Race And Gender Research Paper

Thus, while ‘feminist theory’ remains marginalized, or ignored, the theorizing by and about women of color remains marginalized within the margins. Lest we think that this is simply a byproduct of white male hegemony, this marginalization is also present in feminist theorizing. To be sure, most edited volumes now include articles by and about women of color, the question remains to what extent have these writings influenced mainstream feminist theory?

Theorizing by and about women of color has had a bifurcated influence on the development of feminist theory. As Hooks (2000) notes, there is a ‘high’ and ‘low’ theory, and the former still continues to exclude much of the experientially based theorizing of women of color. Caraway (1991) notes that ‘in academic practice, some white feminists have exhibited a tendency to ghettoize the creative and expressive writings of Black women as ‘‘empirical’’ supplements to the ‘‘formal’’ theory texts of white feminists.’ For example, in a brief overview of some of the main feminist theory texts, women of color generally are segregated into a section on difference, multiculturalism, or women of color. Or, the text is peppered with reprints of 1980s writings by prominent women of color such as Bell Hooks, Pat Hill Collins, Adrienne Rich, Patricia Williams, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, and Angela Davis. But often more recent scholarship on women of color is absent. In an overview of the literature, Glenn (1999) concludes that, ‘ … despite increased recognition of the interconnectedness of gender and race, race remained undertheorized even in the writings of women of color. In the absence of a ‘‘theory’’ of race comparable to a ‘‘theory’’ of gender, building a com- prehensive theory has proven elusive.’ Following the work of Liu (1991), Higginbotham (1992), Kaminsky (1994), and Stoler (1996), Glenn calls for a synthesis through social constructionism, arguing that race and gender are ‘relational concepts whose construction involves both representation and social structural processes in which power is a constitutive element’ (1999).

1. Intersectionality Theory

Theorizing about women of color has had a major impact on postmodernist feminist theory. Postmodernism is committed to the deconstruction of absolute truths and views knowledge as socially constructed. Women of color have developed ‘Intersectionality Theory’ that subscribes to many postmodern tenets, and is committed to what McLaren (1994) calls resistance postmodernism. As Cordova (1998) states, ‘Along with the critiques of modernism comes the notion that social ‘‘facts’’ are social constructions; social reality is mediated by one’s positionality; that identity is tied to location (subjectivity); and that meaning is unstable and connected to the advanced capitalist construction of consumerism.’

‘Intersectionality Theory’ objects to the notion that all truths are equal and to the notion that individual narratives should not become a basis for shared resistance to oppressive power relations. So, while postmodernism emphasizes deconstructionism, ‘Intersectionality Theory’ insists upon an equal attention to constructionism. Equally important is that ‘Intersectionality Theory’ is written in a language more readily accessible to the general public than is that of French Postmodernism. It is often written in the language of experience.

Many women of color have contributed to the development of ‘Intersectionality Theory,’ which is interdisiplinary (Hooks 1984, Anzaldua 1987, 1990, Collins 1990, 1998, Crenshaw 1989, 1991, 1997, de la Torre and Pesquera 1993, Glenn 1985, Lorde 1984, Williams 1991, Zinn and Dill 1993, Brewer 1990, King 1988, Espiritu 1997). Collins (1990) argued for a more complex conceptualization of gender relations; one that included an understanding of the ‘matrix of domination,’ that is the intersection of gender, class, race, sexual preference, and other relevant systems of oppression. For Collins and other feminists of color, these intersections are not simply separate cumulative variables by which we can assess one’s experience of oppression. Rather it is the way these positions interlock in interactive or unique ways at their intersections that provides the experience of oppression. She writes: ‘replacing additive models of oppression with interlocking ones creates possibilities for new paradigms. The significance of seeing race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression is that such an approach fosters a paradigmatic shift of thinking inclusively about other oppressions, such as age, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity.’

Hooks (1989) offers a similar analysis with her notion of a ‘politic of domination,’ arguing that, all of these axes are imbued with ‘notions of superior and inferior … component.’ ‘Intersectionality Theory’ simultaneously challenges multiple levels of oppression, while viewing race and gender as something more than the sum of their parts (King 1988). This theoretical approach arose in parallel with mainstream feminist theory as evidenced by the statement of the Combahee River Collective (1983), which was formed in the mid- 1970s by a group of Black lesbian feminists. They wrote: ‘The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.’

‘Intersectionality Theory’ is more than the notion that the whole does not equal the sum of its parts. It also encompasses some creative, novel, methodological approaches to the study of social phenomena. For example, Sandoval (1998) writes about the extent to which Anzaldua’s (1987) book influences feminists of color: ‘This ‘‘borderlands’’ feminism, many argue, calls up a syncretic form of consciousness made up of transversions and crossings; its recognition makes possible another kind of critical apparatus and political operation in which mestiza feminism comes to function as a working chiasmus (a mobile crossing) between races, genders, sexes, culture, languages, and nations. Thus conceived, La conciencia de la mestiza makes visible the operation of another metaform of consciousness that insists upon polymodal forms of poetics, ethics, identities, and politics not only for Chicanas/os but for any constituency resisting the old and new hierarchies of the coming millennium.’

