The Atlantic: "The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test"

[lapucelle]

126. Vox did an interview with the originator of the concept of intersectionality /

critical race theorist Kimberle Crenshaw:

The current debate over intersectionality is really three debates: one based on what academics like Crenshaw actually mean by the term, one based on how activists seeking to eliminate disparities between groups have interpreted the term, and a third on how some conservatives are responding to its use by those activists.

[Crenshaw said] "This is what happens when an idea travels beyond the context and the content."

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The author's contention is

In escaping from the academy into the mainstream, intersectionality morphed into both a crude tallying of oppression points and an assumption that social-justice struggles fit neatly together—with all of the marginalized people on one side and the powerful on the other.

She goes on to explain:

Fitting Israel into the intersectional framework has always been difficult, because its Jewish citizens are both historically oppressed—the survivors of an attempt to wipe them out entirely—and currently in a dominant position over the Palestinians, as demonstrated by the Netanyahu government’s decision to restrict power and water supplies to Gaza. The simplistic logic of pop intersectionality cannot reconcile this, and the subject caused schisms within the left long before Saturday’s attacks.