Dossier
„Reach Everyone on the Planet…“ Kimberlé Crenshaw and Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things.
Glossary of terms and font usage
The gender asterisk * refers to the constructedness of an engendered category and finds it particularly use in German, visualizing various gender representations (e. g. wom*an). Some authors also choose to use the gender asterisk in English, with furthermore enables identities and self-positioning to be included in a train of thought that goes beyond the traditional, historical attributions that are still frequently assigned even today.
The capitalisation of the word Black refers to the strategy of self-empowerment. It is used to indicate the symbolic capital of resistance to racism which racialized people and groups have collectively fought for and obtained.
BPOC stands for the political self-identification of Black people and People of Color, which draws on a shared experience of racism and incorporates it into the adoption of a collective stance.
The English term Community used in German refers to the collective and its inscribed resistance potential.
The word white is written in italics and lower case to refer to the constructedness of marking differences, with the word white typically remaining unmarked. As, in contrast to the concept of Black, there is no self-empowerment or resistance inherent in this marking of differences. Thus, the word white is equally not written in capital case.
If we can’t see a problem, we can’t fix the problem.