Black feminist thought understands race to play a role in whether society labels an individual as a woman. Thus, the term intersectionality was coined in 1989 to explain how power and status contribute to social organization and understanding. 


19th Century Black Feminist History Influenced the Inception of Intersectionality 

The critical perspective emerged in the 1970's with roots in Black Feminism. 

Arizona State University

This theory examines and critiques societies and cultures and looks at social issues and structures that lead to inequality. It identifies the people who can suppress this inequality and outlines the steps needed to reach human liberation. 

Critical Theory

Tina Goethals, Elisabeth De Schauwer, & Geert Van Hove. (2015). Weaving Intersectionality into Disability Studies Research: Inclusion, Reflexivity and Anti-Essentialism. DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, 2(1–2), 75–94. https://doi.org/10.11116/jdivegendstud.2.1-2.0075


Weaving Intersectionality into Disability Studies Research: Inclusion, Reflexivity and Anti-Essentialism

The process of listening and considering ideas from as many perspectives as possible to reason a conclusion and inform an strategic academic plan. 

Critical Inquiry Theory in Education

Learning science an interdisciplinary field that works to further our understanding of learning as well as to engage in the design and implementation of learning innovations. Contributing fields include cognitive science, computer science, educational psychology, anthropology, and applied linguistics. 

Learning Science

Critical Race Theory is an interdisciplinary movement made up of activists and scholars working to understand and change the relationships between race, racism, and power. 

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

Queer theory is a field of critical theory that can include different meanings, but most broadly referes to a lens that centers the abnormal (the queer) in order to demonstrate the socially constructed boundaries of the normal. 

Queer theory

Critical Practices in Literature 

Cultural Studies analyze the political dynamics of contemporary culture, such as "pop culture" and its historical basis. Cultural studies researchers review how cultural practices connect to wider systems of power associated with or operating through, social phenomena, including ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation.

Cultural Studies

A major critique of the current disability studies discipline relates to its essentialist and binary approach to understanding disability and the subjective disability experience. 

Disability Studies and Intersectionality


History of Critical Perspective in Disabillity Studies

Intersectionality examines the experiences of people who are experiencing discrimination on the basis of two or more marginalized identities at the same time, and how this differs from experiencing discrimnination on the basis of these identities individually.  Because of this depending on context, we all have areas where we experience privilege, as well as areas of oppression

For example, the stereotypes or preconceived notions held about black women are not merely a combination of those held about black people and those held about women, but a unique intersection of racism and sexism that black women experience differently from either black men or white women.

Intersectionality

Disability studies resaerch often neglects the presence of an individual's identity which can have major influence over their subjective reality and reinforces oppressive systems. 

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