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Oppression is a complex term that aims to understand the power struggles between particular groups of people. Those who are subjected to control and discrimination, people in higher power purposely ignore the social conditions that people of colour live in. This is strategically done so that they can create their own laws, policies, literature, history, science, patterns of production, media representation, and other living arrangements structured around conditions other than these, so they better suit the conditions of non-visible minorities. [1]

Approaches to Anti-oppression do not maintain that any individual is either all-oppressed or all-oppressing because dimensions of race, class, and gender do not not fall under simple hierarchical lines. [2] Approaches to anti-oppression seek to challenge these subjectivities and highlight the multi-dimensionality of the “isms,” which include racism, classism, ageism, sexism, sexuality, ethnicity and disability. Sexuality, ethnicity, religion, age, ability and other dimensions of oppression and inequality that are frequently pressed to the side, while the widespread discourse on oppression focuses on race, class, and gender.[3]


Intersectional Approach[edit]

Historical Perspectives[edit]

Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw to define the union of race, gender, and class at experiential and structural points, when in conjunction with the multiracial feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the “re-visionist Feminist theory".[4] Both Kimberle Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins used the term “intersection” which introduced a new way of thinking about oppression as multi-dimensional. The term later grew in popularity in the late 1980s when Patricia Hill Collins re-introduced it through an Interlocking approach.

Contemporary Perspectives[edit]

Anti-Oppressive practice focuses on changing social structural arrangements that influence and emphasize personal and cultural oppressions. Similarly, there are several models that stem from practicing from this framework. Particularly, the focus will be on the Intersectionality model. The Intersectional(ity) Model is described by Bob Mullaly (2002) as “different oppressions intersect at innumerable points in everyday life and are mutually reinforcing, creating a total system of oppression in which one continuum of stratification cannot be addressed in isolation from all others,” [5] For example, this means that a person’s race meets or intersects with class, age, sexuality, or any other identity positions.

Moreover, some scholars argue that instead of focusing on the majority culture, the theory of Intersectionality focuses on minority culture. Within these practices, workers tend to focus on the basic trinity of race, class and gender. Jordan-Zachery (2007) demonstrates how people of colour, especially poor black women, are constantly marginalized and oppressed by their social locations. This is further elaborated by Zack (2005) who mentions that “all women are intersectional subjects…because of the possibility that their womanhood (already a socially disadvantaged position) will intersect with other social positions to multiply disadvantage them.”[6] Furthermore, the notion of the black woman has always been the exemplar to showcase Intersectionality. A black woman experiences multiple oppressions as opposed to a black man or a white woman. Why? Not only does she experiences oppression as a woman (patriarchy and sexism), but she also experiences it as a black person (racism). In essence, her colour interacts with her gender. However, it is important to note that not all black women experience multiple oppressions similarly. By underscoring the multidimensionality of marginalized subjects' lived experiences, the underlying basis is homogeneity.[7]

The theory of Intersectionality stresses complexity. Complexities within categories, subject formations, positions and identities are all intertwined. Mullaly (2002) confirms that any homogenization of people over-simplifies the complexities and varieties of social reality, by not acknowledging the incredible diversity inherent within people’s various gender, class, race, age, sexuality and other social positions. Further, Nash (2008) outlines that in focusing primarily on a black woman’s race or gender identity; the ‘black woman’ becomes a fixed category that is romanticized and fixed in a trans-historical context. In contrast, Peggy McIntosh’s (1990) argument on white privilege states that “her daily experience[s] that [she]…took for granted” as a white woman, can protect her from being harmed and mistreated by others. [8] Furthermore, white privilege is seen as normative and invincible. McIntosh (1990) highlights that “whiteness protected [her] from many kinds of hostility, distress and violence…such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race or sex,” which differs from the many experiences of Black women. [9]

Subsequently, when using the Intersectional(ity) model to practice from an Anti-oppressive framework, power, identity, domination and privilege all work simultaneously and in a complex manner. In highlighting how identity affects individuals, it is imperative that “...a nuanced conception of identity recognizes the ways in which positions of dominance and subordination work in complex and intersecting ways to constitute subjects’ experiences of personhood.”[10] In the realm of domination, Mullaly (2002) asserts that “multiple oppression becomes even more complex when forms of domination are factored into the situation.” [11] For example, in the case of black women, if one woman was affluent, she would experience less discrimination based on her class position than one who was poor. Similarly, it is evident that within the Intersectional model, individuals can experience multiple oppressions, but they may also possess privilege status. Hence, subjects may be victims of patriarchy and privileged by race. By understanding the complexities of privilege and oppression, Intersectionality offers a robust conception of both identity and oppression. [12] Finally, the concept of power and how it is exercised within the Intersectional model is articulated by Knudsen. She explains that:

the focus on power in theory of intersectionality may be connected to mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion in the Foucauldian sense of power. With the concepts of exclusion and inclusion power may be analysed as continually moving. Rather than viewing exclusion barely as a matter of suppression, exclusion involves discourses of opposition and productive power with negotiations about the meaning of gender, race, ethnicity etc.[13]

