Intersectionality

In order to examine the idea of intersectionality I felt it would be best to do so with two pictures. The top picture illustrates my race, which is white. The bottom picture illustrates my assigned gender on my driver's license, which is female.

The basic idea behind intersectionality is that any one person is made of multiple identities that are all operating at the same time. Some of these identities may provide an individual with privilege, while others may take away privilege. Two of my identities that I chose to show here are my gender - female, and my race - white. I feel like these two categories interact in an interesting way considering the privileges they do or do not confer. While some could argue that being a woman places me at a disadvantage (relative to men), at the same time some could also argue that being white places me at an advantage (relative to members of other races). These conflicting statuses may at times cancel each other out, for example while I may be a woman I am also white so my voice may be heard over individuals of different races. When it comes to women's' issues, often women of color voice's are not heard because the myth of white experience as the "norm" may push them aside. My experiences as a white woman are not going to match up to the experiences of a African American or Hispanic woman, so to allow only my voice to be heard in representing all woman is not accurate or fair. As Crenshaw states in Intersectionality and Identity Politics, "the problem with identity politics is that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences." (484) This notion of one woman being able to represent and speak for all women on issues such as feminism or violence is an example of identity politics gone wrong. Intersectionality must be employed in order to understand that categories of difference such as race and gender are not things that can simply be broken apart into distinct packages. (485) In order to appreciate my personal experience that has shaped me, one must not only look at the fact that I'm white, but one must also understand that I am a young, able-bodied woman, who is currently a student, who came from a  middle-class background. All these identities play into who I am as a person and cannot be broken apart to be examined as mutually exclusive facets.