Renowned civil rights scholar who pioneered critical terminology and frameworks in higher educational feminist spaces such as intersectionality and critical race theory , Kimberlé Crenshaw, stopped by the Hammer museum on May 14 for a reading of her new memoir. The highly anticipated new book is called “Backtalker: An American Memoir” illustrates the backstory of Crenshaw’s lived experiences that catapulted her to creating the term intersectionality –a term she coined in an essay to explain the oppression Black women experience– and being one of the 30 scholars of critical race theory which assembled through a group meeting in 1989. The initial foundational work of critical race theory began in the 1970s and included fellow civil rights activists Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and Cheryl Harris who were peers of Crenshaw. She officially coined the term intersectionality in 1989.
“I’ve been called a public intellectual because I’ve fashioned some words you may have heard about, like intersectionality and critical race theory. But if your vision of an intellectual brings to mind the thinker’s pose, one with chin in hand who ponders abstract ideas and with a light bulb suddenly flashing overhead, writes down her epiphany, that’s not me,” she said in an excerpt she read from her memoir.
She continued, “My thinking starts from the bottom up, from interactions with people and experiences across my entire life that have made me feel some type of way. It’s a feeling that tells me to pay attention, to ask some questions, and to struggle to put into words something that needs to be said.”
During the reading and conversation she even discussed the recent gutting of Voting Rights of Black districts in Louisiana that occurred about three weeks ago.
“What they are saying is that, Cracking black voters in order to support incumbency is a race-neutral policy. Dealing with the consequences of this long history of vote disenfranchisement by actually trying to create safe districts, that’s the moment of racial discrimination,” Crenshaw said. She continued, “So, if your baseline is neutrally framed as being perfectly consistent with the Constitution, even though it is a racialized project, how can you think about incumbency? In Louisiana. Without understanding that it is a product of racial power, especially if you take into account how Louisiana became Republican in five decades, right?”
Through her various frameworks, she educates readers and audience members of the multilayered experiences that marginalized people experience in American public life, despite the current denial and erasure intersectional experiences by the federal government through the attacks on Black history in museums and the banning of books about critical race theory and other similar topics in colleges and universities across the country.
She then discussed how Republicans and right-wing conservatives studied language and terms such as intersectionality and twisted the meaning of it to the public, causing some Americans to feel that they’re rights are under attack by merely learning about new terminology that explains the various experiences of marginalized communities such as Black women and LGBTQ+ people. Essentially, it sparked the current “anti-woke” rhetoric and movement that exists currently. Crenshaw explains that a part of her being an intellectual is being able to speak about the power structures of the government and how it impacts the day-to-day lives of all Americans.
“Being a Black intellectual isn’t about discovering stuff. It’s basically a process of interpretation, translating, creating effective interfacing between our experience and the legal structures and other decisional structures that have the power to make decisions about our lives. That’s why we do what we do.” She further added, “It’s my way of saying the thoughts that I am thinking came from these specific kinds of experiences in this specific country, in this specific body.”
As a Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA, Crenshaw’s use of her influential voice – and her refusal to not stop speaking up – has played an integral in the shift of gender, race, and justice in modern times, giving way of not only scholars, but everyday Americans language that defines their intersectional experiences of race, gender, class, and how identity impacts their lives.
To watch the full conversation please visit Hammer Museum’s “Hammer Channel” at https://channel.hammer.ucla.edu/. The memoir can be found at all major retailers or at kimberlecrenshaw.com.