Race-Class-Gender Theory: An Image(ry) Problem

Abstract

For over 100 years, but particularly since the 1980s, scholars have heavily relied on images of race, class, and gender as “intersecting” and “interlocking” forms of oppression and disempowerment. This imagery has helped feminists develop the empirically grounded theoretical premises that (1) race, class, and gender are social structural locations, (2) structural locations shape perspectives, (3) no individual is all-oppressed or all-oppressing, (4) the meanings of race, class, and gender are localized, and (5) race, class, and gender depend on and (6) mutually constitute each other. In this article I synthesize these premises to reveal some opportunities for theoretical development that may inspire a new generation of race-class-gender scholarship. I argue that while intersection is fairly limited as a conceptual image, the interlocking imagery can help us identify how the relationships among these structures of oppression have become institutionalized.