#crenshaw

Moore [v Hughes Helicopter, Inc., an antidiscrimination lawsuit wherein a Black woman was ruled to be unfit to represent all women at her company on account of her racialization] illustrates one of the limitations of antidiscrimination law's remedial scope and normative vision. The refusal to allow a multiply-disadvantaged class to represent others who may be singularly-disadvantaged defeats efforts to restructure the distribution of opportunity and limits remedial relief to minor adjustments within an established hierarchy. Consequently, "bottom-up" approaches, those which combine all discriminatees in order to challenge an entire employment system, are foreclosed by the limited view of the wrong and the narrow scope of the available remedy. If such "bottom-up" intersectional representation were routinely permitted, employees might accept the possibility that there is more to gain by collectively challenging the hierarchy rather than by each discriminatee individually seeking to protect her source of privilege within the hierarchy. But as long as antidiscrimination doctrine proceeds from the premise that employment systems need only minor adjustments, opportunities for advancement by disadvantaged employees will be limited. Relatively privileged employees probably are better off guarding their advantage while jockeying against others to gain more. As a result, Black women—the class of employees which, because of its intersectionality, is best able to challenge all forms of discrimination—are essentially isolated and often required to fend for themselves.

I feel like people heard “intersectionality” and people just heard “I’m oppressed, more than anyone actually, even though I’m (insert identity aspect here) more than everyone else actually, so I can act however I want” and not “oppression and bigotry are complex and affect people differently based on the places where different aspects of their identity overlap, and very few people are actually the ‘perfect’ combination to truly benefit from the systemic issues in our society”

im a little nervous to submit this, but this was technically our first exposure to pluralty and helped with our syscovery! sorry if this was submitted before