Critical perspectives on intersectionality and criminology: Introduction
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480616677495 |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Introduction |
677495TCR0010.1177/1362480616677495Theoretical CriminologyPaik
research-article2016
Introduction
Theoretical Criminology
2017, Vol. 21(1) 4 –10
Critical perspectives
© The Author(s) 2016
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criminology: Introduction
Leslie Paik
City College of the City University of New York, USA
Criminologists have long been interested in the relationship between crime with race,
gender, and class, exploring how the latter set of factors shape or determine differences
in offending, victimization, case processing, and outcomes (Daly 1989; Daly and Tonry,
1997; Peterson et al., 2006; Rosich, 2007; Sampson and Laub, 1993; Tonry, 2011). The
resulting work addresses disparities in various phases of the judicial process (e.g. arrest,
adjudication, sentencing, and parole) and pathways into offending and victimization
(Chesney-Lind, 1989; Huebner and Bynum, 2008; Spohn and Sample, 2013). Yet while
much conventional criminological research does incorporate race, class, and gender in
some ways, very few have theorized about the intersections of those factors and crime in
substantive ways.
This special section aims to fill that gap in criminological theory by exploring con-
temporary views of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). These essays seek to
inform and provoke criminologists to engage more critically in how the justice system
embodies, perpetuates, and transforms existing social inequalities such as race, class, and
gender. The call to take an intersectional approach is more than just an intellectual exer-
cise: it is literally a matter of life and death apparent in the police killings of Black men
and women in the USA, racial disparities in death penalty outcomes, and deaths resulting
from transnational migration into Europe and the USA.
Before introducing the essays in this section, I provide a brief overview of intersec-
tionality. Some cite Patricia Hills Collins’ work and the long tradition of Black feminist
scholars and social activists’ work around race, class, and gender as the antecedent to it
(Collins, 2015; Potter, 2015). Building on that work which took place within and beyond
the academy, critical legal scholar Kimberlee Crenshaw (1989, 1991) introduced and
Corresponding author:
Leslie Paik, Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, City College of the City University of New
York, 160 Convent Avenue, New York, 10031, USA.
Email: Lpaik@ccny.cuny.edu
Paik
5
expanded upon the term, “intersectionality” to those situated in the academy. In her
essays, Crenshaw argues that experiences and lives cannot be separated into distinct
identities of race, class, and gender. Rather, those identities overlap, crossing over into
one another in various ways, depending on the context and situation. Any analysis of
crime that looks at racial, class, or gender disparities should take account of those inter-
secting identities.
Crenshaw (1991) conducts such an analysis of rape and domestic violence as they
pertain to women of color, breaking down the concept of intersectionality along struc-
tural, political, and representational lines. Structural intersectionality, she argues, recog-
nizes the positions of women of color in lower social strata that put them more at risk for
these forms of violence compared to White women; examples include previous immigra-
tion laws that compelled immigrant women to stay married to their citizen husbands for
two years to obtain residency status or language barriers preventing women of color from
accessing social services for victims of domestic violence or rape. Political intersection-
ality addresses the discourses embedded in the laws, policies, and social services related
to domestic violence and rape that effectively silence or erase the experiences of women
of color by either (1) invoking the White woman’s experiences as victims to “normalize”
the idea of these forms of violence or (2) suggesting the need to focus instead on the fight
against racism (e.g. minority women must stand together with minority men who are
being unfairly treated by the justice system, given how laws perpetuate the discourses of
White women victimized by minority men). Finally, representational intersectionality
analyzes the broader cultural discourses to show how “contemporary critiques of racist
and sexist representations marginalize women of color” (1991: 1282). To exemplify this
idea of representational intersectionality, Crenshaw uses the obscenity case against two
Black male rappers of 2 Live Crew to argue that the criticism toward their misogynistic
lyrics about Black women was (1) overly harsh given the lack of attention paid to more
explicitly misogynistic messages contained in White...
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