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Identity, Oppression, and Power: Feminisms and Intersectionality Theory

Article  in  Affilia · February 2008

DOI: 10.1177/0886109907310475

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Gina Miranda Samuels Fariyal Ross-Sheriff

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Editorial Affilia: Journal of Women
and Social Work
Volume 23 Number 1
February 2008 5-9
Identity, Oppression, and Power © 2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/0886109907310475
Feminisms and Intersectionality Theory 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, his-
tory, 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 intersec-
tionality theory in traditional and nontraditional ways to analyze and understand women’s
multiple identities and the challenges that women face. In the traditional sense, intersec-
tionality 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 atten-
tion 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 mul-
tidimensional, 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 inclu-
sive of a broader group of women in their analysis of gender and definitions of what is fem-
inist. 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, migra-
tion 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 myr-
iad 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
6 Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work

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 oppres-
sion within structural macrolevels, as well as how these same social identities become rei-
fied 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 intersectional-
ity 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 expe-
riences 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 con-
ditions 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 sur-
vival skills. Some managed to carry on with their daily lives; others had the painful experi-
ences 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 rela-
tives. 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.
 Samuels, Ross-Sheriff / Editorial 7

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 qual-
ity 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 homoge-
neous neighborhoods and were consequently among the few (or the only) brown-skinned
faces in the world of their childhoods. Although intersectionality highlights the multiple con-
texts 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 reify-
ing false notions of monoracial or monocultural homogeneity, here it can serve as a concep-
tual 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 experi-
encing various degrees and forms of intrafamilial racism within their adoptive family sys-
tems 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 inter-
pret them as outsiders. Being female (avoiding negative stereotypes ascribed to Black men),
having racially ambiguous features (not always being recognized as “Black”), and being mid-
dle 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
8 Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work

male peers, who, having internalized Eurocentric standards of beauty, viewed biracial phys-
ical characteristics as more desirable than those of darker-skinned women. It is not surpris-
ing, 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 com-
munities 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 inter-
sectionality. 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 disadvan-
tages 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 privi-
leges 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
 Samuels, Ross-Sheriff / Editorial 9

world in which the challenges to our analysis of oppression and privilege grow geometri-
cally, we must attend with the greatest care to the lenses through which we view the com-
plexity 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

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