Intersectionality emphasizes relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relations and subject formations. In addition, the model recognizes that intersecting oppressions are both complex and potentially volatile.[14] Furthermore, all of these social categories are always intersecting with each other to form one’s whole identity. It is important not to homogenize the lived experiences of the individuals experiencing oppression. Subsequently, as Mullaly (2002) points out “the heterogeneity that exists within subordinate groups also adds to the complexity of intersecting oppressions.”[15] It is imperative to understand that identities are constructed in a quagmire of structural politics upheld by dominant ideals. This favours the majority culture which obscures white privilege as noted by Peggy McIntosh (1990).

Interlocking Approach[edit]

It has been asserted that race-class-gender theories did not resonate among scholars until Kimberle Williams Crenshaw's and Patricia Hill Collins' usage of the word “intersection." They offered something vividly compelling and powerful, yet this approach is often criticized for violating its original spirit of Intersectionality. It generated attention for the categories to which individuals have been assigned, rather than the processes of such social structures. [16]. The Ontario Human Rights Commission (2001) provided a discussion paper regarding an Intersectional approach to discrimination. Their "definition" of Intersectionality was misconstrued using words such as confluence of grounds, indicating an Interlocking analysis instead. [17]

Scholars then introduced other terms to clarify their original spirit of Intersectionality such as Collins (1986), when she emphasized Interlocking oppression: to reflect how race, class, and gender are not separate entities that intersect one another, but are completely bound up with one another, incapable of being separated.[18]. Those who advocate an Interlocking approach argue that race, class, and gender are all part of something larger, which Collins describes as a single, historically created system. [19] The metaphor imagery of a puzzle may be used to describe an Interlocking approach: finishing the puzzle makes you realize that the way these pieces fit together already exists and the fun lies in finding it.[20]

According to Sherene Razack’s (1998) Interlocking Systems of Domination, an Interlocking approach explains that people can be oppressed in interlocking and interconnected ways, based on their race, class, and gender. [21] Instead, it is vitally important to explore in a historical and site-specific way the meaning of race, economic status, class, disability, sexuality, and gender as they come together to structure women in different and shifting positions of power and privilege. [22]

For example, a Muslim, lesbian, woman of colour, Mona Awad would be oppressed in four different ways, based on religion, sexual orientation, gender, and race. She demonstrates an Interlocking experience of oppression through her simultaneous experience of racism, sexism, and Islamophobia that worked together to victimize her. The sexual harassment Awad faced was done within the context of her religion and ethnic minority status. Awad having her pant leg lifted was an Islamophobic form of sexual harassment. Her boss not only violated her sexually but he based that violation on what he thought were Islamic codes of modesty and thus ridiculed her religion while sexually harassing her. The sexual harassment, combined with the Islamophobia demonstrated through a prohibition of flexible hours during Ramadan (among other incidences), and blatant racism of disliking Asians, demonstrates how her employers thought of her as inferior not just based on her gender, but a combination of her being a Muslim woman of colour. The harassment she faced must be understood within the context of her being a Muslim woman of colour as opposed to one single ‘social category.' [23]

Interlocking and Intersectional[edit]

Ivy Ken (2007) is a prominent scholar of an Interlocking approach, who identifies an advantage of the interlocking imagery as opposed to intersecting in two ways. Firstly, it is important to highlight oppression in ways, according to social categories (Intersecting approach), which is also limiting in the sense that it resulted in what Ken refers to as ‘identity politics’: “a practice at a look-at-this-woman-and-how-she-is-different level.” [24] Therefore, the Intersecting approach tends to reify notions about biological or identity categories, rather than promoting the investigation of how social locations get structured as they are. Furthermore, Collins argues against the widespread Intersectional idea that Black women have a more accurate view of oppression than other groups do (suggesting that oppression is essentially additive—the more kinds of oppression equate to clearer visions). We must acknowledge the unique vantage point women of colour may adopt, but also that those who are in severely disadvantaged structural locations do not necessarily have all-knowing perspectives. [25] The second argument against an Intersecting approach is questioning the nature of the two opposing theories. Ken (2007) and Collins (2000) would both argue that the process of ranking eliminates the need to identify that the relationship between race-class-gender dimensions is essentially one of dependence. Human rights cases based on multiple grounds are typically looked at, either sequentially or by strategically omitting the consideration of other grounds at all. The Ontario Human Rights Commission (2001) argues that both methodologies put emphasis on a single ground: “categorizing such discrimination as primarily racially oriented, or primarily gender-oriented misconceives the reality of discrimination.” [26] Understanding social dimensions in terms of rank only reifies them.

