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Intersectionality
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At a glance
Source-by-source
“The complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect—especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups—to produce and sustain complex inequities.”
APA defines intersectionality as the cumulative way multiple forms of discrimination combine to produce compounding inequities, and attributes the theory to Kimberlé Crenshaw's 1989 University of Chicago Legal Forum article, with the Combahee River Collective (1977) cited as an early expression.
“A lens that recognizes identities such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation and others cannot be examined in isolation from one another; they interact and intersect in individuals' lives, in society and in social systems.”
The Diversity Style Guide frames intersectionality as a lens for seeing how identities interact rather than function in isolation, noting that a single person can simultaneously experience privilege and oppression across their different identities.
“Intersectionality is simply a prism to see the interactive effects of various forms of discrimination and disempowerment. It looks at the way that racism… interacts with patriarchy, heterosexism, classism, xenophobia…”
Racial Equity Tools presents intersectionality through Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw's own words, describing it as a prism for seeing how racism interacts with patriarchy, heterosexism, classism, and xenophobia to create distinct, overlapping vulnerabilities.
Synthesis
The three sources converge on a single definition with no avoid or contested axis: intersectionality names how multiple forms of discrimination overlap and interlock to produce experiences that are distinct from any one of them alone. APA describes “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect.” The Diversity Style Guide calls it “a lens that recognizes identities such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation and others cannot be examined in isolation from one another.” Racial Equity Tools quotes Crenshaw directly — “a prism to see the interactive effects of various forms of discrimination and disempowerment.” All three prescribe the term for use.
The shared point is practical: intersectionality is a framework for analysis, not an identity label a person carries. A communicator uses it to describe how identities compound, not as a category to assign to someone. Two of the sources say so explicitly, that one person can hold privilege and oppression at once (DSG’s “a White gay man can simultaneously experience privilege and oppression”; RET’s example of a Black woman whose experience of gender and racial oppression differs from both a white woman’s and a Black man’s). Self-identification stays primary: defer to how subjects describe their own intersecting identities rather than ascribing them.
The chronology is consistent across the sources that document it. APA attributes the theory to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1989 article in the University of Chicago Legal Forum and cites the Combahee River Collective’s 1977 statement as one of the earliest expressions; Racial Equity Tools attributes its core definition to Crenshaw directly. The concept is rooted in Black feminist thought, and its treatment in equity-language guidance has stayed the same: defining rather than cautioning.
Audience notes
- Journalists and editors. Intersectionality is standard, usable vocabulary, but it is a framework rather than a label. Use it to explain how overlapping systems shape an experience; do not pin it on a person as an identity category.
- Advocates and internal comms. The most useful move the sources flag is that a single person can hold privilege and oppression simultaneously — leading with that prevents the term from flattening into a synonym for “marginalized.”
- It names an analysis, not an identity. Like systemic racism, intersectionality describes how structures interact, not a trait someone has. Keep the systems level in view.
History note
The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in a 1989 article for the University of Chicago Legal Forum, with the Combahee River Collective’s 1977 statement cited as an earlier expression of the same idea (per APA). Its roots are in Black feminist thought, and its definition has remained stable across the equity-language guidance documented here.
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