UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Kimberlé Crenshaw, Civil Rights activist and feminist will present the Barbara Jordan Lecture, sponsored by the Penn State Africana Research Center, on "Intersectionality 101: Race & Gender in Work, Life & Politics," from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018, in Foster Auditorium in the Paterno Library.
“Intersectionalilty,” a term coined by Crenshaw, calls attention to the multiple forces that create and sustain power and privilege in American society — and contribute to the discrimination and oppression of minority groups. One-dimensional approaches to social justice advocacy continue to divide key constituencies into distant and sometimes competing interests. Nowhere is this division more clearly visible than in discourses surrounding racial and gender bias in the workplace, where one-dimensional approaches often render the experiences of women of color unintelligible.
A leading authority in the area of civil rights, black feminist legal theory, race, racism, and the law, Crenshaw shares her groundbreaking work on "intersectionality" in this fascinating keynote, explaining how our inability to view oppression in society in terms of interrelated categories instead of separate ones — for example, separating gender from racial inequality, instead of merging the two — results in greater oppression for those who stand at the intersection of these categories — such as black women.
The lecture is free and open to the public.