The 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment is an opportunity to reflect on the role of women in American politics. The tools of intersectionality allow scholars to pinpoint the progress and pitfalls produced by ongoing modes of sexism and patriarchy as well as racism and classism. It is now well known that major movements for the rights of American women have not always addressed the issues specific to black women
It is now well known that major movements for the rights of American women have not always addressed the issues specific to black women (Simien Reference Simien2006).
(Simien Reference Simien2006). Indeed, in 1851, Sojourner Truth discussed this issue of not being included in conversations about women’s rights (or civil rights for blacks) in her alleged “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Similarly, the fact that Ida B. Wells and other black women were told to process at the back of the 1913 Women’s March on Washington is another illustration of the historical exclusion of black women by their white counterparts (Boissoneault Reference Boissoneault2017). Decades later and even after the 1965 Voting Rights Act enforced black women’s enfranchisement, the Combahee River Collective (Reference Collective1977) noted the exclusion of issues that affect black women by both 1970s white feminist movements and male-dominated anti-racist movements.
Crenshaw (Reference Crenshaw1991) called the dual exclusion of black women’s political interests by white feminists and male-led anti-racist movements political intersectionality. What are the possibilities for addressing this historical pattern? Although black women have been discussing the specific and mutually constituted challenges brought on by racism, sexism, and classism for well more than a century and a half, the concept, theory, and paradigm of intersectionality is only now increasingly common in scholarly work—and appears to be mainstreaming in everyday political discourse as well (Heaney Reference Heaney2019). In fact, in the wake of the 2016 presidential-election outcome, a multiracial group of women sought to unite Americans under a banner of what Crowder calls intersectional solidarity. As an antidote to the ramifications of political intersectionality, intersectional solidarity is political belief and action orientation that arises from being aware, appreciating, and seeking to address the specific barriers presented by the intersections of racism, classism, and sexism.
In their capacity as political representatives (Brown Reference Brown2014), activists (Lopez Bunyasi and Smith Reference Bunyasi, Tehama and Smith2018), and voters (Slaughter, Crowder, and Greer Reference Slaughter, Crowder and Greer2019), black women have tried to address inequities presented by various modes of exclusion—often serving as the model of intersectional solidarity. However, we are confident in suggesting that social inequity will be transformed (or eradicated) more efficiently if and only if a broader coalition of Americans take on this mantle. Can we find instances of this orientation in Americans’ political participatory actions so that it can be cultivated more broadly? We looked at the place where we might expect to find this sentiment in abundance: the 2017 Women’s March on Washington. If we cannot find it here, we are perhaps in a good position to determine what challenges still exist.
POLITICAL INTERSECTIONALITY AND INTERSECTIONAL SOLIDARITY
Black women face challenges similar to other women and men of color, but the effects of these challenges often are exacerbated for black women—and there also are challenges specific to black women. For instance, Tucker et al. (Reference Tucker, Berg, Callaghan and Hsia2007, 247) asserted, “For the past five decades, black women have consistently experienced an almost four-times greater risk of death from pregnancy complications than have white women.” Relatedly, research shows that even when we control for occupation, location, and level of education, black women’s wages are significantly lower than similarly situated black or white men’s; recent data also show that the wage gap between white and black women is increasing over time (Fisher and Houseworth Reference Fisher and Houseworth2017; Lean In Reference In2019). Moreover, even if black women are married and attain high levels of education, they still fall behind white women in wealth accumulation (Zaw et al. Reference Zaw, Bhattacharya, Price, Hamilton and Darity2017). All told, education is not a great equalizer for black women.
The broad concept of intersectionality helps in understanding how the problems of health, wealth, and income disparities are lived out differently across and within groups. However, political intersectionality highlights the fact that (1) “women of color are situated within at least two subordinate groups that frequently pursue conflicting political agendas”; and (2) mainstream discourses of race and gender, marked by a singular group consciousness, “are often inadequate even to the discrete tasks of articulating the full dimensions of racism and sexism” (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991, 1252).
The specificity of challenges presented to groups that face overlapping sets of oppression are perhaps best addressed when members of society have a sense of intersectional solidarity…
The specificity of challenges presented to groups that face overlapping sets of oppression are perhaps best addressed when members of society have a sense of intersectional solidarity—a political predisposition that is characterized by awareness and distress over subordinate groups whose marginalization is defined by the intersection of two or more forms of oppression.
