On the Origin of Concept of “Intersectionality” in Criminology: The Civil Rights Movement and the Rise of “Scholarship of Confrontation”

ABSTRACT

“Intersectionality” has been a key theory in feminist criminology. However, its origin remains disputed. Some have argued it was produced by black feminists in the 1980s. Others have said it was produced by black women in nineteenth-century. The argument of this paper is that it emerged in the 1960s and became popular in the 1970s. It will demonstrate that the key causes of its emergence were the increasing popular concern with the socioeconomic plight of blacks in those decades, and blacks’ discontent with the American academia and their rejection of mainstream theories that were used to explain their socioeconomic plight

Notes

¹ Available at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5126/.

² Collins and Bilge (2016:71) have pointed to 1960s’ social movements and the ‘multiple narratives of intersectionality’ as the source of the concept. However, this conception cannot be reconciled with the argument as to the nineteenth-century root of the concept. The difficulty is the result of their failure to make the distinction that I have made in my argument (i.e., intersectionality as a general concept and a concept with scientific pretensions).

³ For example, see Roxanne Donovan and Michelle Williams’ (2002:95–106).

⁴ According to Greenebaum (1999:42) these statements betrayed an essentialist assumption: class-race-gender were taken to be ‘major factors’ influencing all women’s lives. [Italic original].

⁵ Mary A. Weathers (1969). “An Argument For Black Women’s Liberation As a Revolutionary Force”. Available at: https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/mary-ann-weathers-an-argument-for-black-womens-liberation-as-a-revolutionary-force/. Accessed February 4, 2018.

⁶ Providing assessments of the soundness of various authors’ arguments and theories mentioned in this paper is beyond its space and aim limitations.

⁷ A key difficulty of intersectionality has been diverse uses of the concept of “class”. Various authors have either used Karl Marx’s, Max Weber’s, or economic notions of class. To Marx, it signifies relation to the means of production. Under capitalism, there are two classes: capitalists (bourgeoisie) and workers (proletariat). The former own the means of production; the latter do not and, therefore, have to sell their labor-power for a wage to the former. To Max Weber, “class” is a socioeconomic concept that refers to a group of people with similar income, life-chances (education, jobs, health, etc.), and lifestyles (i.e., ways of behaving with different degrees of ‘esteem, honor and prestige attached to them’) (St. Clair Drake 1965:5). The economic concept of class emphasizes income and other material or non-material assets (real estate, degree, etc.). Strictly speaking, notions such as upper class, middle class, upper middle class, lower middle class, or lower class have no place in Marx’s thought. However, they are meaningful if Weber’s or economic conceptions of class are used.

⁸ It contained more black women than black males because they were more successful in attaining middle-class jobs (Landry 1987:110).

⁹ It was this chronic poverty that later in the 1970s gave birth to the notions of “underclass” and “black welfare queen.” Despite gradual economic improvement for many blacks since the 1950s, many others remained irremediably poor (Dunbar 1984). This was the group that the term “underclass” meant to cover, i.e., the layer of black poor that seemed unreachable by any form of governmental aid or planning. The white poor thought that the governmental help to blacks had only helped to create a group of lazy deviants (Harris 2009). The “black welfare queen” was the archetype. It reflected the white backlash of the 1970s, which was caused by the hatred of the white working-class for “big government”, liberals and blacks.

¹⁰ Similar ideas had been developed in the early nineteenth-century by black intellectuals; they had encouraged blacks to uphold white-middle-class values as the way to socioeconomic success (Wright 2016).

¹¹ These studies often applied Robert K. Merton’s famous theory introduced in “Social Structure and Anomie” (American Sociological Review, 1938, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 672–682).

¹² As gauged by measures such as a type of profession, income level, ownership of residential property, egalitarian division of household chores between husband and wife, possession of academic degrees, and engagement in artistic activities.

¹³ The theory soon became the object of sharp scholarly criticism and was abandoned. Key problems pointed to be blatant sexism, racism and a host of other methodological problems (see Billingsley 1969; Herzog and Lewis 1970; Scott 1982; Staples 1970). The image of black matriarch was also criticized for providing a convenient rape-myth.

¹⁴ Applications of Park’s theory, albeit with revisions, to the black community provided some support for its predictions about racial prejudice. For example, Edward F. Frazier had combined Park’s theory with Ernest W. Burgess’ concentric zone theory and had applied it to the integrative efforts of black families in ghettos of Chicago and New York. He noted a progressive movement of black families from the center of the ghetto outward toward the periphery where population was racially mixed (Frazier 1937). However, the movement was slow due to numerous socioeconomic obstacles. Key among these was a strong racial prejudice closer to the periphery.

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Notes on contributors

Reza Barmaki

Reza Barmaki’s main interest is criminological theory.