37 Chapter 10 – Feminism, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality

Introduction
Throughout this book we have looked at the various theories behind why someone would commit a crime. Most of those theories are based on either historical or individuals. In this chapter, we will explore societal level theories of both crime with Critical Criminology but also justice with Peacemaking Criminology. Critical Criminology calls us to look at the systems around us and how they affect those who commit crimes. It asks questions such as: What is the poverty rate of the community that the the individual that committed the crime ? Peacemaking Criminology may ask a similar question: How can the individual that committed a crime give back in a way the helps the community they come from? We will explore both theories individually and see where we see both in the great state of Louisiana.

What is Feminist Theory in Criminology?

There are several definitions for feminism that accurately describe the theory. Before we discuss feminism through the lens of criminology we must have a common definition that we will use throughout this chapter. Feminist theorist argue that women face discrimination because they belong to a particular sex category (female) or gender (woman), and that women’s needs are denied or ignored because of their sex. Feminism centers patriarchy in understandings of inequality, and largely argues that major changes are required to various social structures and institutions establish gender equality. The common root of all feminisms is the drive towards equity and justice.

Feminist perspectives in criminology comprise a broad category of theories that address the theoretical shortcomings of criminological theories which have historically rendered women invisible (Belknap, 2015; Comack, 2020; Winterdyk, 2020). These perspectives have considered factors such as patriarchy, power, capitalism, gender inequality and intersectionality in the role of female offending and victimization. Let’s take a look at four feminist perspectives below:

Liberal Feminism

According to Winterdyk (2020) and Simpson (1989), liberal feminism focuses on achieving gender equality in society. Liberal feminists believe that inequality and sexism permeate all aspects of the social structure, including employment, education, and the criminal justice system. To create an equal society, these discriminatory policies and practices need to be abolished. From a criminological perspective, liberal feminists argue that women require the same access as men to employment and educational opportunities (Belknap, 2015). For example, a liberal feminist would argue that to address the needs of female offenders, imprisoned women need equal access to the same programs as incarcerated men (Belknap, 2015). The problem with the liberal feminist perspective is the failure to consider how women’s needs and risk factors differ from men (Belknap, 2015).

Radical Feminism

Radical feminism views the existing social structure as patriarchal (Gerassi, 2015; Winterdyk, 2020). In this type of gendered social structure, men structure society in a way to maintain power over women (Gerassi, 2015; Winterdyk, 2020). Violence against women functions as a means to further subjugate women and maintain men’s control and power over women (Gerassi, 2015). The criminal justice system, as well, becomes a tool utilized by men to control women (Winterdyk, 2020). It is only through removing the existing patriarchal social structure that violence against women can be addressed (Winterdyk, 2020).

Marxist Feminism

Like the radical feminist perspective, Marxist feminists view society as oppressive against women. However, where the two differ is that Marxist feminists see the capitalist system as the main oppressor of women (Belknap, 2015; Gerassi, 2015). Within a classist, capitalist system, women are a group of people that are exploited (Winterdyk, 2020). Exploitation in a capitalist system results in women having unequal access to jobs, with women often only having access to low paying jobs. This unequal access has led to women being disproportionately involved in property crime and sex work (Winterdyk, 2020). Like other Marxist perspectives, it is only through the fall of capitalism and the restructuring of society that women may escape from the oppression they experience.

Post-modern Feminism

Ugwudike (2015) outlines how postmodern feminism focuses on the construction on knowledge. Unlike other perspectives outlined above, which suggest there is “one reality” of feminism, postmodern feminists believe that the diversity of women needs to be highlighted when one considers how gender, crime and deviance intersects to inform reality (Ugwudike, 2015, p. 157). For postmodern feminists, they acknowledge the power differentials that exist within society, including gendered differences, and focus on how those constructed differences inform dominant discourses on gender. Of importance is the focus on “deconstructing the language and other means of communication that are used to construct the accepted ‘truth’ about women” (p. 158). Also of importance is the acknowledgement of postmodern feminism regarding how other variables, like race, sexuality, and class, influence women’s reality (Ugwudike, 2015).

