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Intersectionality theory applied to whiteness and middle-classness
Cynthia Levine-Raskya
a
Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
Online publication date: 14 March 2011
To cite this Article Levine-Rasky, Cynthia(2011) 'Intersectionality theory applied to whiteness and middle-classness',
Social Identities, 17: 2, 239 — 253
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Social Identities
Vol. 17, No. 2, March 2011, 239253
Intersectionality theory applied to whiteness and middle-classness
Cynthia Levine-Rasky*
Department of Sociology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada
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(Received 24 November 2009; final version received 29 June 2009)
Despite the ubiquity of intersectionality in feminism and allied methodologies, it
is typically associated with the elaboration of oppression. A consideration of
intersectionality theory as applied to the ‘other side’ of power relations that is to
the intersections of whiteness and middle-classness (and the complications arising
from ethnicity) enables the exploration of power in relation to the enduring
inequities between groups. Dominant positionality is embedded in intersectionality theory in two ways: (1) as part of a complex, postmodern identity formation
in which even at the individual level oppression co-exists alongside domination; (2) in the emphasis on relationality in which oppression and domination are
co-conditional. Building on an essay by Floya Anthias, the intersections of whiteness and middle-classness are further elaborated by showing that, along with
ethnicity and gender, these positions (and positionings) reinforce each other in
some circumstances and contradict each other in different circumstances. This
inquiry introduces a complexity into intersectionality theory that enables a truly
relational approach to the analysis of power often neglected in writing on the
topic.
Keywords: whiteness; intersectionality; social class; middle class; Anthias;
feminism; power; identity
The concept of intersectionality is in a strange transitional phase between emergence
and ubiquity. The former commands attention but risks suspicion; the latter confers
a legitimacy but risks loss of specificity. It both explodes into a proliferation of
identity categories and implodes into a distillation of such categories into a simplistic
model. This tension thoroughly penetrates the concept and is reflected in the way it
informs methodology. What sense can be made of its trajectory in feminist theory?
Rather than writing as a witness to the denouement of intersectionality theory or to
its current maturity, I propose returning to one of its neglected elements in order
to affirm its strength. Through reconsideration of intersectionality theory as applied
to the ‘other side’ of power relations, that is to the intersections of whiteness and
middle-classness rather than to the more traditional categories of racialization,
gender, and working-classness, it becomes possible to explore power in relation to the
enduring problem of racism. That is, I explore the intersections of race and class but
I do so with the lens on whiteness, middle-classness (and briefly on ethnicity and
gender). My purpose is to advance an understanding of power in a theoretical
move that, despite its consistency with writing on intersectionality, is overlooked.
This is a relatively new question in intersectionality theory. While regard to the
*Email: clr@queensu.ca
ISSN 1350-4630 print/ISSN 1363-0296 online
# 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2011.558377
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C. Levine-Rasky
intersectionality of power cannot resolve all tensions, it may unlock some important
passages for analyzing inequities as an enduring problem of relationality between
groups. Simultaneously, it introduces some desirable complexity and contradiction
into the bigger theoretical picture of power relations.
Making space for whiteness and middle-classness on the intersectionality ‘stage’
may seem objectionable for those who support the critical project of challenging
inequities. It could represent a political shift away from the experience of injustice
that ennervates anti-racism movements toward a demand for inclusion of the very
groups who exercise power over inclusion. This is only one among other risks, all of
which require reflection without the temptation to render them more comfortable for
white participants. The purpose of this paper is to participate in a dialogue, however
self-consciously, by challenging the denial of power and privilege conferred by the
intersections of whiteness, and middle-classness. It takes the inevitable risk of error in
order to support a broad-based theoretical and political project the kind of which
Daiva Stasiulus (1999, p. 379) speaks while recognizing the irreducible difference that
such action must engage at the outset.
According to Leslie McCall, ‘intersectionality is the most important theoretical
contribution that women’s studies, in conjunction with related fields, has made so
far’ (2005, p. 1771). Relatedly, Floya Anthias states that intersectionality is the most
important development in the theorization of inequality (2005, p. 32). The feminist
literature on intersectionality reflects a growing sophistication of the terms in which
it may be understood. Early formulations became influential for their integration of
race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability, and other axes of identity. Today,
approaches are not aimed at developing a model illustrative of multiple levels of
oppression but at showing the episteme of a lived reality that embraces its own
complexities. I first look briefly at the rise and definition of intersectionality theory.
