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Feb 1, 2008 - Identity, Oppression, and Power. Feminisms and Intersectionality Theory. I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish.
Editorial

Identity, Oppression, and Power Feminisms and Intersectionality Theory

Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work Volume 23 Number 1 February 2008 5-9 © 2008 Sage Publications 10.1177/0886109907310475 http://aff.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish. I was born at the crossroads and I am whole. —Morales (1990, p. 50)

In her poem, Aurora Levins Morales, a feminist poet, challenges our thinking about women’s human experience as multiple, shifting, and layered across time. She touches on multiple identities of women in terms of race, color, age, social class, ethnicity, culture, history, geographic location, language, and migrant status. She challenges us to view women as multidimensional, yet uniquely whole. In our teaching and research, we have used intersectionality theory in traditional and nontraditional ways to analyze and understand women’s multiple identities and the challenges that women face. In the traditional sense, intersectionality theory avoids essentializing a single analytical category of identity by attending to other interlocking categories. In a nontraditional way, intersectionality enables us to stretch our thinking about gender and feminism to include the impact of context and to pay attention to interlocking oppressions and privileges across various contexts. In this editorial, we provide two case examples from our research—one with Black–White biracial adoptees in White families and the other with Afghan refugee women—to illustrate the challenges that Morales posed and how we use intersectionality to analyze and understand women as multidimensional, yet uniquely whole.

Intersectionality Theories of intersectionality emerged from the writings of women of color during the 1960s and 1970s. Intersectionality has also been used as a tool for gender and economic justice (Symington, 2004). In recognizing the limitations of theorizing gender as a unified collective transcending race and class, intersectionality calls on scholars to be more inclusive of a broader group of women in their analysis of gender and definitions of what is feminist. In fact, intersectionality goes further to recognize that for many women of color, their feminist efforts are simultaneously embedded and woven into their efforts against racism, classism, and other threats to their access to equal opportunities and social justice. These efforts, past and present, frequently position men as allies. Now typically referred to within second- and, more recently, third-wave feminisms, intersectionality proposes that gender cannot be used as a single analytic frame without also exploring how issues of race, migration status, history, and social class, in particular, come to bear on one’s experience as a woman. Consequently, scholars and theorists who endorse this theory must attend to myriad overlapping and mutually reinforcing oppressions that many women face in addition to gender. It is no longer acceptable to produce analyses that are embedded solely within an essentialist or universal collective experience as “woman.” Scholars, such as Baca Zinn and 5

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Thornton Dill (1996), Hill Collins (1999a, 1999b), and hooks (1981, 1989), among others, represent these efforts to dismantle theories of feminism and gender analyses that privilege a homogeneous portrayal of what is “woman,” womanist, feminine, or feminist. Use of the term feminisms in the plural to represent this diversity is an acknowledgment of these efforts. Like Morales’s poem, intersectionality calls on us to consider women as whole beings; to recognize that not all women experience their womanhood in the same ways; many women face multiple forms of oppression, and not all women are rendered powerless. In fact, many women manage their multiple identities and challenges well and lead fulfilling lives. We find it important, however, to push this concept further and suggest that individually women experience their womanhood and various interlocking oppressions differently in different contexts. Likewise, what is oppression in one context may be a privilege in another. This point challenges us to take a multisystemic approach to understanding privilege and oppression within structural macrolevels, as well as how these same social identities become reified or transcended on more micro-interpersonal levels. We offer examples of our research (Ross-Sheriff on Afghan women and Miranda Samuels on Black–White multiracial adoptees) to illustrate multiple identities of women, their challenges, survival skills, and capacity to be in control despite oppressive life conditions. With these examples, we pose three challenges to the future intellectual agenda of those who are interested in engaging with intersectionality theory: (a) We must avoid essentializing the added groupings or identities of race, class, sexuality; (b) we must attend to interlocking privileges as well as oppressions; and (c) we must attend to changes in context that then shift the meaning of various social identities and statuses. Particularly at the interpersonal realms of social life, a privilege in one context may become a liability in another.

