Since I have memory I have been a migrant and have been interested in politics. Not surprisingly I joined GroenLinks, the dutch political party that traditionally has the most interesting standpoints on ethnic diversity. It is neither surprising that inside GroenLinks, in one way or another, I have been always linked to the discussions on migration policy: say multiculturalism (as it was called back in 2000), diversity (as it has been called till recently) and intersectionality, as this area is frequently called today.
Differently than people being attracted by economic policy, or by environmental policy, most of my fellow groenlinksers here interested come from the social sciences. And so, the value and relevance of words is well appreciated. Also, the appropriation of words. Certainly now, when the effects of the Black Life Matters protests are still rippling in our societies. The examples of Black Culture appropriation are many, and painful. So I wonder myself: have we not appropriated intersectionality?
The first doubt I got occurred in a meeting about a year ago. Somebody suddenly started dronning about the intersectional gaze, as -possibly- a plea for realizing that ethnic diversity is relevant for many different policy fields. A statement or viewpoint that I would agree with, surely, but that is scarcely related with intersectionality.
For the record, me being a trained biologist, I have not gone through any training that qualifies me to set the record straight on the correct meaning of intersectionality. That being said, what I understand is that back in 1989 a professor of law, Kimberle Crenshaw, exposed that belonging to a several minorities expose individuals to a compound level of discrimination. Or to put it in the words of her seminal paper, to understand discrimination on a person by being woman or being black, exemplify the narrowness of single issue analysis, since a woman can be also, black. And accordingly being exposed to a double discrimination. Discrimination, in a word, intersects.
So recently we have got the idea, more or less, and run with it. Intersectionality is a thing. As my friend said, we all need to have the intersectional gaze when approaching policy matters. And somehow, I wonder. Are we not just re-branding diversity, without tackling the especific concept that intersectionality brought (should have brought?) to the broader debate on exclusion?
There is indeed the chance that I am being purist regarding words. Whatever the original academic well defined concept, if the people that originally were busy with defending their own space realizes that the fights for defending other spaces is similar, and we are all allies in a broader struggle, that is a good realization. I think that we should have learned that already with the second wave feminists, their atempts to include women of color and their failings in actually doing so… but if we are learning that now with the intersectionalists, let’s be happy about it. It is a progress indeed.
But let’s try to keep it sharp. It is not only about uniting our fights, we ethnic/gender/(dis)able/age groups. It is also to realize that all those categories, and some others, do cross themselves to make some lifes even harder, and our system even in more need of reform that we thought.
It is about the holistic view, if I might say so.