Next, I discuss resurrecting the social position of domination in intersectionality
theory. I show that a role for domination was always integrated into even the earliest
discussions of intersectionality but that it has receded in focus. Re-introducing
domination in the form of whiteness and middle-classness (and then the complications arising from ethnicity) enables a truly relational approach necessary for a fuller
analysis of inequitable social relations: advancing change in work on inequitable
social relations. To date, intersectionality theory has focused on the structures of
oppression and the experiences of oppressed groups. Critical whiteness studies have
elaborated on institutionalized dominance at sites like the justice and education
systems, the emergence or mitigation of race privilege among groups racialized as
white, or on developing anti-racism consciousness among white peoples. Rarely has
intersectionality theory been coupled with whiteness and middle-classness. In doing
so, the process my not only break down barriers between these efforts in theory and
in activism but may also build up nuanced understandings of each as they exist in
inextricable relation to each other.
The rise of intersectionality theory
Intersectionality theory arose from black feminist thought as an incisive critique of
mainstream feminism. In 1977, the Combahee River Collective wrote about the
commitment to struggle against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression
advocating for ‘the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the
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fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking’ (1983, p. 210). Gender is
always raced and race is always gendered. There are racialized differences within
social class groups as there are social class differences within any racialized group.
The way in which these intersect gives substance to a new theoretical embraced by
virtually all of feminist scholarship. Intersectionality is significant not only for theoretical and ideological reasons, but also for reasons of political consciousness and
action (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983; Andrew, 1996, p. 66).
Through not only its neglect of racism and racialized women but also its denial of
this neglect, mainstream liberal (read white) feminism was understood as participating in exclusion of black and other racialized women (see hooks, 1984; Moraga &
Anzaldua, 1983; Smith & Smith, 1983; Lorde, 1984; Das Gupta, 1991; Kline, 1991;
King, 1988). White feminism erred in assuming that racism could be subsumed under
its banner and that it represented the universal experiences of all women (Das Gupta,
1991; King, 1988; Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983; Carby, 2000). Ideological equality
(essential sameness) was deployed defensively by liberal white feminists. White
women were committed to the struggle against sexism and believed that was sufficient for all women regardless of their racial or ethnic identity. However, their
campaigns for issues such as national daycare, access to management positions
and non-traditional occupations, fair distribution of domestic labour, and freedom
from harassment did not represent the interests of racialized women. For racialized
women, social problems were not only marked by sexism but by racism underlying
underemployment, housing, social services, and public education as well as by
everyday racism. Moreover, national and ethnic identity have assumed a salient place
in analyses of global social relations and resistance movements are organized around
local identities (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983, 1992; Stasiulus, 1999). Women’s
struggles are shaped by different political and social conditions in different countries.
For example, legal equality for women may be irrelevant for women living in
polygamic societies; family may be a site of solidarity in countries pulled apart by
occupying forces; abortion may be obviated in places that force women to be
sterilized (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983). When it did approach racial difference, the
will of mainstream white feminism to engulf all other women in a ‘third world’ rubric
was criticized for the way it masked all allegedly inferior qualities as ‘difference’. In
contrast, white middle-class feminists appeared modern and self-determining while
neglecting specific and local meanings of racialized women’s lives, work, constraints,
and practices (Mohanty, 1991; hooks, 1984; Carby, 2000).
Today, it is understood that social class, race and ethnicity crosscut all groups of
women. Working-class women represent a range of ethnicities, and middle-classness
does not guarantee access to class privilege for ethnicized or racialized women.
A middle-class woman who immigrates to North America often finds herself occupying a working-class position in which the meaning of her ethnicity is obscured by her
new class immobility. Crenshaw (1989, 1993) describes American anti-discrimination
law that responds to either Black men or White women, and domestic violence law
that responds to White women. Neither is inclusive of Black women, especially poor
Black women. In a Canadian context, research has given rise to such specificities as
the intersections of race, gender, and class for live-in caregivers (Stasiulus & Bakan,
2007), for Native women at the margins of the Canadian economy (Poelzer, 1991),
for undocumented sex workers (San Martin, 2004), for Black nurses (Calliste, 1996),
and for Muslim schoolgirls (Spurles, 2003). Accounts like these indicate that
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C. Levine-Rasky
attributions of ethnicity, race, and class are placed upon women through material
relations and social representations in the dominant society. Identity is not only a
matter of voluntarism despite the will such women may have toward political affiliation with like others.
