Why Instersectionality?
I write the following today, merely as a way of thanking all my students for allowing me to learn with and from them. For helping me open up a new door to liberatory practice. I owe all my learning to my kids.
Without them, I still would be lost.
Educators who fight for the liberation of all peoples with intersectionality practices are at the center of this discourse. As I attempt to frame my pedagogy within intersectionality, it is important to understand intersectionality as a malleable set of tools rather than as a universal method. I use intersectionality as a healing and empowering toolbox for the project of becoming fully human. In my classes, intersectionality became a grounding tool that helped us decompose all borders between our identities. We decomposed both– borders within our own individual identities (e.g. students realizing they are not only Ethiopian, but also Black immigrants living in the U.S.), and borders between each other’s identities (e.g. some of us realized that though we had different identities we had a lot in common when it comes to race and gender struggles). In the search for human completeness, the historical dismemberment of our multidimensional realities became the root problem to address. The constant challenge was: How can we reintegrate the many parts of ourselves that were torn apart while holding each other accountable as we struggle for mutual liberation?
Embracing our power and recognizing our oppression at the same time has become the main structure of dialogue in my classes, and I believe intersectionality achieves this purpose. There is no despair in recognizing the power the Earth has given us while still identifying the social components that control us. Only in recognizing our privileges can we act in humility as we listen to our marginalization. I frame this embracing of privilege and recognition of oppression with self-reflective questions like: “what am I bringing to the table for mutual liberation?”, and “in which ways is my voice important for this collective fight?” However, there is an intensive process to even get to these questions. Analyzing our identities meant we all had to become vulnerable. We had to first name our privileges in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, economic status, citizenship status, culture, and religion, which meant we had to also recognize the oppressed groups within these social structures. It meant we had to talk to each other about our experiences of being on either side of (or in between) the spectrum.
It is almost impossible not to acknowledge the current and constant debate of whether intersectionality serves the working class or if it is yet another attempt to follow the bourgeoisie's moral standards which in turn exploits and alienates the working class. While it is still a subject for criticism partly due to its co-optation by white liberals, intersectionality seems to be a powerful framework that understands privilege and marginalization simultaneously and collectively.
I teach with intersectionality as a grounding field because when I was a student myself, the only way in which people in academia were finally able to hear my true voice was through intersectionality trainings at the Gallestein Gender Center of my University. This was the place where I was welcomed by Ashfia Salemin, a Brown Desi leader who not only remembered to call me by my name, but learned how to pronounce it just like my mom does. Even Matt Winser, a white gay man, who led some trainings at this Center was able to engage in talks about race, gender, sexual orientation, and economic privileges without imposing his reflections as candidate for universal perspective. This was the only place where I could have ever heard Jacqueline Prince’s voice and experiences as a Black and queer staff in such toxic space that is academia. It was not that everyone in this space knew how to be politically correct, but they knew how to position themselves in spaces where differences were acknowledged and celebrated. People who engaged in and taught me about intersectionality readings became my only zones for self-preservation, where I could let my guard down and finally learn about my hidden realities. I intend to do the same for all my kids. I do not expect to know and understand the lives my kids survive.
Most importantly, I teach with an intersectionality framework because I have learned, as a student and as a teacher, that the world the neoliberal capitalist created is organized strictly through the use of tools that are divisive in this same sense (e.g. racism, ableism, xenophobia, etc.). These sections that I presume make up our political identity are socio-historical tools created by fascism for the dismemberment of the working class and I intend to reclaim such tools for the project of becoming whole humans. With Paulo Freire’s teachings in mind, I try to reconcile all these ways in which the oppressor robs our humanity by reclaiming our dismemberment.
Exactly because I am not a kid who depends on adults anymore, because I am not a Black american dealing with generational slavery trauma, because I am not a Chicanx struggling with the imposition of nationalism on my identity, because I am not a supremacist, I take the responsibility of not knowing it all in the classroom and allow my kids to dissect and intersect every piece of knowledge I offer. It was only through intersectionality that I was able to finally learn how important I was in spaces for mutual growth, and learn how to lend social power to those whose liberation depended on my solidarity.
Though I mainly developed the following practice by strictly working with Black and Brown young learners, this pedagogy has potential to address other communities for liberation (specifically because it’s framed by intersectionality). This being said, I want to finally share my findings on how the suppression of impulses like anger and play in our Black and Brown communities have enforced white supremacy; and at the same time how in the act of affirming those two impulses can help us transcend intersectional boundaries and find our path for reclaiming our humanity.
