When Donald Trump returned to office in January 2024, one of his initial moves was to sign an presidential directive intended to reduce federal funding from schools offering what the administration defined as “critical race theory”. A wave of subsequent orders mandated the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion personnel across the federal government, whilst federal agencies began identifying hundreds of words to avoid, including “intersectional” and “intersectionality”. The result has been the comprehensive elimination of four decades of work by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the 66-year-old legal scholar who introduced the term intersectionality in 1989 and helped develop critical race theory as an scholarly framework. Now, as her memoir is released, Crenshaw faces her most significant challenge yet: protecting the very ideas that have characterized her career as a scholar and civil rights activist.
From Scholarship to Cultural Conflict
What creates the intensity of this negative reaction particularly striking is how just lately Crenshaw’s research entered general public discourse. Until recently, intersectionality and critical race theory remained largely confined to legal scholarship, academic debate and activist circles. These frameworks were discussed in universities and policy forums, but rarely penetrated mainstream conversation or attracted legislative interest. The general public knew little of Crenshaw’s key contributions to legal academia and rights advocacy.
The turning point came in 2020, when a informal alliance of right-wing activists, media figures and politicians started promoting these ideas as contentious political issues. All at once, intersectionality and critical race theory were placed at the core of the culture wars. In the following five years, this has developed into an all-out war against what critics describe as “woke”, with critical race theory serving as the ultimate bogeyman. What was once scholarly language has become politically radioactive, weaponised in debates about schooling, identity and American values.
- Intersectionality explains how race and gender overlap to form everyday reality
- Critical race theory explores how racism is deeply rooted in the legal framework
- Conservative activists highlighted these concepts as focal points of political debate in 2020
- Federal agencies now mark “intersectionality” as a phrase for removal
The Core Bases of Opposition
Childhood Development
Crenshaw’s resolve in naming injustice did not arise from abstract theorising but from lived experience. Coming of age in the segregated South during the civil rights era, she observed firsthand the inconsistencies and intricacies that the law neglected to tackle. Her parents, themselves committed to civil rights, fostered in her a deep understanding that systemic inequality required more than individual goodwill to challenge. These formative years shaped her conviction that academic work must advance justice, that ideas matter because they shape whose voices are heard and whose are made invisible by legal structures.
Her childhood taught her that identifying concepts was an act of resistance. When institutions overlooked certain realities or did not recognise how multiple forms of oppression operated simultaneously, silence became complicity. Crenshaw discovered that her role as a scholar would be to articulate what powerful institutions preferred to leave unspoken, to bring to light what systems worked tirelessly to obscure. This foundational belief would guide her whole career, from her earliest legal writings to her current defence against those attempting to erase her life’s work.
Losing Ground and Understanding
Throughout her career, Crenshaw has confronted profound personal losses that strengthened her understanding of structural inequality. These encounters crystallised her commitment to intersectionality as more than theoretical framework—it transformed into a moral imperative. When she witnessed how legal systems failed people facing multiple, overlapping forms of discrimination, she recognised that traditional methods to civil rights law were fundamentally inadequate. Her academic work emerged not from detached analysis but from observing the real-world impact of legal blindness, the ways that structures meant to safeguard some caused direct harm to others.
This understanding has supported her through many years of work and now through the backlash. Crenshaw recognises that criticism of her thinking are not merely academic disputes but reflect a fundamental opposition to recognising difficult realities about American institutions. Her willingness to speak truth to power, despite individual sacrifice and professional opposition, stems from this hard-won understanding that silence serves only those committed to preserving the existing order. Her sustained activism and published work embody her determination to prevent her contributions from being overlooked.
Intersectionality Rooted In Lived Experience
Crenshaw’s innovative concept of intersectionality was not born from abstract theorising in academic institutions, but rather from seeing the tangible shortcomings of the legal system to defend those facing multiple, compounding forms of discrimination. In 1989, when she originally introduced the term, she was reacting to a distinct situation: Black women workers whose encounters with prejudice could not be properly handled by existing civil rights frameworks built mainly on individual forms of oppression. The law, she understood, treated race and gender as independent classifications, neglecting to acknowledge how they functioned together to determine everyday experience. This understanding transformed legal scholarship and activism, giving expression for encounters that had long gone unacknowledged by bodies established to defend them.
