Disability and the problem of lazy intersectionality

Abstract

Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality has been used to include different dimensions of difference and exclusion. We suggest here, however, that intersectional analyses may paradoxically further exclude discussions of the impact of disability in interaction with other factors. We outline three ways in which intersectionality may be incorrectly used. First, there is selective intersectionality where only certain forms of exclusion are considered. Second is subtractive intersectionality in which the experience of privilege may be seen as removing the lived reality of disability exclusion. Finally, we discuss last instance intersectionality in which one particular historical experience of oppression may be seen to cancel out other ongoing forms of exclusion. All these types of misuse of intersectionality may contribute to disability exclusion. Disability theorists should use concepts of intersectionality carefully and with caution.

Keywords:

• Intersectionality
• disability
• exclusion
• prejudice
• social theory
• South Africa

The notion of intersectionality was introduced by Crenshaw, in two now classic essays (Crenshaw 1989, 1991). Crenshaw argued that social movements foregrounding the interests of oppressed groups failed to recognise the complex interaction of social positionings such as race, gender, sexuality and class (Carbado et al. 2013). She noted that American law traced the nature of discrimination on the basis of race and sex by means of the prototyped experiences of black males and white females, eliding the ways in which femaleness and blackness interact in the lives of black women to create unique patterns of disadvantage not reducible to an analysis of either identity. Crenshaw urged that we complexify our analyses, by mapping the intersections between identity markers associated with patterns of socially engendered disadvantage, to better pinpoint the positions of persons facing layered and multifarious adversity. All of this makes very good analytical sense. However, problems also arise. For example, it has often been noted that an intersectional analysis, if casually applied, can lend itself to creation of hierarchies of disadvantage, where imponderables such as ‘suffering’ are compared in a quasi-linear fashion. In our reading, such simplifications are wildly opposed to Crenshaw’s intentions. Disability may be a particular case in which misreadings occur (Frederick and Shifrer 2019).

What motivated us to write this piece was our observation that a lazy, yet commonplace application of intersectionality in our institutions serves to conceal and deny disability disadvantage, rather than interrogate it. Both organisations and individuals may quickly settle on available ways to conceal or marginalise aspects of disability (Watermeyer 2013). What presents itself as an intersectional approach may paradoxically allow for minimising disability.

Notwithstanding objections to the contrary, interest groups in intersectional discussions on disadvantage are invested in the primacy of certain identity markers over others. Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach (2008, cited in Carbado 2013) instruct us to ‘move beyond the question of whose group is worse off’ in order to circumscribe the unique forms of oppression endured by people with ‘intersecting subordinate identities’. The invitation here is towards embracing complexity. Yet, in practice this is often not how the discussion goes. An analysis which seeks to debunk oppression will, understandably, gravitate towards those areas where disadvantaged identities seem to cluster, returning us to the additive, ‘double jeopardy’ model which Crenshaw’s analysis expressly sought to rescue us from. As the poorly understood, relative newcomer that it is, the complex disadvantage which disability brings is at best underestimated, and at worst effaced altogether.

It is noteworthy that it is ‘subordinated’ identities which we are asked to attend to, while simultaneously putting our assumptions about the relative disadvantage of identity categories aside. Despite its best intentions, it seems, intersectionality in practice brings a logic which resolves towards a hierarchy of suffering. We wish to emphasise that these problems occur in practice, and contradict the far more nuanced accounts to be found in the works of a host of intersectional theorists. Carbado (2013, 813–814), for example, assures us that ‘mapping fixed hierarchies onto particular identities obscure that both power and social categories are contextually constituted’. Carbado (2013, 814) goes on to say that ‘intersectionality applies even where there is no double jeopardy. Indeed … where there is no jeopardy at all’. Its intended purpose, therefore, is to sketch a complex picture of social circumstances, involving privilege, adversity, and everything in between, in order to understand their interaction as lived reality.

In the case of critical race theory (CRT) and critical race feminism (CRF), from which intersectionality emanates, the primacy of race as the defining referent of social destiny is firmly established (Gillborn 2015), creating yet further difficulties. Erevelles and Minear (2010) criticise CRF’s inclusion of disability only as a context, magnifier or nuance, which adds to the oppression of gender, but has no unitary standing of its own. They go on to write that the problem with relying on a particular marker of identity ‘is that the single characteristic that is fore-grounded (e.g. female or black) is expected to explain all of the other life experiences of the individual or the group’ (2010, 129).