In this view, the study of any social problem entails a holistic approach, one that includes analyses of race, class, gender, sexuality, language, culture, and nation.

2. Intersectionality Theory And Mainstream Sociology

‘Intersectionality Theory’ encompasses a methodological approach critical to the study of social phenomena, and it has been employed by many women of color social scientists in such areas as the study of family, social movements, race and ethnicity, social stratification, legal institutions and crime, organizations, work and welfare, and politics. The following discussion provides examples of ways in which analysis of the intersectionality of race and gender enrich our theoretical understanding in several areas of study.

Let us begin with family studies. Wilson’s (1987) work on the American Black underclass, and its implications for the Black family, has gained national attention. By contrast, the research conducted by Black women scholars, many of whom contextualize his findings, has received less attention. Dickerson (1995) examines predominant approaches to the study of African-American families that often judge them by their similarity to white families. She finds these approaches less useful than a form of ‘centrism,’ an Afrocentric paradigm that ‘centers’ groups in terms of their own cultural meanings, attitudes, and values, and gathers data from the standpoint of the group being studied. This approach is very much in keeping with ‘Intersectionality Theory.’

Using this approach, Sudarkasa (1993) and Jewell (1988) both argue against the claim that ‘femaleheaded households are the root cause of the deplorable conditions in which many Blacks find themselves in urban ghettos’ (Sudarkasa 1993). Rather, they argue that the most critical factors for family survival and success are economic resources and proximity to kin. Harriet McAdoo’s research indicates that kin systems are critical for the survival of black single mothers and the elderly. Wilson (1987) seems to drop the importance of kin and translates the need for economic resources into a need for a marriageable pool of Black males. Black male unemployment, he argues, is a critical intervention in the fight to uplift the underclass. While this is certainly of central importance, Black women’s employment is equally important. After all, many upper-class white women are choosing to bear children out of wedlock, but there has not been the corresponding outcry, because they are economically capable of sustaining themselves and their offspring. But it is most difficult for Black women to support their children. Black women are disadvantaged by both racial and gender differences in earnings, which persist even after levels of educational attainment are held constant (Herring 1999).

A perspective that emphasizes the intersectionality of race, class, and gender are absent in most mainstream theories of racial/ethnic families, and this omission leaves such theories inadequate.

This pattern of omission is also visible in social movement theory. While feminists such as Verta Taylor, Myra Marx Ferree, Pam Oliver, Nancy Whittier, and several others have made significant contributions to social movement theory, scholarly contributions by and/or about women of color are largely absent from major theoretical texts in this area, ignoring the contributions of the few women of color who are writing in this area, such as Patricia Zavella, Belinda Robnett, and Bernice McNair Barnett. Zavella’s (1987) work on union organizing has shown that recruitment strategies must specifically address issues of race/class/gender as they affect the reality of potential recruits. Both Barnett (1993) and Robnett (1996, 1997) have shown the importance of Black women’s contributions to the civil rights movement. Robnett (1997) argues that the intersectionality of race/class/gender shaped the organization of social movement organizations and leadership in social movements. Robnett (1997) shows that the experiences and contributions of women in the civil rights movement are varied by race and class. African-American women were critical bridge leaders in the civil rights movement, forging ties between movement organizations and the grass roots participants. Without their participation, the movement would not have succeeded. Her intersectionality approach lends insight into the decline of that movement, as the clash between white politicians, Black male elites, and rural Black women led to the disillusionment and disengagement of grass roots leadership. Scholars such as Dill (1988), Gilkes (1988), and Sacks (1988), have written about the redefinition of what we define as ‘political,’ suggesting that the boundaries are much too narrow, which has important implications for social movement theory, including what counts as a political identity or political activity.

Indeed, the theorizing by and about women of color has been excluded in a number of areas including work, the state, and the sociology of knowledge. For example, while feminist scholars have analyzed social reproduction, that is, childbearing and childcare, its racialization has been noted less. Glenn (1999) points out that while scholars theorize about how gender leads women to be assigned to child care in the context of a sex division of labor, they often ignore the fact that women of color are the ones who end up in the situation of leaving their own children at home or with kin, while they take care of other women’s children to make the money to support their own children. Class, race, and gender affect the life chances of women of color, making them the group often concentrated in low paid childcare because of a lack of better employment options.

Glenn notes a similar omission in studies of citizenship. Whereas many feminists such as Pateman (1988), Young (1989), and Okin (1979) have challenged conceptualizations of the ‘universal citizen,’ short shrift has been paid to race gender. Glenn (1999) asserts, ‘The problem with looking at citizenship as only gendered or only raced is the familiar one: women of color fall through the cracks.’

Collins’s (1999) critique of feminist analyses of science is equally instructive. She suggests that, ‘feminist analyses of gender and scientific knowledge might benefit from closer association with emerging scholarship on intersectionality.’ Collins convincingly illustrates the ways in which ‘selecting a specific social location, social practice, group history, or topic, and subjecting it to an intersectionality analysis,’ challenges the notion that Western science is an objective, apolitical, ahistorical endeavor.

In short, the social location (in the margin in the margin) of the scholarship by and about women of color, impedes the development of our understanding of social phenomena.

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