Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color

Identity-based politics has been a source of strength for people of color, gays and lesbians, among others. The problem with identity politics is that it often conflates intra group differences. Exploring the various ways in which race and gender intersect in shaping structural and political aspects of violence against these women, it appears the interests and experiences of women of color are frequently marginalized within both feminist  and antiracist discourses. Both discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. However,  the location of women of color at the intersection of race and gender makes our actual experience of domestic violence, rape, and remedial reform quite different from that of white women. Similarly, both feminist and antiracist politics have functioned in tandem to marginalize the issue of violence against women of color. The effort to politicize violence against women will do little to address the experiences of nonwhite women until the ramifications of racial stratification among women are acknowledged. At the same time, the anti-racist agenda will not be furthered by suppressing the reality of intra-racial violence against women of color. The effect of both these marginalizations is that women of color have no ready means to link their experiences with those of other women

Framing Affirmative Action

With the passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (“MCRI”), Michigan joins California and Washington to constitute the new postaffirmative action frontier. For proponents such as Ward Connerly, affirmative action is on the edge of extinction. Connerly plans to carry his campaign against what he calls “racial preferences” to eight states in 2008, scoring a decisive Super-Tuesday repudiation of a social policy that he portrays as the contemporary face of racial discrimination. On the other side of the issue, proponents of affirmative action are struggling to regroup, fearful that the confluence of lukewarm support among Democratic allies, messy presidential politics and a menacing Supreme Court may spell the end of affirmative action as we know it. Of course predictions of the untimely departure of affirmative action have been wrong before. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s surprising decision in Grutter v. Bollinger caught runaway circuit judges and trigger happy pundits celebrating the demise of affirmative action a little too soon

This Is Not a Drill: The War Against Antiracist Teaching in America

On January 5, 2022, Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw received the 2021 Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and the Legal Profession from the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). In this modified acceptance speech delivered at the 2022 AALS Awards Ceremony, she reflects on the path that brought her to this moment and the crisis over antiracist and social justice education that is unfolding today. Arguing that the legal academy bears a collective responsibility to fight back against the silencing of antiracist frameworks, she calls on legal educational institutions to confront their historical agnosticism toward racial subordination and to defend the freedom to teach and learn Critical Race Theory against the concerted efforts to undo its legacy

From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally about Women, Race, and Social Control

The structural and political dimensions of gender violence and mass incarceration are linked in multiple ways. The myriad causes and consequences of mass incarceration discussed herein call for increased attention to the interface between the dynamics that constitute race, gender, and class power, as well as to the way these dynamics converge and rearticulate themselves within institutional settings to manufacture social punishment and human suffering. Beyond addressing the convergences between private and public power that constitute the intersectional dimensions of social control, this Article addresses political failures within the antiracism and antiviolence movements that may contribute to the legitimacy of the contemporary punishment culture, both ideologically and materially

Keeping Up with Jim Jones: Pioneer, Taskmaster, Architect, Trailblazer

It is a special honor to have this opportunity to celebrate Professor Jim Jones\u27s pivotal role in integrating the ranks of the law professoriat. Jim Jones was of course not the only one who hoped that the number of minority law professors would swell as the number of law graduates increased, but unlike those who simply watched and waited, Jim Jones decided to actually do something about the infamous pool problem in legal education. Through his innovation, mentoring, and dogged advocacy, Jim Jones put action to passion, quietly, deliberately, and diligently creating a pipeline of minority law teachers. I know that, at least for me, and most likely for every other Hastie Fellow, were it not for Jim Jones, we would not have the careers that we do. This Tribute provides us all with the opportunity not only to express profound gratitude to Professor Jones, but to consider the implications of his visionary leadership in the context of the contemporary challenges we now face

Race, Gender, and Sexual Harassment

I would like to thank Anita Hill and express my deep respect to her for having the courage to shatter the silence on sexual harassment. I am certain that I speak for millions of women in saying that I have been inspired and renewed by her strength and integrity. I have looked forward to addressing you tonight on a critical issue at this very important juncture in our political history. Sexual harassment has captured our attention over the last several weeks and has of course galvanized women in a way that scarcely could have been imagined only a few short months ago. The issue I want to address tonight, however, is at once narrower and broader than sexual harassment. Focusing on the intersections of race and gender, I want to highlight the racial dimensions of sexual harassment of African-American women

Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law

Recent works by neoconservatives and by Critical legal scholars have suggested that civil rights reforms have been an unsuccessful means of achieving racial equality in America. In this Article, Professor Crenshaw considers these critiques and analyzes the continuing role of racism in the subordination of Black Americans. The neoconservative emphasis on formal colorblindness, she argues, fails to recognize the indeterminacy of civil rights laws and the force of lingering racial disparities. The Critical scholars, who emphasize the legitimating role of legal ideology and legal rights rhetoric, are substantially correct, according to Professor Crenshaw, but they fail to appreciate the choices and possibilities available to an oppressed group such as Blacks. The Critics, she suggests, ignore the singular power of racism as a hegemonic force in American society. Blacks have been created as a subordinated other, and formal reform has merely repackaged racism. Antidiscrimination law, she argues, has largely succeeded in eliminating the symbolic manifestations of racial oppression, but has allowed the perpetuation of material subordination of Blacks. Professor Crenshaw concludes by demonstrating the importance of exposing the racist nature of ostensibly neutral norms, and of devising strategies for change that include the pragmatic use of legal rights

Reel Time/Real Justice

Like the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings a few months before, the Rodney King beating, the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers who restrained him and the subsequent civil unrest in Los Angeles flashed Race across the national consciousness and the gaze of American culture momentarily froze there. Pieces of everyday racial dynamics briefly seemed clear, then faded from view, replaced by presidential politics and natural disasters. This Essay examines in more depth what was exposed during the momentary national focus on Rodney King. Two main events – the acquittal of the police officers who beat King and the civil unrest in Los Angeles following the verdict – serve as starting points for an analysis of the ideological and symbolic intertwining of race and power in American culture. This Essay explicates the \u27outlines of a critical race theory, focusing not solely on the Rodney King incident, but considering more broadly how racial power generally is produced, mediated and legitimated – an approach that seeks to connect developments in diverse arenas in which race and power are contested

An Intersectional Critique of Tiers of Scrutiny: Beyond “Either/Or” Approaches to Equal Protection

For the past forty years, Justice Powell’s concurring opinion in University of California v. Bakke has been at the center of scholarly debates about affirmative action. Notwithstanding the enormous attention Justice Powell’s concurrence has received, scholars have paid little attention to a passage in that opinion that expressly takes up the issue of gender. Drawing on the theory of intersectionality, this Essay explains several ways in which its reasoning is flawed. The Essay also shows how interrogating Justice Powell’s “single axis” race and gender analysis raises broader questions about tiers of scrutiny for Black women. Through a hypothetical of a university’s affirmative-action plan that specifically targets Black women, the Essay considers what tier of scrutiny should apply. Because, for the most part, scholars take a race or gender approach to equal-protection law, they have not engaged that doctrinal puzzle and its implications for tiers-of-scrutiny writ large