When Donald Trump took office in January 2024, one of his opening actions was to sign an executive order aimed at cut federal funding from schools teaching what the administration characterized as “critical race theory”. A wave of follow-up directives mandated the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion personnel across the federal government, whilst federal agencies began identifying hundreds of words to avoid, including “intersectional” and “intersectionality”. The result has been the systematic erasure of four decades of work by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the 66-year-old legal scholar who introduced the term intersectionality in 1989 and contributed to critical race theory as an academic framework. Now, as her memoir is published, Crenshaw faces her most significant challenge yet: protecting the very ideas that have characterized her career as a scholar and civil rights activist.
From Scholarship to Cultural Conflict
What creates the force of this backlash remarkably pronounced is how recently Crenshaw’s work became part of the broader public awareness. Until not long ago, intersectionality and critical race theory continued to be limited to academic legal work, academic debate and activist circles. These frameworks were debated within academic institutions and policy circles, but rarely penetrated popular discourse or garnered legislative interest. The wider society knew little of Crenshaw’s seminal work to legal scholarship and civil rights discourse.
The turning point happened in 2020, when a disparate group of right-wing activists, media personalities and politicians began elevating these ideas as political flashpoints. All at once, intersectionality and critical race theory were pushed to the centre of the culture wars. In the following five years, this has developed into an all-out war against what critics term “woke”, with critical race theory acting as the principal scapegoat. What was once technical jargon has turned highly contentious, weaponised in debates about education, identity and American values.
- Intersectionality illustrates how race and gender intersect to influence everyday reality
- Critical race theory examines how racism is embedded in law and justice systems
- Conservative activists promoted these concepts as focal points of political debate in 2020
- Federal agencies now identify “intersectionality” as a phrase for removal
The Individual Underpinnings of Opposition
Awakening in Childhood
Crenshaw’s commitment to naming injustice did not emerge from abstract theorising but from direct experience. Coming of age in the segregated South during the civil rights era, she observed firsthand the inconsistencies and intricacies that the law neglected to tackle. Her parents, both activists in the civil rights movement, fostered in her a deep understanding that structural injustice required more than individual goodwill to overcome. These formative years shaped her belief that intellectual endeavour must support justice, that ideas matter because they determine whose experiences are recognised and whose are left unseen by legal systems.
Her early years taught her that identifying concepts was a form of resistance. When institutions ignored certain realities or did not recognise how various types of oppression operated simultaneously, silence became a form of complicity. Crenshaw discovered that her role as a academic would be to articulate what major institutions preferred to leave unspoken, to bring to light what systems worked tirelessly to obscure. This core conviction would guide her entire career, from her first legal publications to her present defence against those attempting to erase her body of work.
Setback and Perspective
Throughout her professional journey, Crenshaw has confronted significant personal hardships that deepened her grasp of structural inequality. These encounters solidified her dedication to intersectionality as far more than theoretical framework—it transformed into a ethical necessity. When she witnessed how legal frameworks fell short of protecting people experiencing intersecting forms of discrimination, she identified that conventional approaches to civil rights legislation were fundamentally inadequate. Her scholarship emerged not from abstract theorising but from observing the real-world impact of legal blindness, the ways that systems designed to protect some actively harmed others.
This lucidity has carried her through decades of work and now through the criticism. Crenshaw grasps that challenges to her views are not merely academic disputes but reveal a underlying reluctance to recognising inconvenient facts about American institutions. Her readiness to confront those in power, despite private toll and professional opposition, originates in this painfully acquired knowledge that silence serves only those determined to uphold the existing order. Her sustained activism and published work constitute her determination to prevent her contributions from being overlooked.
Intersectionality Emerging From Personal Experience
Crenshaw’s pioneering concept of intersectionality did not arise from theoretical abstraction in academic institutions, but rather from witnessing the real inadequacies of the courts to safeguard those facing multiple, compounding forms of discrimination. In 1989, when she originally introduced the term, she was reacting to a distinct situation: Black women workers whose experiences of discrimination could not be adequately addressed by established legal protections designed primarily around individual forms of oppression. The law, she realised, classified race and gender as separate categories, unable to see how they worked in tandem to shape everyday experience. This understanding transformed legal studies and activism, offering terminology for experiences that had previously remained without recognition by institutions meant to protect them.
