus, Oluo’s opening already implies that her argument will be intersectional, meaning that multiple aspects of her identity overlap and intertwine to determine the amount of privilege and oppression she faces in society.
Oluo also boldly asserts that she lives in a “white supremacist country.” From this, the reader learns that her concern isn’t so much with individuals but with a society and institutions that encourage people to privilege the white race over others. This is another core facet of Oluo’s argument. She consistently argues that the prevalence of white-privileging systems in U.S. society—for example, the media, education, the justice system, and politics—are the central vehicle of oppression in the U.S., and that they must be dismantled in order for social justice to be achieved.
Chapter 1 Quotes
What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor-even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.
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Chapter 5 Quotes
How do our social justice efforts so often fail to help the most vulnerable in our populations? This is primarily the result of unexamined privilege.
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When you are supposed to be fighting the evils of “the man” you don't want to realize that you've become “the man” within your own movement.
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Intersectionality Term Timeline in So You Want to Talk About Race
The timeline below shows where the term Intersectionality appears in So You Want to Talk About Race. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: What is intersectionality and why do I need it?
Oluo defines intersectionality as “the belief that our social justice movements must consider all of the intersections of...
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Race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 when addressing the unique oppressions faced by black women. Scholars subsequently expanded the...
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Oluo argues that intersectionality makes activism more complicated: it’s much harder to figure out the needs of a diverse...
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...fight oppression aim to improve society for all people. This means that they must embrace intersectionality to make sure they don’t oppress some people while fighting for the rights of others....
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...with. She then advises seeking out the perspectives of diverse groups of people with different intersectional needs. She also suggests taking stock of who’s writing the books and articles that champion...
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Oluo continues with some pointers for increasing attention to intersectionality in conversations. Most people don’t know what intersectionality is, and this might make them defensive....
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