Review:

Intersectional – but how?

by Jessica Rabi Aboubakari

Racism affects our interpersonal relations in different ways and also differentiates us through advanced values, images, stereotypes and social practices of our society that we internalize. Thus, the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano Obregó describes with the view of Latin American society that since the violent conquest of America, racism has been "acting on all material and subjective levels, areas and dimensions of everyday existence and on every social scale" (Quintero 2013).

In order to break up these structures, especially in cooperation in political groups, but also privately, there must be a more intensive discussion with their own privileges. Privileges represent categories or Descriptions that are not natural and created by society (Hesterberg 2021), for example, to legitimise exploitation and exclusion (Attia 2013). Privileges are provided or withdrawn to us without active action (Arndt 2021). As a white person, this means not having to worry about it because of their own skin colour, not getting homes and jobs, having to protect themselves from physical or psychological racist attacks or not being perceived as "foreign".
In order to understand more precisely how different privileges work within our society and to understand the associated complexity, it is helpful to consider the concept of intersectionality.

The concept of multiple discrimination created by the US-American black feminist movement should explain why black women do not have the same life realities as white women or black men. Even before the lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the concept of intersection (=crossing), i.e. intersectionality, black feminists such as Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde or Barbara Smith and the Combahee River Collective demanded that different forms of discrimination can overlap and, for example, race, class or gender not only act individually (Kelly 2022). It is therefore essential to note here that all assigned structural categories such as race, class, gender, health condition, education, age, ... act multidimensionally, i.e. overlapping, in a person and affect what discrimination experiences are experienced in what way.

Crenshaw describes in her TED talk 'the urgency of intersectionality' (translated: the urgency of intersectionality), that if there is no name for a problem, the problem cannot be seen and therefore cannot be solved.

With the racism-critical view, this means seeing and calling as already described above, enjoying more privileges and thus being consciously and unconsciously able to possess and exercise more power. For example, this refers to activist groups as follows: Who is represented? Who has how much proportion of speech? Who decides on decisions at the end? What problems are put into focus?

This raises the question of how the problem can be solved. It is important to understand that racism is a structural problem. There is no guide after exactly this has to be followed in this order in order to act more intersective and racism-critical. Nevertheless, it should be the responsibility of each individual to raise all personal resources in order not to reproduce racism and to learn openly. Recognizing new perspectives and constantly reflecting themselves critically.

This can be done, for example, by participating in workshops, visiting spaces to exchange and learn about it. By reading books such as Exit Racism from Tupoka Ogette or The White Fleck from Mohamed Amjahid, by describing more precisely what structural problems are behind it and why these are anchored in our thinking, feeling and acting. And by being open to criticism, where discrimination cannot be reproduced.

Breaking up one's own racism and thinking more intersecally is a lifelong process that is essential for a truly just society.