Intersectionality is easily one of the most powerful forces driving American political debate and policy in 2025. And because of its higher-level academic origins, the majority of voters on either side of its function would likely struggle to define it.
Put simply, the theory examines the consequences of sociopolitical factors and groups in conflict, be they collisions between races, sexes, economic classes, religions, or any other classification humans fall into around the world.
On its homepage, the Philadelphia-based Intersectionality Training Institute defines the concept in detail: “Rooted in the experiences of Black and other women of color in the U.S. and Black feminist activism, intersectionality highlights how multiple and intersecting systems of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism) shape social, economic and health outcomes and inequities based on intersectional positions (e.g., racial/ethnic group, sex, gender, sexual and gender minority status, socioeconomic status and disability) and their relationships to power and privilege.”
The concept touches on many of the topics driving political debate across the United States, from criminal justice reform and diversity, equity, and inclusion to affirmative action and immigration. However, critics see it as rooting for the underdog running amok, spotting an academic Marxist concept used to limit a free society.
Most sources trace the origin of intersectionality theory to Kimberle W. Crenshaw. The lawyer, activist, and University of California, Los Angeles professor heads the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School. However, Crenshaw did not respond to an interview request, nor did any member of the Intersectionality Training Institute or the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies.
Fortunately, Joerg Rieger was willing to speak on behalf of the concept. The professor of theology at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School is the author of Theology in the Capitalocene: Ecology, Identity, Class, and Solidarity. His work specializes in economic, social, and ecological justice.
“In real life, the factors of race, economics, opportunity, privilege — they’re always affecting each other,” Rieger said. “The theory now is broadened in a way that is appreciative of the beginnings, but it’s no longer following an idea that somebody had a couple of decades ago. The supporters are continuing to define it.”
Opponents of the idea see a hand on the scale and a new label on a socialist effort to redistribute wealth and opportunity randomly and haphazardly without a thought as to possible consequences.
Rieger admitted that such complaints exist and are partially driven by believers failing to understand intersectionality and its purpose — applying it as a policy excuse when and where convenient.
“Some people who know about intersectionality have a very narrow idea of it,” he said. “Oftentimes, the concept is simply additive. It’s important to remember that race, class, and gender were the three original terms. Each one reshapes the other. How does class analysis reshape race analysis? How are power and opportunity impacted by gender and race? The point here is not to excuse the results of those impacts, but to understand them.”
Intersectionalism played a major role in the philosophies of the so-called George Soros prosecutors, activist district attorneys such as George Gascon in Los Angeles, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, Kim Foxx in Chicago, Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, and Pamela Price in Oakland. Citing previous grievances based on the intersection of what they deemed unfair socioeconomic factors, all the people named above implemented policies that restricted prosecutions, ended bail, and skipped prison time in favor of education and therapy. In each city, crime increased until the DAs were removed by election or recall.
Those who dismissed intersectionality saw such policies as little more than allowing the disadvantaged to commit crimes without consequences to make up for past inequities, afflicting crime victims from the same disadvantaged communities.
Socialist Mary Romero is a professor emeritus of justice studies and social inquiry at Arizona State University. She pointed out that intersectionality plays a role in criminal justice reform because the theory’s factors collide in poorer, troubled regions.
“There are some who see crime and criminals in those communities and blame those people because they’re just bad people,” Romero said. “But I don’t believe people are either bad or good, but rather it’s the conditions around them that they are responding to with their actions.”
Romero explained that theorists embracing intersectionality suggest the current societal structure rewards people for certain types of criminal behavior.
“If that structure is set up in such a way that bad behavior is rewarded, then people are more likely to go down that path,” she added. “You’re also going to find more street crime in some communities where police officers are patrolling more because people are more likely to be engaged in criminal activity. Adolescent kids in a middle-class neighborhood can be drinking and smoking pot and taking drugs, too, but it might be in a gated community.”
Intersectionality proposes that societal problems such as crime and illiteracy correct themselves if opportunities and environments are evened out via public policy.
“Factors for success really depend on what kind of privileges or disadvantages a community has,” Romero said. “It can be something as simple as, ‘Do I have a library I can walk to in my neighborhood? Is it safe to walk to it?'”
To demonstrate how simply economic elements build up to improve or degrade the quality of life across a community, Romero started with the assumption that every child wants to swim in a Valley of the Sun pool, if they can.
“I was shocked when I came to Phoenix and realized that most of my neighbors have pools in their backyard, including me,” she explained. “If you go to south Phoenix, they don’t have pools. They don’t own private pools, and there aren’t any public pools. That shocked me. You know the kids want to go swimming, but they can’t. Those kids end up sleeping more during the day to escape the heat, leading them to be on the street at night when trouble can occur.”
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Rieger wondered whether society can create criminals by not having enough resources or by creating circumstances in which people can’t survive otherwise.
“We can actually fight crime by addressing what it is that makes people become criminals,” Rieger said. “It can be argued via intersectionality theory that chances are very thin that a black kid who’s born in a ghetto with food insecurity and without a good education will end up getting a PhD.”
John Scott Lewinski, MFA, is a writer based in Milwaukee.