In intersectionality theory, identity is experienced not as composed of discrete
attributes but as a subjective, even fragmented, set of dynamics. Identity and exclusion are therefore multiple and complex (Friedman, 1995), contingent upon social,
political, and ideological contexts that produce and sustain them. Moreover, who one
‘is’ is not static; it is wholly relational to others, to culture, and to organizations in
which one moves. Identity is elected and it is emergent in relation to power. Exclusion
effects individuals and groups marked by multiple categories of ‘difference’ (Moraga
& Anzaldua, 1983; Crenshaw, 1989, 1993; King, 1988; Davis, 1983; hooks, 1995). The
terms of differentiation shift with time and political milieus. These include processes
of domination, resistance, colonialism, nationalism, transnationalism, exile, and
capitalism. The picture is thoroughly complex and contradictory (McClintock, 1995).
Intersecting social positions clash against institutions and policies that insist on
difference and exacerbate inequities.
Simplistic approaches to intersectionality often reduce inequity to a three- or
four-part model. This example is derived from a Canadian textbook on race and
ethnic relations:
Intersectional analysis is a theoretical approach to the study of inequality that
incorporates the interplay of race, gender, ethnicity, and class in defining outcomes.
For examples, gender is superimposed on and intersects with race, ethnicity, and class to
create overlapping and mutually intensifying patterns of domination and exploitation.
(Fleras & Elliott, 2007, p. 360)
Dialogue on intersectionality has moved well away from initial formulations of
double and triple oppression of race/class/gender locations. Indeed, formulaic
approaches to systemic exclusion may merely serve to render it intelligible for the
dominant group, especially for white men (King, 1988, p. 51). It is better conceptualized as involving both social position identity and access to symbolic and
material resources and social positioning in which different groups define, negotiate,
and challenge their positions (Anthias, 2005). It is not so much a matter of social
categories but of collective exclusion and belonging in relationship to other groups
whose borders are permeable and fluid. Avtar Brah and Ann Phoenix provide this
definition of intersectionality:
We regard the concept of ‘intersectionality’ as signifying the complex, irreducible,
varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple axis (sic) of differentiation economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential intersect in
historically specific contexts. The concept emphasizes that different dimensions of
social life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure strands. (Brah & Phoenix,
2004, p. 76)
Brah and Phoenix’s approach is valuable for several reasons. It avoids the risk of
‘adding up’ factors of marginalization by eschewing reference to identity categories
such as class or ethnicity. They abandon this convention by signalling that how
intersectionality is an effect of differentiation is more meaningful than who or what is
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affected. Identity is thus transformed from object to process. The language of
economic, political, and other relations of difference is more effective than a
language of identity categories that reifies difference itself. Anthias (2005, p. 39)
would concur: ‘[O]ne of the major characteristics of social divisions is that they
construct forms of belonging and otherness’. The recognition of subjective and
experiential factors returns to a theme stressed by other observers (e.g. hooks, 1988,
1995; King, 1988; Lorde, 1984) who stress emotion as a response to real material
inequalities between groups substantiating intersectionality subjectively as well as
structurally. Historical context occupies a central place in Brah and Phoenix’s conceptualization of intersectionality. It matters when and how difference emerged, and
its meaning and force is entirely contingent upon that context. While difference and
differentiation are both named, no one kind of difference is given privileged status.
Nor is there any temptation to resolve the tension between subjective experience
and social relations. They are in dynamic relationship. Intersectionality remains a
metaphor. In this, theirs is close to Daiva Stasiulus’ definition: ‘Intersectional
theorizing understood the social relationality of women and men, and the dynamics
of their social, cultural, economic, and political contexts to be multiply, simultaneously, and interactively determined by various significant axes of social organization’ (1999, p. 347, original emphasis).
The place of domination in intersectionality
Intersectionality rejects singular methodologies in favour of the integration of social
relations and subjective experience (Brah & Phoenix, 2004). Dominant positionality
is embedded in intersectionality theory in two ways: (1) as part of a complex,
postmodern identity formation in which even at the individual level oppression
co-exists with domination. No ‘pure’ position exists. Identity is not static nor attributional, but emerges from particular social processes enabling political practice;
(2) in the emphasis on relationality in which oppression and domination are coconditional. I will look at each of these dynamics.