Not only are there differing theories, there are also four waves of feminism in America. The first wave was from 1848-1920;  second wave was from 1963-1980s; third in the 1990s; and present day. Each wave was shaped by the women who lived during those times and the experiences they had. The first wave focused on suffrage for white American women. At this point in history men, including black men had the right to vote but white women did not. The first national women’s convention Seneca Falls began during this wave. The second wave of feminism launched during the time of civil rights, again mostly white women were reevaluating traditional gender roles as well as calling you sexist discrimination. During this wave Black American Women began their own organizations to combat the unique issues they faced in society. The third wave of feminism began to intentional in it’s decision to include women of all races. The third wave focused on the lack of women in positions of power within the government and private sectors as well face workplace sexual harassment head on. During this phase a record number of women were elected to Congress. Present day feminism, the fourth wave, is a continuation of the third wave of feminism. It takes a look at the social structures that keep sexism alive and holds men accountable for their actions with movements such as the #MeToo movement.

Feminist criminology, began with feminist theorists’ call to action to address racism and sexism within criminology and the criminal justice system. As we move through this chapter you will see how both are intertwined.

When feminist criminology emerged in the 1970s, the focus was mainly on how women were accounted for in criminological theories. Feminist criminologists recognized that theories of crime and deviance regarding women’s offending tended to take one of three paths: (1) theories were openly misogynistic, negatively portraying women or situating them as “less than” men; (2) theories were gender blind and completely ignored gender; or (3) theories took an “add women and stir” approach, meaning that the theory was primarily about men and assumed explanations for crime and deviance could be applied to women without question. Most criminological theories were silent on the victimization of women.

Cesare Lombroso is referred to as the “father of criminology” (Belknap, 2015; Deutschmann, 2007; Williams & McShane, 2010). His theory is openly misogynistic, viewing women as “less than” men and discussing them in a negative manner; thus, Lombroso’s theory serves as an excellent example of the first path theories tend to take regarding women’s offending.

In the late 1800s, Lombroso studied both male and female incarcerated offenders in Italy, examining their physical characteristics to see what differentiated criminals from non- criminals. He developed the concept of the born criminal—individuals who were atavistic, more primitive and less evolved than non-criminals, and thus more prone to engage in criminal activity (Williams & McShane, 2010). Lombroso argued that women were typically less evolved than men, but their criminal tendencies were balanced by their lack of intelligence and passive natures. Deutschmann (2007) summarized Lombroso’s gendered approach:

“The typical woman…was characterized by piety, maternal feelings, sexual coldness, and an underdeveloped intelligence. Criminal women, on the other hand, were either born with masculine qualities (intelligence and activeness) conducive to criminal activity, or encouraged to develop these qualities through such things as education and exercise.” (p. 163)

The second path theories take regarding female offending is exemplified by the original social bond theory by Travis Hirschi, which completely ignored gender and the female experience. Social bond theory examined why people conform to rules and laws, avoiding offending. Hirshi (1969) posited that four key bonds discouraged criminal activities: attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. When initially testing his theory, Hirschi focused exclusively on boys, even though both girls and boys were included in his sample (Belknap, 2015). As a result, the female experience is invisible in social bond theory. Hirschi’s exclusive focus on boys and men in research while developing and testing theory was not unique at the time; social bond theory simply represents one example of how a degree of gender blindness was (and still is) common in many criminological theories. Such gender blindness results in theories of criminality based entirely on data and experiences of boys and men, actively erasing the unique perspectives and experiences of girls and women.

Lastly, Cloward and Ohlin’s (1960) opportunity theory demonstrates the “add women and stir” approach in criminological theory, the third path that theories on crime and deviance tended to take regarding women’s offending. Drawing on Merton’s idea of strain as the gap between socially prescribed goals and the inability to achieve those goals, Cloward and Ohlin (1960) argued that there were both legitimate and illegitimate ways to achieve goals, and these opportunities differed based on someone’s race, neighborhood, class, and gender (Deutschmann, 2007; Williams & McShane, 2010). Rather than theorizing how men and women may experience strain differently, Cloward and Ohlin viewed boys as having “legitimate concerns” around money and status, while girls were seen as experiencing “frivolous concerns” related to finding romantic partners (Belknap, 2015, p. 33). While they mentioned gender in their theory, Cloward and Ohlin (1960) made assumptions about the goals of women, and actively ignored the unique strains faced by women, such as discrimination, parenting and childrearing responsibilities, limited education and employment opportunities, and disproportionate victimization.