What sets apart Crenshaw’s work is its refusal to treat intersectionality as merely theoretical. She understood that identifying these interconnected forms of oppression was not an academic exercise but a matter of survival and justice for those experiencing them. Her scholarship insisted that courts and legal institutions must evolve to recognise how racism, sexism, classism and other types of prejudice do not operate in isolation but rather combine to produce unique patterns of marginalisation. By developing intersectionality as both analytical framework and activist tool, Crenshaw established a framework that resonated far beyond academia, eventually reaching millions of people seeking to make sense of their personal encounters with unfairness.
The Costs of Collective Support
Standing at the frontlines of campaigns advancing racial and gender justice has exacted a significant cost on Crenshaw. Throughout her career, she has faced considerable opposition not only from those defending the status quo but also from critics within progressive spaces who questioned her methods or took issue with her focus on intersectionality. The current pushback represents an escalation of this hostility, with her name and ideas intentionally marked for erasure by powerful political forces. Yet Crenshaw has consistently prioritised solidarity with those whose experiences her work seeks to illuminate, understanding that her position and standing carry responsibility to advocate for those whose voices institutional structures overlook.
This commitment to solidarity has meant facing hostility, false claims and campaigns against her scholarship. Crenshaw has seen her meticulously crafted ideas have been weaponised and warped by opponents attempting to undermine comprehensive areas of scholarship and grassroots campaigns. In spite of these obstacles, she continues her work with the African American Policy Forum and via her publications, declining to be quieted or forsake the people whose experiences shaped her research. Her determination embodies a fundamental commitment that the endeavour for equity requires sacrifice and that backing away would amount to a betrayal of those relying on her voice.
Naming Power, Resisting Erasure
Throughout her career, Crenshaw has demonstrated a steadfast dedication to naming the systems and structures that major organisations prefer to leave unexamined. Her work has consistently operated on a fundamental principle: that language influences understanding, and understanding determines the potential for change. By introducing intersectionality into legal and social discourse, she offered a vocabulary for experiences that had previously gone unnamed in formal legal frameworks. This process of naming was never merely academic—it was a political act intended to make visible the unseen, to compel recognition of truths that existing systems had systematically overlooked or denied.
The ongoing efforts to erase her concepts from federal policy and educational institutions represent something Crenshaw sees as deeply significant. When public authorities flag words like “intersectionality” for elimination, they are not merely erasing vocabulary—they are seeking to restrict a framework of analysis that challenges the validity of existing power arrangements. Crenshaw understands that this removal is essentially a manifestation of power, an attempt to render invisible once more the mutual interconnection of oppression. Her unwillingness to remain quiet reflects her conviction that the work of naming injustice must persist, in spite of political opposition.
- Developed “intersectionality” in 1989 to explain interconnected forms of discrimination
- Co-established race-critical legal framework analysing racism in courts and law
- Established African American Policy Forum to promote race justice research and activism
The Back-talker’s Work Left Undone
Crenshaw’s new memoir, Backtalker, arrives at a moment when her life’s work encounters unprecedented political assault. The title itself bears significance—a intentional reclaiming of a term commonly used to diminish and silence those who dare challenge authority. Through the memoir, Crenshaw documents her intellectual journey from childhood through her innovative legal scholarship, giving readers insight into the observations and experiences that shaped her thinking. She reveals how observing injustice firsthand, rather than encountering it solely through academic literature, drove her commitment to developing frameworks that could genuinely transform how institutions comprehend and tackle structural inequality. The book serves as both a personal account and intellectual statement.
Yet despite publishing her memoir, Crenshaw stays keenly conscious that her work remains under siege. Government bodies keep removing her terminology from policy documents, whilst American school boards restrict access to works exploring critical race theory. Rather than withdraw, however, Crenshaw views this moment as confirmation of her ideas’ influence. The sheer force of the backlash demonstrates, she argues, that people with authority recognise how critical race theory and intersectionality threaten to expose uncomfortable truths about American institutions. Her refusal to abandon this work—even as it undergoes deliberate suppression—represents a core dedication to the people whose lived realities these frameworks illuminate and validate.