This document summarizes key aspects of intersectionality theory as developed by Patricia Hill Collins. It discusses how intersectionality examines how gender, race, class, and sexuality intersect and interact to create social inequalities. It focuses on Collins' work developing black feminist thought, which centers the experiences of black women and validates their distinct forms of knowledge production. Collins argues inequality results from the intersecting forces within the matrix of domination, and examines oppression on individual, group, and institutional levels.

1. Intersectionality
Not my work. From
Temple University

2. Intersectional Theory—
Patricia Hill Collins
• Intersectional Theory argues that most
sociological theory makes the mistake of
examining only one variable at a time.
• The basic premise is that variables work in
groups.
• Intersectional Theory is particularly concerned
with the formation of social identities.
• At its most basic form, Intersectional Theory
examines the ways that gender, race, class,
and sexuality work in concert to create
inequality—“interlocking systems of
oppression.”

3. Black Feminist Thought
• This is from a chapter in Patricia Hill
Collins’ book Black Feminist Thought
• Collins is a sociologist at the University
of Maryland
• Collins is the foremost theorist of
intersectionality within sociology.
• Collins’ work on intersectionality begins
with her biography as a Black American
woman.
• Although intersectionality is applicable
to any identity, Black women have been
the leaders in this field of sociology.

4. Black Feminist Thought
• Collins argues that Black feminism creates and
validates knowledge in ways that are very
different from the American educational
system, which has been dominated by elite
White men.
• Collins’ goal is to trace out the ways that Black
feminists have produced and recorded
knowledge.
• The distinct forms embraced by Black
feminists are shaped both by cultural
differences (distinct values traced both to
African-American and to African cultures) and
“intersecting oppressions”—which refers to the
way that mainstream institutions have denied
access to Black women. In other words, the
culture they are raised with and the
experiences they have in life.

5. Who Cares? Who Should
Care?
• Black Women: Because their forms of
knowledge are increasingly recognized
and heard
• Social Theorists: Because
intersectionality and Black feminism are
providing new theories that make for
better social explanation.
• Social Researchers: Because these new
theories help them to make sense of their
findings.
• White Male Theorists: Because their
research, treated for years as if it applies
to all, is now placed in its proper context.

6. The Things a Black Woman
Knows
• Because Black women were long denied
access to academia, their collected
knowledge is less likely to be found in
scholarly texts (with notable exceptions
such as Zora Neale Hurston)
• Collins pushes us to find this knowledge
elsewhere, in subverted forms of
knowledge transmission: poetry, music,
oral histories, sermons, etc.—which is why
so many of her quotations are from
playwrights, novelists, and poets.

7. The Matrix of
Domination
• Collins directs the unique perspectives of Black
feminism towards one issue in particular—
inequality and the complex matrix of forces that
produce inequality.
• Although Collins focuses on the uniqueness of a
Black female perspective, she is also invested in
building alliances with other perspectives—
across races, genders, and classes.
• These alliances are only possible when we
acknowledge our unique perspectives and listen
to those of others.

8. The Matrix of
Domination
• According to Collins, inequality and
oppression are the result of several
forces working hand in hand—the
matrix of domination.
• No one singular force is the cause of
injustice. She identifies class, race,
and gender as the major forces that
affect the lives of Black women.
• She acknowledges that these forces
also affect many others, and that
other issues come into play as well.

9. The Matrix of
Domination
• Inequality functions on 3 levels:
• Personal/Individual
• Groups
• Institutions/Societies
• At all 3 levels, we want to look not only at the
domination that is occurring, but also at the ways that
people resist it and fight back.
• Resistance can only succeed when it sets its own
terms. For the Black women in Collins analysis, that
means privileging the unique “ways of knowing” that
are held by Black women over and above the
institutionalized forms of knowledge that have been
used as tools of domination.
• If any of you feel that sometimes the readings in this
course have alienated you or left you out, that’s
important! Ask yourself how your “way of knowing” is
different from that of the author we are reading.

10. Ways of Knowing• Collins states, and perhaps it is obvious,
that in order to produce Black feminist
theory, you have to be a Black woman.
• But that doesn’t mean that those of us
who are not Black women cannot learn
from Collins’ ideas.
• Collins gives us a language for
understanding our own unique ways of
making sense of the world.
• It is important to note that in many of
our readings this semester, the authors
never identified themselves as White
men. We have to wonder, does their
race and gender matter?

11. Black Feminist Thought
and Intersectionality
• The study of Black feminist thought is a
specific application of intersectionality
that places Black women at the center of
analysis to study their experiences, their
actions, and their epistemologies.
• Intersectionality is a broader and more
general theoretical approach that can be
used to examine any group or community
by placing them at the center and
understanding where they sit within the
matrix of domination.