The many androcentric (male-centered) explanations for crime and criminality not only centered on men as the primary focus of explanations, but were mainly the work of male theorists. This reality called for a new theorizing of women, created by women, related to both victimization and criminalization. Feminist criminologists demanded a centering of gender as a key factor in understanding crime and criminality. Here we see the scholarship of ground-breaking feminist criminologists like Meda Chesney-Lind, Carol Smart, and Karlene Faith, and the theorists and criminologists they have inspired, such as Elizabeth Comack, Gillian Balfour, Joanne Belknap, and others.

The key issues that brought feminist criminology to the surface involved domestic violence or violence against women (Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Johnson, 1996; Johnson & Dawson, 2011) and the differential and unequal treatment of women as offenders within the criminal justice system (Britton, 2000; Chesney-Lind & Pasko, 2004; Comack, 1996). We discuss the issue of women as offenders later in this chapter. We look now to how the contributions of feminist criminology have shaped our understandings of women’s victimization.

Victimization

“Feminist criminology has perhaps made its greatest impact on mainstream criminology in the area of women’s victimization” (Britton, 2000, p. 64).

Gender-based violence is disproportionately experienced by women (Cotter & Savage, 2019, p. 3) and around the world (World Health Organization, 2021). As Bruckert and Law (2018) note, violence against women stems from a broad range of systemic issues, including those rooted in patriarchal beliefs, such as colonialism, neoliberalism and capitalism (p. 9). Such social structures intersect with aspects of identity (such as sexual orientation, gender expression, age, ability, ethnicity) which can increase risk of victimization.

Female victims account for two-thirds of police-reported family violence (Conroy, 2021). Women are much more likely to be murdered by their male intimate partners than male partners are to be murdered by their female partners; in fact, women make up approximately 80% of all victims of intimate partner homicide (Conroy, 2021).

Specifically, women with disabilities experience double the rate of violent crime compared to women without disabilities (Cotter, 2018). With regards to lesbian, bisexual, transgender and non-binary people’s experiences of violence, there is a lack of comprehensive statistics, but the available evidence indicates that bisexual women and transgender individuals face very high levels of violence compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts (Jaffray, 2020; Langenderfer-Magruder et al., 2016). While the lack of comprehensive data on transgender women and non-binary people’s experience of victimization is glaring, as is the lack of available data on Black women’s victimization, what we do know is that Black women’s experiences of violence are rooted in misogynoir, a concept coined by Moya Bailey and defined as “the virulent and often unseen hatred directed at Black women due to the intersections of anti-Blackness, misogyny and racism in society” (Maynard, 2017, p. 130). Feminist criminology critically interrogates statistics such as the ones presented above, and points to the gendered elements of such violence, calling for wide recognition and social and criminal justice reforms.

Indigenous women’s experiences of violence are also situated within intersectional social identities as well as colonial and gendered structural inequities. In particular, Indigenous women’s experiences of violence are directly linked to the history of the United States, beginning with the Indian Act, and permeating through past and present discriminatory policies and practices within various social institutions, including but not limited to health care, criminal justice and education. The intergenerational trauma of the residential school system, as well as pervasive systemic racism, have resulted in higher levels of domestic violence, substance abuse, and suicide (Comack, 2018). Indigenous women are also much more likely to be the victims of violent assaults and victimization than non-Indigenous women, and this violence tends to be more severe (Monchalin, 2016) (see ‘Nobody wants to look for a 40 year-old Native woman down here’). A crisis of violence against Indigenous women and girls exists, yet too often the victimization of Indigenous women continues to be dismissed and ignored by legal and law enforcement systems.

Comack (2020) argues that criminology has focused on men as offenders. This focus has been justified because the majority of police-reported offenders are men (Comack, 2020; Savage, 2019). While comprising a much smaller proportion than male offenders, female offenders are still represented in adult, youth, and violent offence statistics (Belknap, 2015). Accordingly, we must consider the unique pathways of women as offenders to inform criminal justice system responses to women as offenders.