Afghan Refugee Women In my research and practice with Afghan women in exile and repatriation (Ross-Sheriff, 2006), I examined their life histories and experiences under the repressive Taliban regime and during the bombardment of Afghanistan after September 11, 2001—their traumatic life events and coping and survival skills in their multiple roles and identities. The women’s experiences before fleeing Afghanistan as refugees, during the flight, in exile in Pakistan, and at the time of repatriation reflect their multiple roles and responsibilities under challenging conditions of oppression, as well as their sense of power and of being in control of their lives.

Afghan Women at Home in Afghanistan Imagine the conditions when the Taliban were in control and enforcing their views related to the restricted lives of women who should not be visible outside their homes and of their fears during the bombardment of Afghanistan by the United States after September 11. The women were not “helpless victims” of an oppressive Taliban regime or as they watched their homes and neighborhoods being destroyed; they had developed coping strategies and survival skills. Some managed to carry on with their daily lives; others had the painful experiences of watching their husbands, sons, and male relatives tortured or killed; and still others who could, flee with their families to avoid the torture or imprisonment of their male relatives. As refugees fleeing war, they traveled by night to avoid bandits and the police, sought refuge during the day, and succeeded in crossing the border where they could have been robbed or raped.

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Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan Imagine Afghan Muslim refugee rural and urban women with their families in a city in Pakistan. The women worked hard to find shelter, got menial jobs to support their families, learned the local languages; some even learned English, and did whatever was necessary to settle in Pakistan. After their initial settlement, they attended mosques, prayed together, and established social-support networks with their conationalists and coreligionists. They were “social actors” who shared and exchanged information and resources to improve the quality of their families’ lives and hoped for a better future, if not for themselves, at least for their children, after peace returned to Afghanistan.

Black–White Multiracial Adoptions A congruent perspective emerged from my research with Black–White multiracial young adults who were adopted as children by White parents (Miranda, 2003). Most of the young adults I interviewed were raised in ethnically, socioeconomically, and culturally homogeneous neighborhoods and were consequently among the few (or the only) brown-skinned faces in the world of their childhoods. Although intersectionality highlights the multiple contexts that these individuals must negotiate across the life course, here I consider two specific contexts in which biracial female adoptees operated that at times were unique to them. Although I acknowledge that the very notion of a “White” or “Black” community risks reifying false notions of monoracial or monocultural homogeneity, here it can serve as a conceptual framework in which to explore cultural shifts in the meaning that is attached to their various statuses and identities.

Being Biracial and a Transracial Adoptee in a White Community Within White communities and their families, the adoptees’ brown to beige complexions typically marked them as “people of color.” Consequently, their oppressions included experiencing various degrees and forms of intrafamilial racism within their adoptive family systems and racism in their White communities. Few of them “dated” while in high school; Eurocentric images of beauty left their attractiveness devalued or ignored by their White male peers. These adoptees received clear messages that racially they were not White. Culturally, however, many believed they were. Their social acceptance and status as people of color in White communities was certainly advantaged by having two White parents whose culture was transmitted (often unconsciously) through the families’ daily routines and rituals. Consequently, the adoptees operated in predominantly White contexts with familiarity and cultural ease, simultaneously being aware that their physical appearance made others interpret them as outsiders. Being female (avoiding negative stereotypes ascribed to Black men), having racially ambiguous features (not always being recognized as “Black”), and being middle class were additional advantages in this context.

