The False Dichotomy in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Intersectionality

“Why is this important? Because grammar shows that Crenshaw’s distinction between identity politics and liberal universalism is artificial.”

In an excellent overview of the theory of intersectionality for Areo, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay recently drew attention to a famous declaration by the theory’s progenitor, Kimberlé Crenshaw:

“We all can recognize the distinction between the claims ‘I am Black’ and the claim ‘I am a person who happens to be Black.’ ‘I am Black’ takes the socially imposed identity and empowers it as an anchor of subjectivity. ‘I am Black’ becomes not simply a statement of resistance but also a positive discourse of self-identification, intimately linked to celebratory statements like the Black nationalist ‘Black is beautiful.’ ‘I am a person who happens to be Black,’ on the other hand, achieves self-identification by straining for a certain universality (in effect, ‘I am first a person’) and for a concomitant dismissal of the imposed category (‘Black’) as contingent, circumstantial, nondeterminant.”

As a quick grammar lesson shows, however, there is no “straining” for universality at all. In the first sentence, “I” is the subject; “am” is the (linking) verb; and “Black” is the predicate adjective. The subject is the person speaking. The predicate adjective modifies the subject and is connected to the subject via the verb “am.” The full sentence conveys that the person speaking is black.

The second sentence says exactly the same thing, with more grammatical baggage. “I” is the subject; “am” is the (linking) verb; “person” is the predicate nominative. The nominative renames the subject as a way of providing information about who or what the subject is; in this case, a person; “who happens to be Black” is an adjectival clause that modifies “person.” The clause has a subject (who), verb (happens), and an adverbial infinitive phrase (“to be Black”) modifying the verb “happens.” “Black” is the predicate adjective that follows “to be” in the infinitive phrase.