In our own context of post-apartheid South Africa, the problematic application of intersectionality shows in at least three anomalous ways. First is what we will refer to as subtractive intersectionality. As a profoundly unequal society, where economic status coincides to a significant degree with race, South Africa is unsurprisingly preoccupied with the question of privilege. In a lazy intersectional analysis, what this can mean is that blackness means disadvantage, and blackness combined with femaleness, and perhaps with disability, exacerbates disadvantage. Disability appears here, as in Erevelles and Minear (2010) critique, not as a unitary feature, but merely a modifier through which the definitive variable of race is refracted. But furthermore, when whiteness is combined with disability, something surprising occurs. The fact that disability has no standing of its own, and must be propped up by blackness in order to have relevance, is revealed by the fact that when combined with whiteness, its impact dissolves altogether. In other words, as one’s disadvantage is, problematically, added to through the presence of blackness, femaleness and disability, so too can it be subtracted by the presence of white privilege. The reality of white privilege, especially in a racialised society such as South Africa, is beyond debate, and we agree that it is an important issue. But the subtractive intersectional logic surrounding disability implies that, in the lives of black South Africans as well as white, disability in and of itself has no socially disadvantaging impact. Somehow, disability’s endless forms of embodiment in interaction with multifarious environments, and resultant myriad forms of disadvantage, simply vanish when lacking the support of race. The effect of this is that the question of what disability disadvantage actually is, when not simply an adjunct to the primary identifier of race, need not be explored. This is as much of a problem to disabled black people as it is to anyone else, as the particular, complex, dynamic nature of disadvantage, engendered by the interaction of extraordinary bodies with diverse environments, is effaced by an analysis which will always resolve in the direction of race, and to a lesser degree, gender. A common observation made while applying the logic of intersectionality is that the experience of disability will be different for individuals positioned in different intersectional locations. Of course this is true, but what is erroneous is the mistaking of this observation for some sort of real knowledge about disability itself. We need to begin with all that is essential to the phenomenon—finding out all we can about the contextualised experience of disability, in a sustained manner, before it then becomes both useful and important to map the ways in which disability experience will differ across variations in identity. This is no small task. If the analysis begins elsewhere, such as with race or gender, in our view a critical interrogation of disability disadvantage will never be reached; for a world reluctant to get too close to the unruliness of disability, it will simply be too easy to avoid.

The second anomalous instantiation is what we term selective intersectionality. This is similar to subtractive intersectionality, but there is not the overt argument made that race or gender somehow can take away disability-related disadvantage. In this model, disability is simply overlooked. Selective intersectionality goes further, however, as it emphasises certain features above others. In South Africa, for example, LGBTQIA + status is often mentioned as a feature of intersectionality (Francis 2021; Reygan, Henderson, and Khan 2022), with disability sometimes not mentioned at all (Davids and Matebeni 2017; Maxwell et al. 2016; Smith 2015), though there are of course exceptions (Mohamed and Shefer 2015; Reygan and Steyn 2017). Issues of discrimination against LGBTQIA + people are clearly important in the African and South African context, and it is to be welcomed that these are raised in African discussions of intersectionality, but our concern is that though nowadays it would not be acceptable to discuss intersectionality in South Africa without mentioning LGBTQIA + issues, it is still possible to do so without mentioning disability. Something is happening here in the use of selective intersectionality, with politically salient questions of exclusion being more talked about and considered than issues of disability which, as we have suggested elsewhere, remain hidden (Swartz et al. 2018).

The third example we wish to mention is what we term ‘last instance’ intersectionality. This is not something we have seen written about but both of us, at different higher education institutions, have heard talked about. In the context of discussions of employment equity in universities, colleagues have suggested that the real intention of employment equity legislation in South Africa is to deal with legacies of discrimination and exclusion which were caused by apartheid. Here, apartheid becomes the ‘last instance’—the basis on which all decisions about employment equity should be made. In this logic, race cancels out other forms of disadvantage, including, for example, the ongoing everyday difficulties faced by blind people in the academy. It also argues, implicitly, that there was no disadvantage for white disabled people under apartheid, which is untrue.

In summary, though the concept of intersectionality is useful and important, it is easily abused and it may, paradoxically, be used to obscure the embodied reality of disability exclusion and oppression. It is incumbent on disability studies scholars to engage critically with what has been touted as a central concept for critical scholarship.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.