Intersectionality in a Multiracial Feminist Framework: Bridging Intersectionality and Empirical Social Science Research

Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill (1996) describe multiracial feminism as a broad-based theoretical perspective in which race, gender, class, and other systems of inequality are understood as intersecting, working with and through each other, and influencing the lives of all people.  The authors identify six distinguishing features of multiracial feminism, including: a conceptualization of inequalities as intersecting; a recognition of intersecting inequalities at all levels of social life; an understanding of the relational nature of inequality (i.e. relationality); a focus on social structure as well as individual agency; attention to differences and commonalities; and an appreciation for wide-ranging methodological approaches. This paper draws from Baca Zinn and Thornton Dill’s work to re-consider the uneasy relationship between intersectionality and empirical social science research. I argue that in too many empirical projects the concept of intersectionality has been reduced to a single theme: the theme of multiple “mutually constitutive identities”.  This revised and reduced conceptualization of intersectionality – what I refer to as “intersectionality-light” – has made it especially difficult to reconcile intersectionality and empirical research.  

The more expansive conceptualization of intersectionality found in multiracial feminism reveals the limitations of the “intersectionality-light” approach.  Within the framework of multiracial feminism, intersectionality is an interdisciplinary, multi-vocal, and multi-method project.  Multiracial feminism encourages us to ask how a wide range of research methods can contribute to the collaborative project of intersectionality.  Vivian May (2002) writes that “Because intersectionality requires a both/and way of knowing and a degree of open-mindedness toward ambiguity, women's studies methods do not necessarily seek to smooth over or eradicate paradoxes and differences, but find them to be spaces from within which to work.” Such an acceptance of ambiguity, incompleteness, and multiplicity may also be helpful for empirical intersectional research in the social sciences.