Where Lines Cross

Emma DeGraffenreid and four other Black women sued General Motors for discrimination, in a case decided in 1976. General Motors had hired Black workers, mostly men, for factory jobs, and women, mostly white, for office jobs, so it hired almost no Black women before 1964. When layoffs came in 1974 under a seniority rule, the Black women it had hired later were let go first. The court looked at race and sex separately, found no discrimination on either, and dismissed the case.

In 1989 the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw named this problem intersectionality. Like traffic at a crossroads, harm can come from several directions at once, and some harms exist only where the roads meet.

The idea has roots in earlier thinkers, such as the Combahee River Collective and bell hooks. It asks us to look at the particular situations people are in, not only at single categories.

The scholarship rules

A university offers one scholarship for first-generation students and another for students with disabilities. Each has its own committee.

A student who is both finds that each committee assumes the other will help her, and she receives neither. When the university reviews its process, it sets up one meeting where cases that cross categories are considered together.

Try this today Think of a policy at your school or work. Ask who might fall through the gap between its separate protections.