Intersectional solidarity (IS) leans on the concept of “reflective solidarity,” which requires “opposition to those who would exclude or oppress another” and “mutual recognition of each other’s specificity” (Dean Reference Dean1998). The former is characterized as distress within intersectional solidarity and the latter is characterized by awareness. Building on the organizational theory of intersectionally linked fate (Strolovitch Reference Strolovitch2008; Tormos Reference Tormos2017), IS is defined as a disposition that can be exhibited by anyone who has awareness of their own positionality in reference to marginal subgroups regardless of race, gender, or sexuality; it requires awareness and anguish over the unique challenges that various marginalized groups face. For example, whereas black women are a disadvantaged subgroup relative to white women or black men, black cisgender women are advantaged relative to black transgender women. Signs of IS would arise if cisgender black women indicated that they are aware of and opposed to the particular oppression that black transgender women face.
Scholars of social movements have noted both the perils and the potential that may arise when multiple factions come together to build coalitions. Indeed, extant research leads us to consider conflicting hypotheses on the extent to which IS may arise—even among participants of the 2017 Women’s March. On the one hand, much research would lead us to expect low levels of this predisposition. For example, scholars have noted that white women and male policy makers are much less likely than black women and Latina representatives to work to mitigate the restrictive aspects of welfare reform (Reingold and Smith Reference Reingold and Smith2012). Similarly, research has shown that, generally speaking, white Americans are unaccustomed to dealing with matters of racism (DiAngelo Reference DiAngelo2018). In fact, a sense of white fragility—that is, defensiveness and pushback by white people—became quite apparent in the run-up to several women’s marches. Many white women believed that a requirement to be conscious of the specific issues of black, transgender, and immigrant women equated to an alienation of the concerns of white women (Stockman Reference Stockman2017). Moreover, scholars have found that even when organizers of the 2017 Women’s March called for explicit attention to intersectionality and prioritizing the most marginalized groups, many individuals were largely motivated to participate because of issues most closely related to their own identity. For example, some white women cared less and some black participants cared more about issues surrounding racial justice (Fisher, Dow, and Ray Reference Fisher, Dow and Ray2017). Even when groups come together in coalition, it often is the case that privileged members (even of subordinate groups) will deprioritize the concerns of doubly or triply marginalized group members; Cohen (Reference Cohen1999) called this process secondary marginalization.
On the other hand, some research suggests that these barriers can be overcome. New research suggests that intersectionality is mainstreaming among a wider group of Americans, even if simply as an abstract principle. For instance, Heaney (Reference Heaney2019) revealed that individuals who took part in the 2018 Women’s March were more attuned and receptive to issues of intersectionality than participants in other types of marches (e.g., gun regulation and anti-abortion); this suggests that the march was able to achieve its framing goal. These findings inspire a more optimistic hypothesis around the development and expression of IS.
DATA AND METHODS
To address normative issues of intersectionality, inclusion, and equity in Americans’ political attitudes and behaviors, we examined whether and the extent to which instances of IS arise. We relied on data collected by Lopez Bunyasi and Smith (Reference Bunyasi, Tehama and Smith2018) at the 2017 Women’s March: they asked participants about their motivations to attend the march, which political and social issues were important to them, and their ideas about the connection between the Women’s March and other movements (e.g., Black Lives Matter).
Lopez Bunyasi and Smith (Reference Bunyasi, Tehama and Smith2018) estimated that black women were underrepresented at the 2017 Women’s March, compared to their population in either the DC–Maryland–Virginia metropolitan area or the general US population. However, because black women were the primary target of the initial research, they are overrepresented in our sample. A total of 270 respondents completed the five-minute paper-and-pencil survey. We analyzed the open-ended responses of 103 women who identified as black or noted an ancestry that included black as well as another racial or ethnic group, and 127 responses of white women (four of whom identified with another race or ethnicity but none as black).
In general, survey respondents were well educated and relatively affluent. Almost 70% of the black respondents either earned a college degree or engaged in/completed a postgraduate program; the same was true for 80.3% of white survey respondents. More than half of the white respondents (56%) noted that their household income was more than $80,000. Among black respondents, 38% of household incomes were higher than $80,000; another 38% reported their household income as between $40,000 and $80,000. For perspective, the median income for black families nationally was only $40,258 and $68,145 for whites in 2017 (US Census Bureau Reference Bureau2018). Finally, it is worth noting that the median age of black respondents was 37, 10 years younger than the median white respondent. The overwhelming majority were women and people who identified as having supported either (or both) Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
We analyzed the text of an open-ended question with the quanteda package in R to assess IS. Specifically, we focused on respondents’ answers to the following question: “Why are you participating in the Women’s March on Washington?” An orientation toward IS would be noted if respondents mentioned multiple marginalized groups. Whereas another scholar asked his respondents whether they support the idea of intersectionality (Heaney Reference Heaney2019), we evaluated whether the issue was already salient to them (i.e., initiated by the respondents) and whether addressing the issues of various oppressed groups was a key motivator in their choice to participate in the 2017 Women’s March.
