The fact that a concept strong enough to change American civil rights law is still frequently misinterpreted by those who use it the loudest is almost ironic. In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced intersectionality—not as a catchphrase or a political tool, but as a precise legal tool intended to explain why a Black woman could face discrimination in ways that neither gender law nor race law alone could sufficiently address. Over thirty years later, a theory card with Crenshaw on it is making the rounds as a teaching tool that aims to accomplish what legislation and media coverage seemingly failed to do: provide a clear, accurate, and memorable explanation of the concept.
Because it is so easily obscured by political noise, the origin story is worth revisiting. The reasoning came to Crenshaw while he was researching the DeGraffenreid v. General Motors case from 1976. In retrospect, it seemed almost obvious. A Black woman had filed a discrimination lawsuit against the automaker. She could pursue her case as a woman or as a Black person, but not both at the same time, the court informed her. This confused Crenshaw, a young legal scholar at the time. She used the metaphor of a traffic intersection to illustrate how discrimination based on race can occasionally lead directly to discrimination based on gender, and people standing at that intersection are simultaneously struck from several directions. Intersectionality was that. It is not a grand theory of human misery. a legal framework that would allow courts to see what they were refusing to.
The theory card, which emphasizes both that definitional clarity and Crenshaw’s fundamental ideas, comes at a time when the idea has never been more politically charged or misrepresented. Legislation limiting the teaching of race in schools has been passed in more than twenty states. In congressional hearings, school board meetings, and cable news segments, Crenshaw’s name has occasionally been linked to arguments she has never made. A version of intersectionality that serves as a nebulous catch-all for identity-based complaints is circulating in public discourse. Crenshaw herself has admitted this tendency, pointing out that intersectionality is occasionally used as a catch-all phrase to mean “it’s complicated” and that “it’s complicated” can quickly turn into a justification for doing nothing at all.
A well-crafted educational tool could precisely close that gap between the original concept and its widespread application. The theory card format resists the kind of informal paraphrasing that tends to hollow out concepts because it is succinct, attributable, and anchored to a particular thinker and context. A semester’s worth of politicized curriculum debates might not have the same impact on public understanding as something as straightforward as naming the case, identifying the scholar, and providing a straightforward explanation of the traffic-intersection metaphor.
It’s difficult to ignore how much Crenshaw’s personal narrative undermines the conservative portrayal of intersectionality as anti-American. She was raised in a home in Canton, Ohio, where having dinner conversations was practically a civic duty. Her parents were educators, and they expected their kids to have opinions, stand up for them, and be open about what they saw in the world. This upbringing resulted in a person who, as a child, watched the Selma marchers on television and carried that image into a legal career where they argued that everyone should be able to benefit from the promises found in American law.
This feels urgent in ways that transcend scholarly discussion because of the larger cultural moment. Recently, Crenshaw published a memoir titled Backtalker and made an appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air to defend critical race theory, which she co-named with thirty other academics in the early 1990s, in addition to intersectionality. In ways that would irritate anyone who has actually read the source material, both terms have been legally restricted, publicly misrepresented, and stripped of their original meaning. It is genuinely unclear whether a theory card will change. However, it seems like the right course of action to go back to the original text, the real thinker, and the particular legal issue that gave rise to the idea. Telling the truth about the origins of something can sometimes be the most radical educational act.
