-: Two years down in the sociology PhD program,
and we all know what that means.
It's time for comprehensive exams.
That fun little exercise where we read 7,000 pages
in a very short amount of time,
remembering only the substantive bits,
and who said what to who when and in which contexts.
I am, broadly speaking, a scholar of inequality,
so I am trying to read as much
as humanly possible on inequality in education.
I am trying to read as much as humanly
possible on inequality in families.
I'm trying to read as much as humanly possible
on inequality and stratification in the workplace.
And then I get to this really cool category of reading.
You know, theories of inequality.
And for people, as scientists,
theories are those things that help us explain the world.
Ideally.
Maybe give us a little bit of an inkling
about what to expect.
And maybe even a little bit of predictive power.
And it is at this moment I feel compelled,
that is, I must say,
public service announcement, correlation is not causation.
(audience laughs)
Back to theories.
I come across this word intersectionality.
Anybody heard of it?
God, full house!
We have too!
So, I'm trying to figure out what it is
sociologists and social scientists mean
when we use this word inequality.
I learned that it was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, 1989.
And it's something about understanding
interlocking, overlapping systems
of oppression and discrimination,
and how these impact people differently
depending on where they are positioned.
So that is to say, black men and white men
don't have the same experience.
White men and white women don't have the same experience.
And white women and black women do not either.
I further read Patricia Hill Collins, 1990,
again calling us to look at how these systems
overlapped and intersect, and we should in fact
be moving those people at the margins,
those people with the least power, the least privilege,
positioned at all of these intersections
to the center of our research.
So that we may have a more accurate
understanding of systems of inequality,
of power, and of privilege.
Okay, 500 of those 7,000 pages done.
I think I've got a general idea.
Comprehensive exam day comes.
I sit in the computer lab with
some of my fellow grad students.
Type up nonstop everything I can possibly
pull out of my mind about stratification and inequality.
Two short breaks, five o'clock hits, the exam's over.
Done.
Check the box.
Onto the next thing.
You know.
The dissertation.
Totally manageable.
Small potatoes compared to the comprehensive exam.
This idea of intersectionality is still
sort of knocking around in my mind,
but I think it's on the exam.
It's done, it's over.
I don't need to be bothered with this idea
that seems to pop up sometimes in sociology.
Not important anymore.
I am, first and foremost, a scholar of social movements.
So, in trying to come up with
this research question for my dissertation
that I think is going to be so manageable,
I start looking at what activists and organizations
and social movements are doing today.
There's this thing that happened in January of this year
that in fact happened in January of 2017.
You all may have heard of it.
The Women's March?
Okay.
Thank you, thank you!
The organizers intentionally invoke this word,
intersectionality, to talk about the different
experiences that women are having.
And how it is crucial that we understand
how those experiences are different.
Okay.
I'm also paying attention to this
other movement that's happening.
You all may have heard of it.
The movement for Black lives?
Black Lives Matter organization,
part of their platform is centering trans women of color.
I'm also reading about this organization, BYP100.
It's a grassroots Black Lives Matter organization.
And they say that they are explicitly using
a Black, queer, feminist lens to understand
systems of oppression and discrimination.
Gosh, this sounds like intersectionality.
And then how about those Dreamers?
United we Dream is a national organization,
and part of their platform is explicitly talking about
how women who are immigrants are disproportionately
impacted by immigration policies.
And another one of their pillars is looking at
how LGBTQ immigrants are differentially
disproportionally impacted by policies.
Gosh, you all know what this sounds like by now, right?
Intersectionality.
So, I'm realizing, it's everywhere.
But what is it?
And this is where my story as a scientist,
of how I really feel like a scientist,
gets really interesting.
I decide that I have to delve into what this idea is.
I need to understand what it means.
I need to understand how researchers are doing it.
And for me, I begin to feel like a scientist
when I can challenge my discipline.
And I do mean my discipline.
When I can make an informed statement
about what I've read and what I've researched,
and sort of put out a call to my fellow scientists.
So.
Warning, blasphemy ahead.
Sociologists are not always as clear as they should be
when they use this word intersectionality.
Is it a framework?
Is it a concept?
Is it a term?
Is it a theory?
You don't have to take my word for this,
preeminent scholar Patricia Hill Collins,
2015 wrote a piece Intersectionality's Definitional Dilemma,
where she's calling us out about how
we don't clearly operationalize,
that is define what it is we're talking about.
And as I think most of the scientists
in the room can agree, operationalization, totally vital.
Clearly explaining what we're doing,
so that our work can be replicable,
and we can build a shared knowledge base.
Vital.
One of the most important things
that Collins has to say in this piece though,
is intersectionality can be understood as a critical praxis.
That is, something that activists are doing.
Intersectionality?
It's an activist term.
We are social scientists using this activist term,
and I am bound and determined to figure out
what it is we're doing with this term.
I find, in Collins' piece, that the first time
we really get an idea of intersectionality
is the Combahee River Collective, 1977,
written by Black, lesbian feminists about how we must
understand interlocking systems of oppression.
That is, people are positioned
and experience racism differently,
sexism differently, classism differently,
and there are a lot of others.
And it at this point that I have to lament
that I don't have the time to give
a full history of intersectionality.
Scratch that.
Giving the full history and analysis of intersectionality
is beyond the scope of this presentation.
The good news is we have a department
and a degree plan here at the university
which are guaranteed to learn a little bit about this.
Please see sociology.
So, it is in learning that this term comes from activists,
and then has somehow been, dare I say, co-opted
by some scientists to mean something different.
And as a scientist now that I'm firmly grounded in my field,
I feel that I can stand up here and stake a claim
about the science that I do, and as a scientist.
And that is that we must cease the practice
of separating theory from practice.
We must cease creating this hierarchy
of what is more important and how we understand the world.
We must continue to look to activists,
who are out on the streets today organizing,
using this as a way to build coalitions
and frame their goals and tactics,
just as it did come out of activists in the 1970s,
and somehow, I would argue, got lost in translation
through the process of social science.
So, in concluding today, I will stake
my claim as a scientist and state
not only should our science be empirically
observable and verifiable, not only should we be
painstakingly clear in what it is we mean,
so that our work may be replicable
and build a shared knowledge base,
but we as scientists should be studying
theory and practice together.
We must do better at centering those people
at the margins, so we many more fully understand
how systems of inequality, discrimination
and oppression operate in this world.
And that indeed if we do these things,
we might just learn how we as scientists
can make those systems of inequality
just a little bit less detrimental.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)