1. (Re)Reading Intersectionality as a Heuristic: The Case as Black Male Crisis Narrative Texts.
- Author
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Lindsay, Keisha
- Subjects
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AFRICAN American men , *RACE , *OPPRESSION , *GENDER , *FEMINISM - Abstract
That black males are "endangered" is a common theme in popular and academic texts in the U.S. and the U.K. Central to these texts, alternatively referred to as black male crisis narrative texts, is the presumption that black males are in crisis. Critics rightly suggest that these texts have less to do with documenting black men's economic and other woes more to do with flawed assumptions of blackness as a masculine construct. I argue that despite these limitations, or perhaps because of them, crisis narrative texts are important because they challenge established understandings of intersectionality - a concept pioneered by black feminists to illuminate black women's position at the crossroads of racial, gendered, and sexual systems of oppression. Section one of the paper outlines intersectional theorists' assumption that race, gender, and sexuality are interlocking, mutually constructing "axes of differentiation" which either subordinate or privilege those within their midst. Section two suggests that despite crisis narrative authors' embrace of gendered politics at odds with the feminist ethos that traditionally informs intersectional analysis, crisis narrative texts nevertheless construct black men as intersectionally oppressed. In doing so, these authors posit a new kind of intersectionality which: 1) rejects the feminist orientation that traditionally informs theorizing about interlocking social identities and 2) reveals how race, gender, and other interlocking identities can simultaneously advantage and disadvantage a given social group. Section three explores how we are to understand crisis narrative authors' use of intersectionality to advance principles so divorced from the feminism that generally informs the study of interlocking social identities. The answer, I suggest, lies in recognizing that while intersectionality is a heuristic for thinking about how social identities are mutually constructing, the concept does not specify which identities intersect in ways that generate oppression and/or privilege or how best to address the needs of those deemed intersectionally disadvantaged. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2007