Conceptual Imagery and Social Processes[edit]

Structures like race, class, and gender create, shape, influence and depend on each other through processes. They mutually form each other, and approaches to Anti-oppression should determine how that happens and what the result (and constantly shifting) relationships among them are. [27] In analyzing Anti-oppressive approaches to race, class, and gender, no one of these dimensions can be fully understood outside the context of the other two. A further question of analysis: Can it be understood outside the context of other axes of oppression? Sexuality, ethnicity, religion, age, ability and other dimensions of oppression and inequality are often pushed to the side with the abundance of discourse focusing solely on race/class/gender dynamics as prominent and dominant. This is problematic when larger social contexts are not even considered in most research on oppression. [28]

Moreover, observing from a larger sociological conceptual scope, another question can be pulled from the discussion of oppression: Is it a system of oppression with parts (race/class/gender), or do race/class/gender exist as structures of oppression in and of themselves? Scholarly discourse reflects both arguments while others remain inconsistent in their work. For example, Collins’ usage of the words ‘system’ and ‘structure’ are inconsistent and this is conceptually confusing. Ken (2007) suggests that an Interlocking approach may enable a specific view that race, class, and gender are structures that interlock to create a larger system of oppression.

Ken (2007) suggests that we let the language of ‘systems’ go, due to the fact that oppression is the remaining common denominator among them. [29] Perhaps there is a need to invoke disorder and problematize the existing conceptual images when thinking about oppression. Intersectional analysis has traditionally fostered a genetics-obsessed climate that reified the mainstream notions about ‘essential’ characteristics, rather than emphasizing the social processes through which those characteristics are noticed, interpreted, and used as the basis for relegating people to different social locations. [30].

Razack (1998) acknowledges that we constantly interpret the words and acts of others, and that we do so subconsciously as well in conforming ways. In understanding oppression, there should be sensitivity towards culture-specific norms in the inclusion of religion, race/ethnicity, and class. [31]. Razack (1998) refers to two points regarding the use of language and labels. First, it wraps arguments in a mantle of race even as one theorizes how racial subjects come into existence through gender hierarchies and vice versa. Second, it leaves the impression that colour is what matters most, even when describing the very different histories and regulatory processes that affect it, as largely exemplified through intersectional research. [32]

Oywumi (1997) suggests that concepts of race, class, and gender (if they exist at all), means something different for people regarding their place and time. They may simultaneously mean something different and even be contradictory in other places at other times. An example of pre-colonial Nigeria highlights that no words within the Yoruba language differentiated ‘boys’ from ‘girls’. The literary labels were non-existent and therefore the social meanings attached to them were not processed in that community. [33] Furthermore, Ken understands the persistent circular effect of phenomenology—attaching meanings with social experiences and labels: “There is a dialectical relationship: people’s orientations to the world—their general dispositions; their somewhat unconsciously developed perspectives—are both structured and structuring, which is to say that they came to influence the very forces that contributed to their own formation.” [34]

The Interlocking approach also has flaws. First, it does not allow for race, class, and gender to ever be together in unique ways. Also, referring back to the puzzle game metaphor, the puzzle pieces as social structures that interlock to form social systems and institutions relies on the imagery of solid pieces, and not apt to change. Race, class, and gender take unique forms and institutions that result from their combinations. In addition to constructing each other and also larger systems and institutions, they also construct people. The notion of ‘who we are’ is always being created, constructed, and manipulated: “They are constitutive of our subjecthood. We constitute ourselves as subjects through these categories and our subjecthood gets constituted by others through these structures, using them.” [35]

Moving forward in Approaches to Anti-oppression[edit]

The historical formation of discourse around oppression regarding race, class, and gender emerged from Black Feminist thought. The compelling arguments of an Intersectionality approach that has highlighted the difference among individuals and complex power struggles through homogenous discourse. It has been identified the merge into an Interlocking approach that argues the importance of something larger than categorical differences. Moreover, the comparative fallacies of both Intersectional and Interlocking approaches may suggest a 'side-step' away from the current conceptual imagery and labels regarding oppression. Significantly, what has been discovered is our limited ability to fully comprehend what race, class, and gender mean for each other if we continue to rely on these images alone. There is a need for new discourse on approaches to Anti-oppression to interrogate the integral social processes that continue to shape and form our personal perspectives on oppression today.