Traditional criminological theories rarely account for female offending (Belknap, 2015). With the rise of feminist criminology in the 1970s, a variety of theories have attempted to explain female offending. For example, Adler and Simon’s liberation thesis (1975, cited in Belknap, 2015) accounted for female offending by connecting the women’s liberation movement with what was believed to be an increase in female crime rates in the 1960s and 70s. This theory attempted to address the gender-ratio crime problem, as well as account for changes in women’s crime rates (O’Grady, 2018). While both Adler and Simon connected their theory to women’s liberation, they differed on the overall effect on crime. Adler posed that violent crime would increase, while Simon suggested that only property crime would increase for women (Belknap, 2015). On the other hand, according to Simon, female violent crime would decrease because women would be less frustrated as they gained equal access to opportunities (Belknap, 2015). This theory, in its simplest form, argued that women’s liberation leads to convergence in gender roles, and increased opportunities for employment for women. Adler and Simon claimed increased employment also increased opportunities for crime including corporate and white-collar crime, ultimately leading to a convergence in crime rates (Tavcer & Dekeseredy, 2018). While a substantial gender gap in offending remains, the theory was important because it considered women and located women’s engagement in crime within social systems and outside of the biological realm.

Hagan and colleagues’ power control theory (1985, cited in Belknap, 2015) outlined the role of social control in accounting for gendered differences in crime. They theorized that the gendered power dynamic between parents was often replicated with their children. In a patriarchal home, where women had less power, children were socialized into gendered roles where boys were encouraged to take risks and given more freedom, while girls were more restricted in their activities and socialized to be obedient and quiet. In such households, girls had fewer opportunities, to engage in deviance. According to Hagan and colleagues, in egalitarian households, with equal power between parents, relatively equal freedoms and levels of parental supervision, were given to daughters and sons, which allowed for more opportunities for girls to engage in deviant behavior (Belknap, 2015). Note that while this theory does least attempt to explain female offending, it is not without its critics. Of particular concern is how the theory blames mothers who work outside of the home for their daughters’ delinquency (O’Grady, 2018). The theory has also been criticized “for its simplistic conceptualization of social class and the gendered division of labor in the home and workplace, and for its lack of attention to racial/ethnic differences in gender socialization and to single- parent families, most of which are headed by women” (Renzetti, 2018, p. 78).

Feminist theories have also attempted to account for female offending through the cycle of violence and pathways theories. Widom (1989) examined the relationship between trauma and offending in their cycle of violence theory (cited in Belknap, 2015). This theory posits that girls and women who experience trauma are more likely to be arrested later in life. For example, some evidence suggests that when faced with a traumatic experience, a person may turn to substance use as a coping mechanism (Barker, 2018). This type of coping method can lead to increased involvement with the criminal justice system if individuals are utilizing illegal substances, are engaging in illegal activity to support their substance use (e.g., theft), or engaging in illegal activity due to their substance use (e.g., driving under the influence) (Barker, 2018). Support for this theory of offending has been mixed, at best (Belknap, 2015). Pathways theory focuses on the route for offending among female offenders. Not unlike the cycle of violence theory, pathways theory considers the role of childhood abuse and trauma in female offending, which is particularly important as evidence shows that female offenders report higher rates of childhood trauma than the general population (Comack, 2018; Shdaimah & Wiechelt, 2013).’

If you want to know more about victimization of women in the state of Louisiana there are several articles and reports that show the levels of domestic abuse fatality rates; human trafficking data; and even the economic costs of violence towards women.

Treatment in the Criminal Justice System

As our discussion of victims and offenders highlights, feminist criminology examines the different pathways into offending as well as myriad ways in which women are uniquely victimized. From the above, you should have some understanding of the role of gender in criminology and within the criminal justice system. At the same time, we must understand the intersectionality of gender with other forms of identity. Early universal notions of women’s lives failed to account for the unique experiences of women, and other aspects of women’s identities such as race, Indigeneity, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and sexualities

The above-noted “add women and stir model” sometimes used to explain female criminal offending and victimization assumes that gender has no role in the treatment of women in the criminal justice system (i.e., explanations for male criminality can be applied to women), while other approaches either blame women for their circumstances, openly see women as less than men, or ignore gender completely. For example, rape culture “encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women in the form of words, jokes, advertising, media, objectification, and gendered norms” (Tavcer et al., 2018, p. 196). When such attitudes are prevalent, sexual assault is commonly linked to rape myths that suggest women who dress provocatively, drink or use drugs, or who walk alone are somehow responsible for the assault. Rape culture shifts the blame to women, rather than focusing on the problem of glamorized and normalized male violence. Sexual assault prevention programs often focus on the behaviors of women and how to avoid an assault, rather than on campaigns directed at men and what they can do to ensure they do not sexually assault someone. Moreover, these attitudes often result in the double victimization of women: first by the man who assaulted her, and then by the criminal justice system in which she is re-traumatized, blamed for the assault, and has her character questioned.

