UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA WGS 498/GSJ 598

Module 3 – Assigned Resources

Compare the two versions of Sojourner Truth’s speech (access them side by side here). What differences do you notice? Speculate on what makes the version ‘transcribed’ by Frances D. Gage twelve years after the event so compelling that it overshadows the version transcribed shortly after the event by Marius Robinson.

1977 statement by the Combahee River Collective is regarded as pivotal for the development of what we now call intersectionality.

The Combahee River Collective in 1974. Left to right bottom: Demita Frazier and Helen Stewart. Left to right top: Margo Okazawa-Rey, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Chirlane McCray, and Mercedes Tompkins. (Margo Okazawa-Rey) Reprinted from https://www.thenation.com/article/society/combahee-river-collective-oral-history/

The collective named itself inspired by a then little-known act of Black woman rebellion – the 1863 Combahee Ferry Raid, during which Harriet Tubman led a military operation of 150 Black Union Soldiers that freed more than 700 people from slavery. 

The Combahee River Collective was a Black Feminist Lesbian political group active between 1974 and 1980 in Boston, which formed as a critique of both the white and middle-class dominance of the feminist movement and the masculinist focus of Black nationalist organizations at the time. Against this backdrop, they formulated their own political position based on their experiences as Black and queer women. (Though queer would not have been a term they would have used at the time.): “A combined anti-racist and anti-sexist position drew us together initially, and as we developed politically, we addressed ourselves to heterosexism and economic oppression under capitalism” (n.p). The CRC are credited with coining both the notion of “interlocking oppressions” and the concept of “identity politics”.

As you read, consider these points:

• How does the CRC explain the genesis of Black feminism?
• How do they define identity politics? How does their definition compare to your understanding of identity politics? 

As a legal scholar, Crenshaw turns initially to court cases, then feminist and anti-racist politics, to show the adverse effects of a single axis analysis for Black women. 

As you read, consider these points and questions:

• Using the title of the text and the subheadings, get a sense of the structure of the text
• Note and distinguish Crenshaw’s conceptual interventions from the examples she uses to illustrate and support her arguments
• What are the problems of a single-axis analysis, according to Crenshaw?
• What is the traffic analogy trying to illustrate (63)?
• What is the basement analogy trying to illustrate (65)?
• To what end is she invoking the symbol that is Sojourner Truth? (66)
• What is the feminst concept of “separate spheres” and how does Crenshaw utilize this example to illustrate the limits of a single-vector analysis? (67)
• To what end is Crenshaw invoking Anna Julia Cooper, another 19th-century Black feminist often regarded central to the intellectual history of intersectionality? (69)
• What insights and questions are you left with after reading this text? What is unclear or confusing?

This text together with Crenshaw (1989) are central to the coining of the term intersectionality. This is the full, original version of the text.

As you read, think about your reading purpose and context: are you reading for overview or for a particular project? Consider the context of publication (journal, audience) and how that effects the kinds of evidence Crenshaw utilizes.

Published four years after her 1989 “Demarginalizing the Intersections of Race and Sex,” Crenshaw also takes the opportunity to respond to the responses to her earlier article and build on that earlier work. Note for example, that in the earlier article Crenshaw focussed exclusively on Black women and the intersections of race and gender. Four years later, in this 1993 article, Crenshaw widens her lens to speak about the experiences of women of color with violence. And she acknowledges that intersectionality is not reducible to the intersections of race and gender but that “class or sexuality, are often as critical in shaping the experiences of women of color” (1245).

As you read, consider:

• survey and note the structure of the text (title, subheadings, sections etc.);
• locate the main argument;
• summarize Crenshaw’s view on identity politics (1242);
• explain the distinction between political, structural and representational intersectionality;
• speculate on why Crenshaw’s turn to the topic of violence against women of color might have been especially powerful;
• take note of questions, insights, and confusions you encounter as you read.