The struggle against patriarchy and racism must be substantively robust and inextricably intertwined.
Kimberle Williams CrenshawRead
When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when anti-racism does not incorporate opposition to patriarchy, race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other, and both interests lose.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the need for intersectionality in feminism and anti-racism efforts to ensure that both movements support each other rather than conflict.
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw emphasizes the importance of recognizing the interconnectedness of race and gender within social justice movements. When feminism fails to confront racism and anti-racism neglects patriarchy, the resulting tension can undermine the goals of both movements, creating an environment where neither fully achieves their aims. The quote calls for a more inclusive approach that addresses both gender and racial injustices simultaneously.
Themes
FeminismRacismIntersectionalitySocial JusticeGenderRace
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social equity, one might quote this to advocate for inclusion of all marginalized groups.
More from Kimberle Williams Crenshaw
All quotes →I have a wonderful, diverse, and young staff at the AAPF who pretty much work around the clock trying to figure out how we promote the idea that social justice requires us to be intersectional in our thinking and in our scope of vision.
Kimberle Williams CrenshawRead
If you don't have a lens that's been trained to look at how various forms of discrimination come together, you're unlikely to develop a set of policies that will be as inclusive as they need to be.
Kimberle Williams CrenshawRead
We have to move back to the idea that education isn't about teaching people to bow to rigid rules. That's not what democracy is about.
Kimberle Williams CrenshawRead
Having a monolithic view of feminism is suffocating.
Kimberle Williams CrenshawRead
We must begin to tell black women's stories because, without them, we cannot tell the story of black men, white men, white women, or anyone else in this country. The story of black women is critical because those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it.
Kimberle Williams CrenshawRead
Similar quotes
It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.
Henry MillerRead
We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction.
Sigmund FreudRead
Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?
Hermann HesseRead
Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels...I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power.
Thomas PaineRead
When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God’s idea of God, and God’s idea of God is Christ
E. Stanley JonesRead
Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that. The void is all-inclusive, having no opposite--there is nothing which it excludes or opposes. It is living void, because all forms come out of it and whoever realizes the void is filled with life and power and the love of all beings.
Bruce LeeRead