Our identities shape who we are. It is important for us to recognize that people can have more than one identity that defines them: race, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity and more. Our many characteristics are social determinants in how we stand, and how we’re treated in society.
The idea that people have overlapping social identities that intersect with one another, that define our selfhood, is intersectionality.
Intersectionality is a phenomenon coined in the 1980s by American civil rights activist and critical race theory scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and it helps us understand compounded discrimination.
Humans are as multi-dimensional as the issues we face in our diverse society. It is imperative to acknowledge this, so that we may advocate for each other. Together, we confront our societal problems and help provide a voice to the people whose perspectives are usually dismissed.
Violence against people of color and violence against women are both major issues and topics of discussion; however, the discussion of violence against women of color often fails to receive the same attention.
The compounding identities — the intersection of being both a woman and a person of color — result in the wider population ignoring the struggles women of color face far too often.
They deal with similar issues to their male and white counterparts, yet women of color find themselves receiving little to none of the same support; they are instead pushed away, out of sight and out of mind This is the same for other identities as well.
For example, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and women, live in a parallel to their counterparts that is hard to define.
Finding an effective way to explain the difference in how certain people experience problems compared to their more privileged equivalents will allow us to better aid them in discovering approaches to solve these problems, and in creating better policy.
As functioning members of society and decent human beings, their problems are everyone’s problems. It’s time we work to amplify the voices of those who have been drowned out of perception and bring their oppression to the limelight.
We all need to become advocates for our neighbors as we look to improve our society for all. Multifaceted issues require complex solutions, and to properly approach these issues, we must understand the privileges and oppressions that are reinforced by our identities and social inequality.