Approaches to Anti-oppression gallery[edit]

See Also[edit]

External Links and Further Suggested Reading[edit]

CA: Wadsworth.
  • Collins, P. H. (1989). The social construction of black feminist thought. Signs, 14(4), 745–773.
  • Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black
feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), 14–32.
  • Crenshaw, K. W. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence
against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299.
  • Foucault, M. (1990 [1978]). The history of sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (Robert Hurley, trans.).
New York: Random House, Vintage Books.
  • hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Boston: South End Press.
  • Oywu`mı´, O. (1997). The invention of women: Making an African sense of western gender discourses.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • West, C., & Zimmerman, D. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1, 125–151.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Ken, I. (2007). Race-class-gender-theory: An image(ry) problem. Gender Issues, 24, p.3. Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http://www.springerlink.com
  2. ^ Ibid, p. 5.
  3. ^ Mullaly, B. (2002). Challenging oppression: A critical social work approach. New York: Oxford University Press.
  4. ^ Grabham, Emily. (2009). Intersectionality and beyond. New York: Routledge-Cavendish. 23-80.
  5. ^ Mullaly, B. (2002). Challenging oppression: A critical social work approach. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 151.
  6. ^ Nash, J.C. (2008). Re-thinking intersectionality. Feminist Review, 89, p.10. Retrieved May 3, 2009, from http://www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/journal/v89/n1/pdf/fr20084a.pdf
  7. ^ Ibid, p. 1-15.
  8. ^ McIntosh, P. (1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. p. 6. Retrieved May 6, 2009, from http://www.case.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf
  9. ^ Ibid, p. 5.
  10. ^ Nash, J.C. (2008). Re-thinking intersectionality. Feminist Review, 89, p.10. Retrieved May 3, 2009, from http://www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/journal/v89/n1/pdf/fr20084a.pdf
  11. ^ Mullaly, B. (2002). Challenging oppression: A critical social work approach. Pp. 155-156 New York: Oxford University Press.
  12. ^ Nash, J.C. (2008). Re-thinking intersectionality. Feminist Review, 89, Pp 1-15. Retrieved May 3, 2009, from http://www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/journal/v89/n1/pdf/fr20084a.pdf
  13. ^ Knudsen, S.V. (2004). Intersectionality – A theoretical inspiration in the analysis of minority cultures and identities in textbooks. p. 7. Retrieved May 3, 2009, from http://www.caen.iufm.fr/colloque_iartem/pdf/knudsen.pdf
  14. ^ Mullaly, B. (2002). Challenging oppression: A critical social work approach. New York: Oxford University Press.
  15. ^ Ibid, p. 169.
  16. ^ Ken, I. (2007). Race-class-gender-theory: An image(ry) problem. Gender Issues, 24, p. 13. Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http:www.springerlink.com
  17. ^ Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2001) An intersectional approach to discrimination: Addressing multiple grounds in human rights claims. p. 3. Policy and Education Branch.
  18. ^ Ken, I. (2007). Race-class-gender-theory: An image(ry) problem. Gender Issues, 24, p. 13. Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http:www.springerlink.com
  19. ^ Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. p. 255. New York: Routledge Press.
  20. ^ Ken, I. (2007). Race-class-gender-theory: An image(ry) problem. Gender Issues, 24, p. 15. Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http:www.springerlink.com
  21. ^ Razack, S. H. (1998) Looking white people in the eye: Gender, race, and culture in courtrooms and classrooms. p. 11. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  22. ^ Ibid, p. 12.
  23. ^ Britten, N. (2009) HBOS Bank had Institutionally sexist Environment. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from Telegraph.co.uk: http:www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/law and order/4161734/HBOS-bank-had-institutionally-sexist-enironment-tribunal-hears.html
  24. ^ Ken, I. (2007). Race-class-gender-theory: An image(ry) problem. Gender Issues, 24, p. 14. Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http:www.springerlink.com
  25. ^ Ibid, p.5.
  26. ^ Ibid, p. 6.
  27. ^ Ibid, p. 11
  28. ^ Ibid, p. 8.
  29. ^ Ken, I. (2007). Race-class-gender-theory: An image(ry) problem. Gender Issues, 24, p. 15. Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http:www.springerlink.com.
  30. ^ Ibid, p. 4
  31. ^ Razack, S. H. (1998) Looking white people in the eye: Gender, race, and culture in courtrooms and classrooms. p. 8. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  32. ^ Ibid, p. 11.
  33. ^ Ken, I. (2007). Race-class-gender-theory: An image(ry) problem. Gender Issues, 24, p. 7. Retrieved April 26, 2009, from http:www.springerlink.com
  34. ^ Ibid, p. 6
  35. ^ Ibid, p. 16.
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