In Brah and Phoenix’s definition of intersectionality, no reference is made to
particular position in relation to oppression or domination. It does not identify any
group or any particular ‘side’ of racism or inequity; it only identifies intersectionality
as an outcome of differentiation, itself arising through various kinds of social relations. The authors state that ‘different dimensions of social life’ operate simultaneously. This goes for all groups whether they are commonly characterized as
dominant or subdominant. Yet intersectionality is habitually associated with positions of oppression; it is usually ‘about’ poor, racialized women tethered to discourses of ‘otherness’. It is also true that in a demonstration of Lacan’s ‘passion for
ignorance’, white, middle-class feminists desire to neglect the role of domination in
social relations.
When used to describe a postmodern identity formation, multiplicity arises not as
a limitation but as a possibility for representation, resistance, and alliance-building.
It moves closer to the complexities of lived realities while providing space for struggle
across differences. The multiple, fragmented, and shifting identities signify the
contradictory positions of oppression and domination within it. Collins’ famous
‘matrix of domination’ (1993) seems to pivot on oppression especially for Black
women, but she also notes that Black women exercise power in some spheres.
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C. Levine-Rasky
Moreover, she notes that ‘a matrix of domination contains few pure victims or
oppressors. Each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege from
the multiple systems of oppression which frame everyone’s lives’ (p. 621). This works
at the level of the individual, Collins asserts. Individuals are both members of
multiple dominant groups and members of multiple subordinate groups (p. 621).
Susan Friedman notes that intersectionality is not uni-directional but involves a
‘relational positionality’ in which identity is ‘situationally constructed’ (1995, p. 16).
Not only are identities multiple and interlocking, but domination and oppression coexist, she notes.
I suspect intersectionality is often simplified when it is taught in undergraduate
classrooms, but even in the textbook quoted in the previous section, there is
discussion of the relationality between privilege and ‘dis-privilege’ (Fleras & Elliott,
2007, p. 158). This gestures to the essential relationality between oppression and
domination, the relationship among groups within power relations that effect
exclusion and inclusion (Ng, 1991; Stasiulus, 1999). These relations involve political
structures like the state and civil society, cultural forces, and the economic
organization that give rise to difference, to the centre, and to the rules that govern
the border between them. The co-dependency of oppression and domination is
recognized in postcolonial studies from Fanon (1963) and Memmi (1965) to Said
(1979) and Spivak (1999) highlighting the mutual effects of colonialism on the
colonized and the colonizer. Power is ‘always already’ involved in intersectionality.
Even in early formulations such as Collins (1993) and Moraga and Anzaldua (1983),
domination was integrated as part of the complex web of social relations. In her
conceptual framework for intersectionality, Weber (2004) notes that domination is
contingent upon exclusion. There is no centre without a border, no privilege without
oppression.
Friedman (1995) notes that power is exercised by members of both dominant and
subdominant groups, an observation that is confluent with Foucaultian analytics of
power (Levine-Rasky, 2007). She asserts that the notion of a circulating power is
consistent with that of contradictory subject positions that include race and
ethnicity. In interlocking forms of multiple oppressions, there is no position unaffected by the contradictory effects of domination. For Foucault, power is productive, not possessed but exercised by individuals. It has the character of a network
‘which runs through the whole social body’ (1980, p. 119). It operates like a technique
or strategy associated with the positive production of subjectivity. Power succeeds
not only by virtue of its oppressive force but through the possibilities it makes. For if
power does not descend but circulates, then individuals ‘are always in the position of
simultaneously undergoing and exercising their power’ (1980, p. 98). Power is
therefore not simply appropriated by a dominant class to be used to exploit a
subordinate one. Instead, power is ‘exercised upon the dominant as well as on the
dominated’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 186) and carries with it a political and
economic utility. This claim has important implications for the critical study of
whiteness and middle-classness, especially where they intersect.
Middle-classness and whiteness
Despite its relative neglect, the embeddedness of domination in intersectionality
theory compels the study of middle-classness and whiteness as two of Brah and
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Phoenix’s ‘multiple axes of differentiation’ that emerge from specific historical
contexts. Indeed, in their essay, Brah and Phoenix (2004) discuss work on whiteness
by such authors as Ruth Frankenberg and Paula Rothenberg and on middleclassness by such authors as Valerie Walkerdine and Diane Reay.
The problem is not who has power, but how power is practiced so as to effect
political and social advantage. It’s a question of position and of positioning as
Anthias reminds us. But what are whiteness and middle-classness and how are they
practiced? What are the historical, economic, cultural, political contexts that gave
rise to them? This is linked to the broader problem of social domination that is
accomplished through a range of structural and cultural phenomena including race,
social class, gender, religion, language, but also historical settlement and current
immigration policies, the ideology of Canadian multiculturalism, and so on. To
restrict analysis to the racial dimension implied by whiteness or by middle-classness
obscures questions about these other categories and the way they interact so as to
consolidate the complex practice of power. Length restrictions make theorizing on a
scale evoked by all of these factors impractical to do here. Moreover, doing so may
result in a scheme that could be unwieldy at best and impossibly abstract at worst.
