Intersectional Justice: An Overview

For centuries, marginalized and racialized peoples have been fighting to be treated fairly, equitably and with humanity.

What does it mean to be categorized and labeled according to your race, gender, sexuality, economic background, the way you think or understand the world?

What if these labels stick? Follow you wherever you go?

How do you fight labels you don't feel are fair or accurate or you just don't want to be labelled?

We can fight back. 

Similar to social justice, intersectional justice is concerned with dismantling systems that unfairly create and uphold social, political, legal and economic imbalances. Intersectional Justice (IJ) goes one step further to consider people who have been classified and labelled in multiple ways (race, "ability", language, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, etc.). 

Thanks to Kimberle Crenshaw, we understand that some categories meet others like streets do, at intersections. "Intersectionality" is a way to talk about the ways in which being pushed into one social category or another, complicates who we are, how we're perceived in society.

Black and Indigenous youth with intellectual and/or developmental dis/abilities are often categorized not only according to race and culture, but also according to other socially constructed categories that feed society's intellectual and developmental expectations.

Intersectional Justice is a way to resist the status quo.

Intersectional Justice resists multi-marginalizing social categories. Resistance involves confronting, challenging, defying and even re-claiming multi-layered labels.

IJR 

Distinct from social justice research, Intersectional Justice Research (IJR)  is (typically community-based research) that aims to disrupt multi-marginalizing social categories like race, ability, language, sexuality, ethnicity, etc., to resist and reject the systemic oppression that presents as the status quo.  

The following list of IJR resources is not exhaustive, but it's a great place to start!

INTERSECTIONALITY

Cho, S., Crenshaw, K. W., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies: Theory, applications, and praxis. Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 38(4), 785-810. 

IJ PEDAGOGY (EDUCATION)

Case, K. A. (Ed.). (2016). Intersectional pedagogy: Complicating identity and social justice. Routledge. 

Moore, A. (2018). Intersectional Pedagogy: Complicating Identity and Social Justice. Critical Questions in Education, 9(1), 74-79. 

Annamma, S. A., & Winn, M. (2019). Transforming our mission: Animating teacher education through intersectional justice. Theory Into Practice, 58(4), 318-327. 

Beneke, M. R. (2021). Mapping socio-spatial constructions of normalcy: whiteness and ability in teacher candidates’ educational trajectories. Whiteness and Education, 6(1), 92-113. 

Niles, G. Y., & Monaco, E. A. H. (2019). Privilege, Social Identity and Autism: Preparing Preservice Practitioners for Intersectional Pedagogy. DADD Online, 112. 

ENVIRONMENTALISM THROUGH an IJ LENS

Amster, R., & Kato, Y. (2018). Engaging Narratives: Environmental Essentialism and Intersectional Justice. Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship, 2(3), 5.

Goodling, E. (2020). Intersecting hazards, intersectional identities: A baseline Critical Environmental Justice analysis of US homelessness. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 3(3), 833-856. 

Carfore, K. (2021). Ecofeminist Theology: Intersectional Justice and Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism. Feminist Theology, 29(3), 234-246.

IJ APPROACHES to HEALTHCARE 

Borras, A. M. (2021). Toward an Intersectional Approach to Health Justice. International Journal of Health Services, 51(2), 206-225. 

Lacombe-Duncan, A. (2016). An intersectional perspective on access to HIV-related healthcare for transgender women. Transgender health, 1(1), 137-141. 

Kulesza, M., Matsuda, M., Ramirez, J. J., Werntz, A. J., Teachman, B. A., & Lindgren, K. P. (2016). Towards greater understanding of addiction stigma: Intersectionality with race/ethnicity and gender. Drug and alcohol dependence, 169, 85-91. 

Semlyen, J., Ali, A., & Flowers, P. (2018). Intersectional identities and dilemmas in interactions with healthcare professionals: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of British Muslim gay men. Culture, health & sexuality, 20(9), 1023-1035. 

IJ in DIS/ABILITY RESEARCH

Cascio, M. A., Weiss, J. A., & Racine, E. (2020). Making autism research inclusive by attending to intersectionality: a review of the research ethics literature. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 7. 

Gibson, A. N., & Hanson-Baldauf, D. (2019). Beyond sensory story time: An intersectional analysis of information seeking among parents of autistic individuals. Library Trends, 67(3), 550-575. 

Oswald, A. G., Avory, S., & Fine, M. (2021). Intersectional expansiveness borne at the neuroqueer nexus. Psychology & Sexuality, 1-12.