AustLit

'The COVID-19 pandemic and the resurgence and spread of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and protests within the US and beyond have drawn fresh attention to the usefulness of intersectionality as an analytic and political lens through which to comprehend the world. Intersectionality demands we notice and address structural inequality and its effects on particular groups and individuals and eschews a universalist approach that glosses over—for example—the fact that some people are much more likely to die of disease or at the hands of police or in prison than others, or indeed to protest about it. Its champions argue an intersectional approach should inform everything from humanitarianism to health policy to protest movements to arts funding to domestic violence services, all of which have been recalibrated in 2020 as COVID-19 exacerbates and creates social inequalities. These advocates include intersectionality’s central theorist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a Professor of Law at Columbia University and UCLA, who through her Intersectionality Matters! podcast and #SayHerName campaign has provided cogent analysis and activism around both the pandemic and #Black Lives Matter.'