The result of all of this is that our movement is left with a shallow analysis of “intersectionality” rather than a full strategy by which the oppressed – people of color, women, queer folks, people with disabiliteies — can unite to fight our common enemies. Among progressive circles, the idea of “intersectionality” has been taken up by the non profit industrial complex (NPIC). In the absence of working class organizations like revolutionary organizations and thriving unions, academia and the NPIC have become the dominant progressive institutions today. The theories they espouse understandably have lasting impacts.
It is commonly explained, that “our oppressions intersect.” That race, class, disability oppression (the –isms) all come together to support one another. When activists reference these intersections, it is usually a call for different identity based groups to work together, to counter a divide and conquer. It is also an attempt to recognize the specific struggles of each identity-based oppression. The intentions are good, and serve initially as a useful lens for understanding various experiences, yet fall flat as an organizing theory.
The erasure of class in the intersectionality theory is most clearly expressed through the replacement of class oppression with the defanged term, “classism.” Rather than advocating for class struggle of the working class and the poor taking over the means of production and the running of society, the “classism” analysis is an attempt to raise the consciousness of the rich, to be NICE, FRIENDLY, SENSITIVE to their poorer brethren. Under “classism” ideology, working and poor folks become the rich man’s burden, not an agent for change in our own right. In fact, the organizing that arises from such an ideology is as condescending and patronizing toward working class and poor folk as the snobbishness it aims to criticize.
At its worst, intersectionality theory compartmentalizes our identities — we are a “class” compartment, lying next to a “woman” compartment, lying next to a “people of color” compartment, and then a “person with disabilities” compartment, and the list goes on. In reality, we aren’t neatly arranged compartments segregated and then intersected. That each of those individual compartments is further divided into those with more and less institutional power is also erased. In reality, we are a mesh of working class, queer, gendered, differently abled and colored people. We don’t naturally have more allegiance to the queer segment of ourselves than the colored segment – we are all of it at once. We hate the white supremacist queers, as much as we disdain the ruling class people of color or labor bureaucracy who will readily sacrifice us for their own self interest. We also don’t naturally have more allegiance to the queer middle class than we do to the rank and file straight workers. Our self-conception is more complicated, and our liberations, more explosive.