Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s path from ‘Backtalker’ to legal scholar
5/5/202644 min
Crenshaw named two of the most contested ideas in American politics: intersectionality and critical race theory. Her new book is called ‘Backtalker: An American Memoir.’ It takes us to her childhood in Canton, Ohio, and along her path through Cornell, Harvard Law, and the University of Wisconsin, where, in 1988, as a graduate student, she sketched a diagram of an intersection to explain how race, class, and gender overlap. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about these moments in her career, and how she’s thinking about America’s 250th anniversary.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.
Tonya Mosley· Host0:14
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tonya Mosley. My guest today, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, is a legal scholar responsible for naming two of the most contested ideas in American politics, intersectionality and critical race theory. She has written a new memoir about how she came to those words and what it has been like to watch the courts, legislators, and the media weaponize and redefine them. The book is called Back Talker: An American Memoir. The first of those words came together one late night in 1988 at the University of Wisconsin. Crenshaw was a young legal scholar pulling apart one of the most important court cases of her career. A Black woman had sued General Motors for discrimination, and a federal court told her she could sue either as a Black person or as a woman, but not both at once. Crenshaw took a legal pad and drew two roads crossing. One road was race, the other was gender. She put an X at the intersection and wrote the woman's name there. The law, she would later argue, could not see this woman because it could only look down one road at a time. She named that X intersectionality.