Through intersectional analysis, Hill’s identity can be seen as a black woman and not just black or as a woman. We do not need to identify parts of who we are to the exclusion of everything else, intersectionality gives us an alternative praxis to work through complex issues at the intersection of race, gender, class, orientation or any other feature of our identities. Intersectionality also offers an increasingly important frame of analysis, in an otherwise binary form of Western feminism – the idea of our privileges being a spectrum, from which sometimes we, even without intentional consent, still tacitly hold the upper hand. Let’s use an example in which there are two women: one is Indian and one is White. In this case, yes, both are women. But, one is also an Indian woman, a racialized and marginalized individual, thus giving the white woman an upper hand in advantage and privilege over the Indian woman. The purpose of this example is to illustrate that our privileges are not fixed, and stagnant beings, but are malleable to the different natural and social environments we are in. More importantly, privileges and intersections of domination are ever changing as our relation to others is changing. What advantages we have, don’t have, and wish to have are contingent upon the ways in which we navigate our social and cultural spaces. Traditional thought tends to overlook aspects of intersections in our identities, and subsequent privileges, which is why looking at the “matrix of domination” as coined by Patricia Collins, is ever important in being able to critically discuss how we can both liberate, and be liberated. Part-4 #Socialissues