Women are also victimized when they are incarcerated. As noted above, incarcerated women have disproportionate histories of physical and psychological trauma. This reality means that they are not necessarily incarcerated for their behavior; instead, they are incarcerated for responses to their histories of trauma (Comack & Balfour, 2014). Similarly, trauma can be associated with mental illness, and the treatment of mentally ill prisoners in a corrections setting is problematic at best, and harmful at worst. Most correctional programs are designed for men and fail to draw on the strengths of women, instead focusing on their deficiencies (Folsom, 2018; Gobeil et al., 2016). In addition, most programs do not address gender diversity. For example, anger management programs address an identified problem or deficit and follow the same format for men and women. The alternative is to apply a strength-based approach, focusing for example on positive personal factors such as faith or morality (Ronel & Elisha, 2011, as cited in Kewley, 2017), and to use those factors as a foundation to positively move forward.

Today our responses are much more likely to be women-centered and less likely to blame women. While woman-blaming does still happen, the responses to such attitudes indicate the increasing social pushback and demands for change. We continue to see laws evolve and change to better address women’s needs. While we do not suggest gendered inequality has ended, we must acknowledge that progress has been made. It is important to remember that gender equality is situated within colonialism, racism, and capitalism and therefore not all women have received the same benefits, as illustrated above with the experiences of racialized and sexualized populations such as Indigenous women or transgender or bisexual women.

Critiques of Feminist Criminology

Like any other group of theories, feminist criminology is not without its critics. The main critiques, and the ways in which feminist criminology has and continues to respond to these critiques, are detailed here. A key critique of feminist criminology is its exclusive focus on cisgender women. Recent scholarship illustrates this is not the case. The work by Connell (2000, 2005) highlights how patriarchy and inequality disproportionately affect men as well, and how existing gendered notions of masculinity and femininity are harmful to everyone. Adams (2000) points out the similarities between the treatment of female agricultural animals and women in the emphasis on controlled reproduction and dominated labor. Others have clearly linked the violence against animals and women in cases of domestic violence, calling for a species inclusive approach (Barrett et al., 2017; Barrett et al., 2018; Fitzgerald al., 2019; Stevenson et al., 2018). Feminism is not about bringing men down, but about raising women up. Feminism is about equality. Feminist criminology offers more comprehensive theories about criminality and crime as well as inclusivity in understanding the circumstances of the victimization and criminalization of both men and women and the disproportionate factors that affect them in unique ways.

Another critique of feminist criminology is its tendency to focus on the experiences of white and cisgender women and to ignore or minimize the experiences of racialized, transgender or other marginalized women. While this may be a valid critique of early feminist criminology, more recently, we see a renewed and concentrated focus on intersectionality. Intersectionality is a framework that examines how race, class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity layer on each other in interlocking ways to multiply the effects of victimization or criminalization (Crenshaw, 1995). Feminist criminologists also look at how Black, transgender, or marginalized women experience intimate partner violence, or street level harassment, and how they are affected by such violence against them. Other research focuses on how structural inequalities including racism and transphobia, embedded within policing and the criminal justice system harm Black, Indigenous, and women of color (Maynard, 2017; Monchalin, 2016; Lyons et al., 2017a; Lyons et al., 2017b) as well as the dismissal and derision transgender people experience within the criminal justice system (Kendig et al., 2019).

Overall, feminist criminology centers gender together with other aspects of identity in crime and criminology rather than minimizing or treating gender as an add-on. Rather than taking the male experience for granted, feminist criminology actively theorizes the female experience of both criminalization and victimization, with critical attention to racism, classism, sexism, and other bases of discrimination and marginalization. This chapter has illustrated the unique and critical lens that feminist criminology brings to issues of incarcerated women as well as gender based violence and victimization. Sharing feminist roots with the diverse feminist theories, feminist criminology emphasizes the role of patriarchy, inequality, and gender in all explanations of crime and criminality.

What is Overt Racism?

