Patricia Hill Collins '' Intersectionality Is Not Neutral'

In many contemporary spaces, intersectionality is taught and consumed as a static concept of merely listing identities carried by one person simultaneously. It’s used more often as a checklist than a place of analysis or resistance. However, the use of intersectionality as just an apolitical tool, rather than a theory born from the knowledge of Black women experiencing a “triple jeopardy” of oppression and seeking liberation by deconstructing the institutions that bind them, is reductionist at best. In “Intersectionality is Not Neutral”May communicates that intersectionality pushes us to question and challenge the relatively mundane or acceptable norms in society that lend themselves to a continuous legacy of systemic inequality.

Interstitial politics, defined by Kimberly Springer as a “politics in the cracks” is also a key element in intersectional analysis. As Black feminists it’s our job to locate places of contradiction and conflict, because in working alongside these sites of power and gatekeeping, we can achieve a better knowledge of how they operate as well as develop strategies to dismantle them. This embracing of sociopolitical dissonance embodies the spirit of dialectical practices in Black feminism. In the chapter “Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought” Patricia Hill Collins emphasizes that

interaction between intersecting oppression necessitates an activist push for collective liberation, and thus a support of values that extend beyond the specified interests of American Black women.
Similar to the dialectical relationship Black women maintain, where in their oppression informs their activism, marginalization creates the opportunity for perseverance and struggle.Marginalization isn’t a process that remains unchanged and continues as is uninterrupted, but is dynamic and ever changing.

As both Tracey Reynolds and Audre Lorde have emphasized, Black women are not perpetually passive victims, but active agents. It is totally possible for Black women to seize a form of empowerment, whether that be alternative education, or the creation of organizations that weren’t situated in either the Civil Rights movement or Women’s

Movement.
Unfortunately, any tool can be used in a way it was intended to be. Social conservatives, can use intersectionality to advance their agenda. An example of this in the reading is how homophobic Black Christians use heteronormativity alongside their Blackness and assert that their racial subjugation relies on the labeling of Black people as unhealthily hypersexual, heterosexual beings. As I was reading, what came to mind was the tired argument that Black women are truly liberated, usually used in conjunction with the belief that Black men are emasculated. The way we view gendered hierarchy as Black feminists has been inverted, right down to claiming that Black Matriarchs further disempower Black men in a reenactment of their
“master’s” abuse. The assertion imbues intersectionality, and does not seek to rank oppressions.
Here lies the importance of recognizing intersectionality Black feminist origins, and the matrix of domination piece. Respectability politics have no place interacting with intersectionality because of this, seeking to become palpable to hegemonic, structural, and interpersonal institutions that perpetuate oppression is directly antithetical to true liberation. In the case of heteronormativity and homophobia imparted and enforced between Black people, notions of primal hypersexual heterosexuality relates to primal hypersexual homosexuality. Neither create a whole, human picture of Black sexuality, but a social conservative can most definitely make a case for the vilified, stigmatized pure intentioned Black heterosexual who loves Jesus, whereas the the contrary would be considered totally out of line with their politics.