RESULTS
Given that the development of the 2017 Women’s March was a direct response to the 2016 presidential-election outcome, it is unsurprising that responses generally clustered around women’s rights and the Trump administration. Of all participants, 27% referenced “Trump,” the “president,” or the “new administration” as sources of motivation, responding with statements such as “I am participating because with Trump winning the presidency, I want to be sure my voice and concerns do not go unheard. It is important that we all stand together for what is right and just.”
A major theme of the protests’ organizers was represented by 37% of respondents who mentioned “women’s rights”; we referred to this focus on one axis of marginalization as singular consciousness. However, there were participants who not only explicitly referenced solidarity with other women but also intersectionality. Certainly, the term intersectionality is esoteric, but the idea that some groups experience multiple and compounding oppressions is well understood by many. Use of the words intersectional and solidarity exemplify the progressive and highly educated nature of many 2017 Women’s March participants; however, respondents did not need to use either term to exhibit this disposition. For example, one white respondent stated that she was participating in the march because “I want equality for women, POC, LGBT+, and I want to send a message to Trump.” Similarly, another respondent stated that she was marching “as a show of solidarity with others supporting women’s rights and to voice my opposition to the misogyny, xenophobia, racism, and misinformation on which Trump campaigned.” These statements exhibit IS because they move beyond acknowledging a singular consciousness of gender and also explicitly reference a desire to fight for equality for people of color and members of LGBT+ communities. Table 1 is a comprehensive illustration of the differentiation between responses that capture intersectional solidarity and those that exhibit a singular consciousness.
Table 1 Why Are You Participating in the Women’s March on Washington?
Considering the newly inaugurated president’s stance and his admitted practice of sexual misconduct, it is not surprising that significant attention was given to women’s rights. However, from Trump’s declaration of his candidacy through the start of the 2017 Women’s March, there were numerous examples of the new president’s racist, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and xenophobic sentiments. Therefore, we might expect these points of marginalization and exclusion to be salient in the minds of many Americans. When we examined each group separately, we found that about 18% of black respondents and 18% of white respondents took up the mantle of IS. In all, slightly less than one in five responses exhibited IS; among those sentiments, 45% were expressed by black women, who comprised about 38% of the respondents in this sample. On the one hand, this sentiment is taken up by members across racial groups; it is not exclusive to black women. On the other hand, these results echo the social-movement literature that reveals the difficulty of convincing cross-cutting groups to come together to work for those who are among the most marginalized.
DISCUSSION
Scholars who center intersectionality in their research tend to do so not only because of curiosity for empirical inquiry; they also are motivated by normative questions for democracy. Arguably, recent debates about the fitness of US Supreme Court nominees were renewed in part because the lessons of undermining claims of sexual harassment and misconduct were not heeded when Anita Hill, a black woman, testified about her experiences in 1991. Moreover, the #MeToo movement was initiated by a black woman, Tarana Burke, but was promulgated by the media only when it was made clear that well-known white women’s lives and livelihoods were at stake. Women have demanded, forced, and pushed the United States toward its creed, but it will be important for scholars to discern when and under what circumstances all women have or will be able to benefit from this labor.
The 2017 Women’s March was critiqued initially for excluding women of color from the organizational discussions for the event. The organizers responded to both contemporary and historical exclusions of women of color by white feminists by including well-practiced activists such as Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour. Whereas some balked at the shift in orientation, others lauded the move that we would characterize as intersectional solidarity. For instance, one black respondent stated, “I wasn't going to come at first but after reading the policy platform—I thought it was inclusive + intersectional (they were trying)—I decided to come.” Although it is beyond the scope of this article, such a sentiment suggests that other organizations and institutions (e.g., the Democratic Party) could benefit not only ethically but also politically by orienting their political rhetoric as well as their policy stances toward IS. Moreover, although black women have been at the forefront of recent social movements (e.g., Black Lives Matter), we found that all groups have much work to do to ensure not only that dominant groups do not marginalize subordinate groups but also that processes of secondary marginalization are mitigated.
As we move further away from landmark moments such as the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, it behooves scholars to delve more deeply into the extent to which the orientation of political representatives and policy makers prevents women of color from slipping through the cracks produced by political intersectionality.
As we move further away from landmark moments such as the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, it behooves scholars to delve more deeply into the extent to which the orientation of political representatives and policy makers prevents women of color from slipping through the cracks produced by political intersectionality. Scholars should continue to assess the extent to which and whether political participation among citizens, policy outcomes of political representatives, information provided by the media, and rhetoric of political executives have equitable outcomes not only for heterosexual, cis-gendered, middle-class women but for all women. The concept of intersectional solidarity provides a tool for social scientists to do so.