Overt racism can be understood as the kind of racism individuals experience as direct interpersonal experiences. It is a kind of racial bias encounter experienced subjectively by individuals. For example, if someone is overtly racist towards you, it has immediate emotional and subjective effects. If you are treated unfairly due to race/racism, you experience it as a direct personal insult or injustice. If a person insults you with a verbal insult that mocks your racial background, then that can be understood as an overt act of racist speech. It is overt racist speech because it is using the framework of “race” as the main vehicle of insult. If that speech act is followed by an assault, then it can be argued that the assault was motivated by hate or bias. In both cases, racism or racial motivation is linked to the insult and/or assault. In this regard, such acts can be understood as acts of overt racism to Covid-19 racist assault on Singaporean student and East Asian student assaulted in ‘racist’ coronavirus attack in London. In some cases the courts can consider motivation as it pertains to sentencing. If the motivation for the crime is “hate/bias”, then this “prejudice” can be understood as motivating the crime (e.g., assault). If “hate/bias” is the motivation behind the crime, then the motivation alters the sentencing. The motivation of “hate/bias” does not affect the verdict; it only affects sentencing. In this regard, one limitation to the way this law responds to overt acts of racism is that there are no adequate guidelines for judges to follow when administering a guilty verdict in cases motivated by “hate/bias.” Specifically, the language of the law states: A court that imposes a sentence shall also take into consideration the following principles: (a) a sentence should be increased or reduced to account for any relevant aggravating or mitigating circumstances relating to the offence or the offender, and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, (b) evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, color, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor. The second limitation to this law is that there are no detailed guidelines for judges to follow when delivering a sentence that involves a crime motivated by “hate/bias.”

What is Institutional Racism?

Institutional racism can be understood as “racism without racists”. An institution may have racist policies or practices that do not necessarily require racist beliefs on behalf of the workers tasked with enacting them. Once a racist rule is institutionalized, an employee tasked with enforcing this prohibition does not need to be racist themselves in order for the prohibition to produce a racist effect—they just need to fulfil their work duties. For example if there is a white only section at a restaurant, the greeter doesn’t have to be racists themselves to enforce the rule set by their employers.

Their compliance is not an act of “overt” racism or bias because compliance is an act of lawfulness. And yet, there are complications to compliance. On the one hand, compliance is not an overtly racist act, but silence is also an act of complicity and endorsement. On the other hand, the act of compliance raises the specter of tacit approval of racism by continued employment in an institution that clearly has harmful racist effects. Is an employee—who stays at a job against their conscience—making an overt decision to perpetuate racism? Similarly, in the case of Shereen Hassan’s border refusal, we can understand the border guards’ actions not as individual racism or the active discretion of a specific agent but as institutional in nature because an external system of biased selection alerted the agent to detain and reject Shereen’s application to travel to the United States. Her refusal was not based on any unlawful act or behavior on her part, nor the specific actions of a particular officer—any agent would have done the same; rather, a system of race—combined with a bias against previously identified non-Western names and nationalities—was adopted by Homeland security and border control. In so doing, a race-based system of bias and selection was “institutionalized.” The system exists outside of the behavior or thinking of individual officers. The officer does not need to be biased themselves to carry out biased selection; the officer need only follow the system that flags Shereen Hassan’s name and profile. The officer does not act in a biased manner; the officer only follows what the system instructs. The officer is innocent of bias or racial profiling. The institution and its rules produce the racist effect, not the border control agent. This is the very definition of “institutional racism.”

What is Systemic Racism?

Systemic racism is different from the other two forms of racism. It is not a form of racism experienced as an interaction between two individuals, and it may not be an institutional prohibition. Rather, it is bias or difference experienced as an effect of social structures. It may not even be immediately recognized as racism. It can also be understood as how race intersects with economic achievement and labor market disparity between those who are raced and those who are not raced (i.e., White). The term “systemic” refers to the phenomenon of how non-racial aspects of society such as employment or housing affect a person’s life course. Lower labor market performance or lower salaries and wages can have an important effect on a person’s life. If you have low socioeconomic status (SES), this low status might affect your life course. Some authors have argued that non-White people are more likely to be caught in a cycle of low SES and that status is inter-locked with non-White status. Sheila Block and Edward-Grace Galabuzi argue that “[T]he racialization of poverty refers to a phenomenon where poverty becomes disproportionately concentrated and reproduced among racialized group members, in some cases intergenerationally” (Block & Galabuzi, 2011, p. 15). In this regard, poor economic performance can intersect with race to produce “systemic” forms of oppression, bias, and disadvantage. This is what is meant by Kimberlé Crenshaw’s notion of “intersectionality.” These disadvantages are not directly driven and maintained by overt or institutional forms of racism; rather, the racial disparity can be understood as a third product of the way race interlocks with economic performance as argued by Block and Galabuzi. A series of conditions (e.g., worker preference, lower wages, types of work) work together to create the condition of racialized economic impoverishment. It is an accumulation of social practices that overlap and work together without a single guiding logic. In the context of policing, the racial profiling and targeted policing of racialized subjects may be one of those social practices.