What characterises Crenshaw’s work is its rejection of treating intersectionality as merely theoretical. She understood that identifying these interconnected forms of oppression was not an academic exercise but a matter of survival and justice for those experiencing them. Her scholarship insisted that legal systems must develop to acknowledge how racism, sexism, classism and other forms of discrimination do not operate in isolation but rather combine to produce distinct experiences of exclusion. By developing intersectionality as both analytical framework and activist tool, Crenshaw created a language that extended well outside academic circles, eventually reaching millions of people seeking to make sense of their personal encounters with unfairness.
The Costs of Solidarity
Standing at the forefront of campaigns advancing racial and gender justice has taken a significant cost on Crenshaw. Throughout her career, she has encountered substantial resistance not only from those defending the status quo but also from detractors in progressive spaces who challenged her approach or disagreed with her focus on intersectionality. The current backlash represents an intensification of this hostility, with her name and ideas deliberately targeted for erasure by influential political actors. Yet Crenshaw has steadfastly maintained solidarity with those whose experiences her work seeks to illuminate, understanding that her position and standing carry responsibility to advocate for those whose voices institutions ignore.
This commitment to solidarity has meant enduring hostility, false claims and campaigns against her research. Crenshaw has seen her carefully developed concepts have been weaponised and twisted by detractors seeking to delegitimise entire fields of study and activist movements. Notwithstanding these difficulties, she persists in her efforts with the African American Policy Forum and via her publications, refusing to be silenced or to abandon the people whose experiences shaped her academic contributions. Her resilience embodies a fundamental commitment that the work of justice requires sacrifice and that retreating would amount to a betrayal of those counting on her words.
Naming Power, Challenging Erasure
Throughout her professional life, Crenshaw has demonstrated a steadfast dedication to naming the systems and structures that powerful institutions choose to leave unexamined. Her work has always operated on a core principle: that language influences understanding, and understanding shapes the possibility of change. By establishing intersectionality into legal and social discourse, she offered a framework for experiences that had previously gone unnamed in formal legal frameworks. This act of naming was never simply academic—it was a political intervention designed to make visible the unseen, to force recognition of truths that current systems had systematically overlooked or rejected.
The ongoing efforts to erase her concepts from government policy and educational institutions represent something Crenshaw sees as profoundly important. When public authorities flag words like “intersectionality” for elimination, they are not merely erasing vocabulary—they are working to constrain a system of understanding that challenges the legitimacy of existing power structures. Crenshaw understands that this suppression is itself a form of power, an attempt to render invisible once more the linked character of oppression. Her refusal to be silenced reflects her conviction that the act of identifying injustice must go on, in spite of political opposition.
- Developed “intersectionality” in 1989 to explain interconnected forms of discrimination
- Co-developed critical race theory framework examining racism in courts and law
- Established African American Policy Forum to promote race justice research and activism
The Backtalker’s Incomplete Work
Crenshaw’s latest memoir, Backtalker, emerges at a moment when her life’s work confronts unprecedented political assault. The title itself holds significance—a conscious reclamation of a term often used to diminish and silence those who question authority. Through the memoir, Crenshaw documents her scholarly development from childhood through her pioneering legal scholarship, providing readers with insight into the lived experiences that shaped her thinking. She reveals how experiencing injustice directly, rather than engaging with it only through academic literature, drove her commitment to creating frameworks that could meaningfully transform how institutions comprehend and tackle structural inequality. The book serves as both personal testimony and intellectual manifesto.
Yet following the publication of her memoir, Crenshaw remains acutely aware that her work remains under siege. Federal agencies continue removing her terminology from policy documents, whilst school boards across America limit student access to texts examining critical race theory. Rather than retreat, however, Crenshaw views this moment as validation of her ideas’ potency. The very intensity of the backlash demonstrates, she argues, that those in power understand how intersectionality and critical race theory risk revealing difficult realities about institutions in America. Her refusal to abandon this work—even as it undergoes deliberate suppression—constitutes a core dedication to the communities whose experiences these frameworks clarify and affirm.