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THE INTERSECTIONAL FIFTH BLACK WOMAN1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2014

Devon W. Carbado  and
Mitu Gulati
Devon W. Carbado*
Affiliation:
UCLASchool of Law
Mitu Gulati
Affiliation:
Duke UniversitySchool of Law
*
Professor Devon W. Carbado, UCLA School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90095. E-mail: carbado@law.ucla.edu
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Abstract

In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw published Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, an article that drew explicitly on Black feminist criticism, and challenged three prevailing frameworks: 1) the male-centered nature of antiracist politics, which privileged the experiences of heterosexual Black men; 2) the White-centered nature of feminist theorizing, which privileged the experiences of heterosexual White women; and 3) the “single-axis”/sex or race-centered nature of antidiscrimination regimes, which privileged the experiences of heterosexual White women and Black men. Crenshaw demonstrated how people within the same social group (e.g., African Americans) are differentially vulnerable to discrimination as a result of other intersecting axes of disadvantage, such as gender, class, or sexual orientation.

This essay builds on that insight by articulating a performative conceptualization of race. It assumes that a judge is sympathetic to intersectionality and thus recognizes that Black women are often disadvantaged based on the intersection of their race and sex, among other social factors. This essay asks: How is that judge likely to respond to a case in which a firm promotes four Black women but not the fifth? The judge could conclude that there is no discrimination because the firm promoted four people (Black women) with the same intersectional identity as the fifth (a Black woman). We argue that this evidentiary backdrop should not preclude a finding of discrimination. It is plausible that our hypothetical firm utilized racially associated ways of being—performative criteria (self presentation, accent, demeanor, conformity, dress, and hair style)—to differentiate among and between the Black women. The firm might have drawn an intra-group, or intra-intersectional, line between the fifth Black women and the other four based on the view that the fifth Black woman is “too Black.” We describe the ease with which institutions can draw such lines and explain why doing so might constitute impermissible discrimination. Our aim is to broaden the conceptual terms upon which we frame both social categories and discrimination.

Keywords

IntersectionalityPerformativityAntidiscrimination LawRaceGenderSexual OrientationIntraracial
Type
Intersectionality
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Fall 2013 , pp. 527 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2013 

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Footnotes

1

Support for this article was provided by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities (MD00508 and MD006923). An earlier version of this article appears as Carbado, Devon W. and Mitu Gulati (2001). The Fifth Black Woman. Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, 11: 701–729.

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