The selection of two factors whiteness and middle-classness reflects my own
research activities and does not imply a hierarchy of factors. Theorizing on this scale
trades off breadth for depth but remains loyal to the spirit of contemporary feminism
inspired by commitments to social justice.
Among modern observers of social class, Marxists and Weberians alike, the
middle class is described in terms of its cultural, ideological and political dimensions
rather than productive or economic ones. Weberians admit components such as
consumption, occupation, and status. The middle class is distinguished from the
working class by its lifestyle, authority and education (Wacquant, 1991). However,
this leaves aside the whole question of class identity as it emerged historically as a
class formation. This process, explains Wacquant, involved a late nineteenth century
differentiation from the working class identified with the industrial labour movement
and regarded as trapped in traditional modes of labour. The middle class identified
with new technological modes of labour and sought to align themselves with the
ruling class, in effect to be anti-proletarian. State policies like insurance and pensions
solidified middle class differentiation. Eventually, this process accrued ideological,
and political, and cultural symbols for the new middle classes and assumed a central
position in its formation. Individualism and personal property all figure prominently
in the rise of the middle class as a distinct category (Crompton, 1998). These issues
emerge as more significant than those of class location based on economics. Even
here, however, the nature of occupations and the degree of control over work are
qualitatively different for middle-class workers (Crompton, 1998, p. 167).
Distinct from questions of ‘who’ belongs to the middle-class or even ‘what’ is the
middle-class, this perspective stresses the practices of the middle class. The work of
Pierre Bourdieu has been pivotal in this approach, concentrating on middle-class
consumption, lifestyle, and disposition. The concept of cultural capital as developed
by Bourdieu receives special attention (see Ball, 2003; Reay, 1998, 2000; Savage, 2000;
Lareau, 1989; Whitty, 2001; Skeggs, 2004). Bourdieu (2004) explains that cultural
capital is the acquisition of those cultural goods valued as the ‘distinction’ of the
privileged class, and that these become components of one’s habitus, or ‘long-lasting
dispositions of the mind and body’. Class is not understood in the abstract. Nor is it
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a static or discrete category. It is approached instead in terms of ‘the situated
realizations, of class and class reproduction’ and ‘as it happens’ (Ball, 2003, pp. 6,
174) bridging a structuralist and culturalist perspective. As a structural phenomenon,
class bears upon material conditions and the production and distribution of rewards
and resources. As a cultural practice, class positions are achieved and enacted as
lived reality.
Class is also understood relationally. That is, class becomes itself through
differentiation and exclusion (see Savage, 2000) and through active identification or
gestures of belonging (Ball, 2003). As Anthias (2005) points out, group membership
involves the maintenance of boundaries. Defining a ‘we’ is premised on constructing
otherness. To take an example, Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and social capital are
frequently used for analyzing the school choice among the middle-class particularly
for its relevance to social inequality. As Ball, Bowe and Gewirtz (1996; and also
Lareau & Weininger, 2004) argue, choice is thoroughly social; it depends not just on
cultural capital but on the practice of cultural capital. One must use it to reap the
economic, social and symbolic benefits conferred by social class. Middle-class
parents are more likely, for example, to activate their cultural capital through a
variety of means including direct involvement with the school, the provision of
supplementary educational programs, better contacts with teachers and administrators, and efforts to achieve confluence between the school culture and that of their
home (Lareau, 1989; Wells & Oakes, 1998).
Whiteness also requires careful definition and elaboration. The approach cited
below is effective in identifying the contexts in which whiteness emerged through
certain conditions and its effects. It avoids reifying whiteness as a somatic or ‘real’
social category, and shows that in obscuring its own internal differences, whiteness
secures power:
Like other racial categories, whiteness is more than a classification of physical
appearance; it is largely an invented construct blending history, culture, assumptions,
and attitudes. From a descent of various European nationals there emerges in the
United States the consensus of a single white race that, in principle, elides religious,
socioeconomic, and gender differences among individual whites to create a hegemonically privileged race category. (Babbs, 1998, p. 10)
Discussions on the emergence of whiteness range from Taylor (2005) who argues
that it emerged from particular junctions in science and philosophy in the English
Renaissance, to Bonnett (1998a) who shows that racialized differentiations were
made in pre-modern China and the Middle East that eventually took on Christian
and colonial overtones. Further, he shows the emergence of the intersection between
whiteness and class (1998b) in which the British working class embraced whiteness
for the advantages accorded to the capitalist class (even as capitalism changed its
form and symbolic meaning over time), and with gender (1998a) in which women
were entrusted with the reproduction of the white British nation. In her careful study
of whiteness in early American literary and history texts, Valerie Babbs (1998) puts a
specifically American spin on the emergence of whiteness. In its hostile relations with
Native peoples, then in the amalgam of British immigrants in the United States,
whiteness was fabricated into a meaningful community with enfranchisement and
other citizenship rights for insiders and enslavement and brutality for outsiders.
