The Identity Trap

According to advocates of this broader sense of intersectionality, members of different identity groups can never fully understand each other’s experiences. And because different

This new ideology was defined by seven major themes: a rejection of the existence of objective truth; the use of a form of discourse analysis for explicitly political ends; an embrace of strategic essentialism; a deep pessimism about the possibility of overcoming racism

In this way, the legitimate impetus for standpoint epistemology came to be the kernel for the idea that I have “my truth”—one that you have no right to question or critique on the basis of supposedly objective facts, especially if you do not belong to the same marginalized identity group.

He distrusted simplistic narratives of good and evil. He rejected the idea that anybody could be defined by virtue of the group to which they belong. He was deeply worried about the way in which prevailing discourses exerted power over every single member of society. And he hated the

limits on free speech are harmful in a way that other policies are not because they undermine the ability of a society to course correct.

In Crenshaw’s most influential paper, which she published in 1989, she coined a term for the way in which different forms of discrimination can reinforce each other: “intersectionality.”

For despite Foucault’s refusal to propose a better model for society, it was his rejection of universal truth, his skepticism about the possibility of progress, and his warnings about the power of oppressive discourses that ended up inspiring an ideology that has gone on to transform the left and gain unexpected influence in the mainstream: the ide

“The interests of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites.” From this perspective, periods of historical progress come to seem like a kind of illusion: