While many Americans agree that 'the system is rigged' economically, few are aware of the ways in which racial inequality has been structured and embedded in our society. This is why candid, fact-based discussions about racial inequality are so desperately needed.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

If we aren’t intersectional, some of us, the most vulnerable, are going to fall through the cracks.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

cracks vulnerable fall

When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when antiracism does not incorporate opposition to patriarchy, race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other and both interests lose.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

feminism racism race

It's not about supplication, it's about power. It's not about asking, it's about demanding. It's not about convincing those who are currently in power, it's about changing the very face of power itself.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

asking faces inspiring

The empowerment of black women constitutes the empowerment of our entire community.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

empowerment black community

Nonwhite and working-class women, if they are ever to identify with the organized women's movement, must see their own diverse experiences reflected in the practice and policy statements of these predominantly white middle-class groups.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

practice white class

... not all black women have silently acquiesced in sexism and misogyny within the African-American community. Indeed, many writers, activists, and other women have voiced their opposition and paid the price: they have been ostracized and branded as either man- haters or pawns of white feminists, two of the more predictable modes of disciplining and discrediting black feminists.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

white men two

There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions - not just black women but other women of color. Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

women black color people

The struggle against patriarchy and racism must be substantively robust and inextricably intertwined.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

against must racism struggle

The point of feminism is you shouldn't have to be a man to be treated with equal respect.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

you man equal respect

We are a society that has been structured from top to bottom by race. You don't get beyond that by deciding not to talk about it anymore. It will always come back; it will always reassert itself over and over again.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

will back you society

Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members but often fail to represent them.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

women light power relationship

The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

change power together work

Censorship is certainly not the answer to controversial material and is inconsistent with our most basic constitutional values.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

answer our censorship values

To never think about race means that it doesn't really shape your life, or more specifically, the race that you have is not a burden to you.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

never think you life

It's hard not to question whether the harsh verdict of Winnie Mandela is a reflection of discomfort with women warriors or, more broadly, with the militant ethos that ultimately became a foil for the popularized representation of Nelson Mandela as the open-armed father of a non-racial nation.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

nation women reflection father

Black girls are punished, many times violently so, for questioning and challenging authority, which is something that is often celebrated and encouraged as a sign of intelligence and critical thinking in white boys.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

intelligence black white thinking

The way we imagine discrimination or disempowerment often is more complicated for people who are subjected to multiple forms of exclusion. The good news is that intersectionality provides us a way to see it.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

good discrimination people way

If you don't have a lens that's been trained to look at how various forms of discrimination come together, you're unlikely to develop a set of policies that will be as inclusive as they need to be.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

look you discrimination together

Sexism isn't a one-size-fits-all phenomenon. It doesn't happen to black and white women the same way.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

women black-and-white black white

Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.

Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

gender society race together