Inaccurate definition

While reading “The leftist lexicon” by Bradley Gitz, I noted some inaccuracies in his description of intersectionality theory.

This term was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a civil rights activist and legal scholar, who wrote that traditional feminist ideas and antiracist policies exclude black women because of the overlapping discrimination unique to them: “Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which black women are subordinated.” This is the intended definition.

The term was later put in the dictionary to mean interconnected categorization of social categories, i.e., race, class and gender. Since then it has been adopted to mean just social justice and, hence, given an unintended connection to Marxism.

In an Oct. 23, 2018, article by Merrill Perlman, she says now it is used as “a label like ‘liberal’ or ‘alt-right,’ which can then be ‘weaponized’ in the polarity wars” (such as seen in Bradley Gitz’s column), and becomes something to be either for or against.

In Perlman’s article, she suggests that a journalist should not use this term without an explanation of its true meaning because they are probably looking for another term (unless they are trying purposefully to weaponize the word to create division). It has nothing to do with white, Christian males, although there is no dispute that white males and many others have perpetuated racism, sexism, class and gender division. SALLY MAYS Roland