Last autumn, I took an online course offered by Afroféminas titled Black Feminism from Abya Yala. I enrolled because I wanted to deepen my understanding of intersectionality and other topics that I knew would enrich both my personal growth and my professional practice.
The course was divided into four parts: Introduction of Black Feminism, History and Reinvindications, Intersectionality, and White Privilege. This course was facilitated by Zinthia Alvarez Palominio, who is a migrant body, a collaborator with Afroféminas, and the author of several books about black women and science. I want to share with you the chapter on intersectionality, my takeaways and how I implemented it at a workshop.
The course was divided into four parts: Introduction to Black Feminism, History and Reclamations, Intersectionality, and White Privilege. It was facilitated by Zinthia Álvarez Palomino, who describes herself as a migrant body. She is a collaborator with Afroféminas and the author of several books about Black women and science. In this post, I want to share with you the chapter on intersectionality, my key takeaways and how I put them into practice at a workshop.
Conducting a workshop
I’m a member of the Otroas Feminismoas collective. Last month, we were invited by the Suomen Rauhanpuolustajat (Finnish Peace Defenders) association in Helsinki to lead a training and sharing session for young adults about our collective and intersectionality. I was one of the facilitators. I led the first part of the training, where I introduced what our collective does and what intersectionality means. I explained the concept using examples drawn from my own experiences and contexts.
Intersectionality
Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989. She stressed that being a woman and being Black can’t be seen as separate; they are interdependent. Oppressions like race and gender interact with multiple other forms—for example, sexuality. The idea of intersectionality is not to sum up the oppressions, but rather to understand how they specifically affect people and how they interact with and cross one another.
Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LGBTQ+ problem there. Many times, that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things.
Take a peek at this TED Talk, ‘The Urgency of Intersectionality’, where Kimberlé explains more about the concept and how she started using it.
Intersectionality is a theoretical approach that demonstrates how different categories, such as gender, class, and sexuality, overlap, causing multiple forms of oppression.
For example, as a Black immigrant woman living in Europe, I have fewer opportunities to find a job than a white European woman. I can also face more rejection when looking to rent an apartment.
I like to describe intersectionality as a river that receives the flow of other rivers. The rapids grow stronger as younger streams join, creating different obstacles and erosion along the way. The intensity of those rapids represents the overlapping oppressions experienced by human beings living under social injustice.
Use of Intersectionality
The intersectionality framework was brought to the scene from an academic angle. However, we need to take into consideration that eventually the Black feminist movement adopted it to understand the crossing of oppressions toward Black women. With this approach, Black feminists wanted to widen the scope of mainstream feminism and restructure the pyramid established by society.
Many Black activists, such as Lélia González, used the term to demand recognition that Black women’s problems are not the same as those of white women. Women are not homogeneous.
Feminism cannot succeed without understanding context. This is where applying intersectionality becomes useful. For example, a project aimed at improving sexual and reproductive rights must start with a baseline understanding of the local community. Feminist frameworks developed in the Global North cannot simply be unpacked and applied elsewhere without understanding race, gender, culture, environment, socio-political conditions, and more.
The use of intersectionality is not limited to women’s projects or a feminist approach. This framework can be used for all individuals to guarantee inclusion in all its forms.
Circle of Intersectionality
Over the years, Patricia Hill Collins, a sociologist and Afrofeminist, developed the Circle of Intersectionality. It demonstrates that intersectionality goes beyond gender and race; it intersects with other social categories, which are shaped by the structure of power and oppression. In this circle of power and oppression, each body is intertwined; there is no such thing as all bodies being just dominated or the contrary.
The circle of intersectionality is composed of three dimensions: internal, external, and power and oppression. The oppressions and power that individuals experience depend on the context and environment in which the person lives. For instance, an immigrant woman living in the Global North can face oppression to get an apartment, but in the Global South, she can have a house for herself.
Intersectionality and white privilege are interconnected experiences. Each one explains how the social structures and the system of power influence each individual in a different way according to their identities. However, white privilege is another topic which I will develop in another article.
Re-imagining
At the workshop I conducted together with my friend, the young adults had to put into practice what they learned through collage art, by imagining a world that applies intersectionality. The four groups put together some really interesting colleges that stressed the integration of the LGBTQA+ community, work positions are not based on gender, the importance of coexistence, freedom, imagination, love, and community are key roles to tackle the patriarchal system.
As I closed the training and this article, I reaffirmed that intersectionality is a tool that needs to be put into action on all levels in society to tackle social injustice. As an Afro woman, I think it is necessary to continue learning about tools that can be used to unweave the oppressive structure of society.
How do you practice intersectionality? Share it!
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