In journalism the word "intersectionality" is everywhere, and it's often used just to list identities. I know Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term in 1989, but I'd like to understand the original argument and what philosophical claim, if any, it makes.
Members reply here. Reading is always free.
Fellow
Crenshaw's 1989 paper, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex", started from cases like DeGraffenreid v. General Motors (1976). Black women sued for discrimination. The court said GM hired women (white women) and Black people (Black men), so there was no sex or race discrimination, and refused to combine the claims.
The philosophical claim is that discrimination against Black women isn't the sum of sexism and racism. It's a distinct form that single-axis frameworks can't see. The Combahee River Collective's statement of 1977 made a similar point about interlocking oppressions.
Fellow
And Beauvoir noted in The Second Sex how women's situations differ by class and race, though she didn't develop it. The deeper philosophical point is that categories like "woman" can quietly take one group's experience as the standard.