NBC ran a doting headline about “Why Kamala Harris’ nomination is pushing this academic idea further into the mainstream.” The idea is “intersectionality,” and it dates to a 1989 law journal article by Kimberle Crenshaw: “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.” At its core, the intersectional insight is reasonable enough: If we look at racial oppression and sexism, it isn’t as simple as adding things up. Understanding how women in general are disadvantaged and understanding how black people are disadvantaged isn’t really enough to understand how black women are disadvantaged.

“Intersectionalists” also make a great deal more of this insight than it deserves. The study of demographic identity-group disadvantages is a booming academic industry, and innovations in that space tend to garner a lot of scholarly adherents. As “Parkinson’s Law,” the classic Economist satirical study of bureaucracy, states, the work will expand to fill the time allotted. A lot of time is allotted to parsing and elaborating on buzzwords such as the one Crenshaw coined. And it has made its way into other contexts. For example, it is now quite common for job descriptions or scholarly research areas to be described as existing at “the intersection” of this and that.