Being Biracial and a Transracial Adoptee in a Black Community However, in the Black community, the same characteristics combined to form a different set of assets and liabilities. The adoptees’ skin tone now became an advantage with Black

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male peers, who, having internalized Eurocentric standards of beauty, viewed biracial physical characteristics as more desirable than those of darker-skinned women. It is not surprising, then, that this situation disadvantaged bonding with Black female peers who viewed the biracial adoptees with suspicion (interpersonal dynamics of colorism that, at times, escalated to physical violence). In this community, having White parents and cultural competencies were serious liabilities. Accusations of “acting White” were attached to behaviors that were perceived as revealing their disconnections from a Black family or community. In fact, once the adoptees moved away from the communities of their childhoods, most “outed” their backgrounds to potential friends and partners who were Black. Many believed that doing so would prevent feelings of deception when family photographs or introductions to parents revealed their membership in a White family. Being middle class also disconnected the adoptees from gaining insider status when their peers endorsed stereotypes that linked an “authentic Black experience” to being poor. What often operated as an asset in White communities worked as liabilities as the adoptees sought connections within Black communities. Throughout their life narratives, these biracial adoptees told how they successfully learned to manage and anticipate these shifting interpretations of who they are and who others expected them to be. In recognizing the complexity of these oppressions and privileges—one’s immediate developmental context becomes crucial in pursuing an analysis guided by theories of intersectionality. What is valued in one context may not be valued in another. What is oppressed in one context may be elevated in another. And although macrostructures are perhaps more enduring, even they shift over time, across generation, and most certainly from one nation to another. Few of us exist within one context. Therefore, our sets of assets and disadvantages and oppressions and privileges change as our contexts change. We must at all times be aware of these shifting privileges and disadvantages. We must begin to theorize privileges and oppressions not as fixed statuses but as fluid and dynamic.

Conclusion: Pluralistic Unity Sorting through the layers and levels of oppressions and privileges and understanding them collectively without fracturing them as additive and separate components are crucial if we are to appreciate fully the shared and unique experiences of women as whole beings in their diverse roles and identities. We must also attend to the fractures that persist between women along (and within) the constructed domains of class, race, sexuality (Russel & Wilson, 1997) and to oppressive notions of femininity and an essentialized womanhood that are internalized and reified by those who identify as women. Women oppress other women, some groups of women have enslaved other women, some women have cleaned for other groups of women, and some women have cared for and raised the children of other women. In claiming some collective experience around womanhood, we must pay honor to this history and the contemporary manifestations and persistence of these realities. This understanding is fundamental for social workers as we work with women to honor their unique, multidimensional womanhood, personhood, and agency, even as their personhood and agency are honored and devalued across the many contexts they must navigate. As the opening poem suggests, theories of intersectionality challenge us all to see beyond an oversimplistic and monolithic sisterhood, not at the expense of a fractured one but, we hope, to construct the largest space for those whose identities include “woman” to find a place within that is affirming and recognizable to us all. In an increasingly global

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world in which the challenges to our analysis of oppression and privilege grow geometrically, we must attend with the greatest care to the lenses through which we view the complexity of the lived experiences of those we would call sister and of all we would embrace within the family of humanity. Gina Miranda Samuels University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration Fariyal Ross-Sheriff Editor-in-Chief for Manuscripts

References Baca Zinn, M., & Thornton Dill, B. (1996). Theorizing difference from multiracial feminism. Feminist Studies, 22, 321-333. Hill Collins, P. (1999a). Black feminist thought. New York: Routledge. Hill Collins, P. (1999b). Moving beyond gender: Intersectionality and scientific knowledge. In M. F. Ferree (Ed.), Revisioning gender (pp. 261-284). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. hooks, b. (1981). Ain’t I a woman? Cambridge, MA: South End. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. Cambridge, MA: South End. Miranda, G. E. (2003). Reading between the lines: Black–White heritage and transracial adoption. African American Research Perspectives, 10(1), 174-187. Morales, A. L. (1990). I am a child of the America’s. In A. L. Morales & R. Morales (Eds.), Getting home alive (p. 50). Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books. Ross-Sheriff, F. (2006). Afghan women in exile and repatriation: Passive victims or social actors? Affilia, 21, 206-219. Russel, K., & Wilson, M. (1997). Divided sisters. New York: Anchor. Symington, A. (2004, August). Women’s rights and economic change: Intersectionality: A tool for gender and economic justice (No. 9). Retrieved from http://www.awid.org/publications/primers/intersectionality_en.pdf.