Police racial profiling is both a product of systemic racism and an agent that helps produce it, and it is interlocked with other social determinants that cannot be easily separated as objects of analysis. In this sense, some authors have named “systemic racism” as a form of multi-dimensional disparity or racial inequality that reveals itself in education, incarceration, and health, where Indigenous or Black students have less chance of achieving their high school education, more chance of being incarcerated, and lower average life expectancies. These multi-dimensional forms of disparity are correlated with people of color who are more represented in the areas of less longevity, more incarceration, and less education (Rohde & Guest, 2013). Indigenous and Black Canadians specifically are over-represented in the categories of less life, more prison, and less education. It is these forms of inter-locking disadvantages and social harms that help explain the meaning of “systemic racism.” As DiAngelo (2018) so eloquently states in her text White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, “[R]ace will influence whether we survive our birth, where we are most likely to live, which school we will attend, who our friends and partners will be, what careers we will have, how much money we will earn, how healthy we will be and even how long we expect to live” (p. 5). People of color are overrepresented in both their interaction with the system of justice and the system of incarceration (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2017, 2018).  And this returns us to the beginning of this chapter, where we began by asking: If race is a flawed social construction, why don’t we simply change, alter or erase the idea of race?

What is Intersectionality? 

Race is also often understood in the context of a multi-dimensional structure of race, class and gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability. Intersectionality is designed to show how these categories and their social effects are interlinked in a way that makes them difficult to pull apart and analyze as separate entities. That is, race, class and gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability are understood to act together to produce social effects such as social division, oppression, and entitlement. Critical legal theorists like Kimberlé Crenshaw and others have used the concept of “intersectionality” to describe how race intersects with social and economic class, gender and sexual expression, nationality, and other institutional markers of identity (Crenshaw, 1989).

Intersectionality research attempts to reveal that racial bias is not just a feeling or belief held by a single person, as racism and racist practices exist in symbiotic relationships with other social factors. Intersectionality—as a concept—allows us to see that people do not just act alone in their bias or that racial bias simply exists by itself; rather, race is intersected with other social institutions, practices, and actions. It is interlocked and interdependent on other social traits and/or social conditions. For example, in the case of Maya above, not only was being a woman a factor but also being a minority. Both affected how she interacted with the world around her.

Through a lens of intersectionality, it is possible to examine race and how it is jointly expressed as economic wage disparity, housing disparity, health disparity, education disparity, and/or as overt acts of violence and aggression. Race is intersected with other forms of oppression to such a degree that it may be a misnomer to simply name it and reify it as something called “race.” Maybe it should be renamed something like “race-class-gender- sexuality-(dis)ability and how they are interlocked in their social operation and history.” The framework of intersectionality reminds us that the concept of race or racism should only be used as a term of analysis and investigation and not as a “thing” in itself. That is, when we use the term “race”, it only serves to allow us to focus on the specific ways racialization operates (i.e., racial bias or racism). Scholarly use of the term “race” does not imply that racial categorization is a correct or natural way to understand people; rather, it recognizes that it is a significant mode of categorization that, along with others, can produce social effects for individuals and groups. For example, the class of a person and whether they are rich or poor has a powerful modifying effect on how a person is understood, judged, rewarded, and/or damaged by their racialization. It cannot simply be “color” that causes racist harm by itself.

Intersectionality teaches us that criminality can’t be judged on one level. We must take into account gender, education level, social status, neighborhood environment, and even sexuality.

Watch the following video to understand intersectionality outside of the criminal justice system.