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Similarly, Roediger (2005) elaborates on whiteness as an effect of the differentiation
of European ethnic groups in the US labour force.
Just as with other racialized categories in intersectionality theory, it is insufficient
to regard whiteness as a discrete identity category. We have seen how middleclassness is exercised. It is more than a social location or an expression of occupation
or relationship to the economy. Besides functioning like a location and standpoint,
whiteness is also a practice (Frankenberg, 1993); several contributors to critical
whiteness studies have described its mechanisms. Hurtado and Stewart (2004) for
example, describe such dynamics as the creation of social distance from others’
difficult circumstances, the denial of personal circumstances conferring racial
privilege, white racial privilege acknowledged only with its loss, superiority ascribed
to a ‘normalcy’ and ‘neutrality’ unattainable by racialized others, and an unrecognized solidarity. John Gabriel (1998) specifies in whiteness the processes of exnomination (refusing to name itself), naturalization (against whom others require
definition), and universalization (taking its peculiarity as representative of all).
Frankenberg (1993) describes ‘discursive repertoires’ used by whites the most
common of which are colour and power evasiveness.
Just as with middle-classness, relationality is also a salient theme in the literature
on whiteness. In critical whiteness studies generally, racism involves participation in
systems of domination the rewards for which are distributed inequitably among
groups constructed as racially different. Benefits accrue to those groups who occupy
a social location of power or who engage in the performance of power. One such
benefit of whiteness is a material and psychic distance from the entire issue of
racialized inequality. But this ‘benefit’, as other characteristics of whiteness, is an
outcome of exclusion. As Toni Morrison (1992) pointed out in her extraordinary
statement, qualities attributed to whiteness are possible only in relation to their
absence in a racialized other. Privilege, a normalized identity, status, rewards, and
dominance are contingent upon an epistemological frame that situates others as
different relative to these characteristics. Critical whiteness studies expose the often
unacknowledged but mutual contingencies of privilege and oppression.
Intersectionality theory applied to whiteness and middle-classness
Next, I want to explore the possibility of applying intersectionality theorizing to the
study of domination, specifically to the practice of whiteness and middle-classness.
When these two dynamics are studied together, they are frequently conflated as in
the phrase, ‘the white, middle-class’, rather than shown to explicitly emerge from
theoretical claims. Consistent with intersectionality theorizing however, a study of
domination can only be achieved by assuming the interdependence of race and class.
Floya Anthias (2005) provides a promising approach. In emphasizing the problem of
inequality but finding additive models of intersectionality too simplistic, Anthias
takes a cultural approach to the problem. She suggests that ‘social position’ involves
differences in resources while ‘social positioning’ describes ‘how we articulate,
understand and interact with these positions, e.g. contesting, challenging, defining’
(p. 33). For Anthias, social difference involves both of these processes and produces
the experience of belongingness or otherness. In other words, identity locations
conventionally represented as gender, race, class, ethnicity, culture, religion, and so
on, are shaped by material differences and are also lived subjectively and practiced in
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C. Levine-Rasky
relations with others. Moreover, they are co-produced through such interactions. The
process is thoroughly relational.
Anthias makes a second point that facilitates the application of intersectionality
theory to whiteness and middle-classness. She asserts that depending on the particular context in which social relations are played out, intersectionality may be either
reinforcing or contradictory in its effects. In this, she allows us:
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to see ethnicity, gender and class, first, as crosscutting and mutually reinforcing systems
of domination and subordination, particularly in terms of processes and relations of
hierarchisation, unequal resource allocation and inferiorisation. Secondly, ethnicity,
gender and class may construct multiple, uneven and contradictory social patterns of
domination and subordination; human subjects may be positioned differentially within
these social divisions. (Anthias, 2005, pp. 3637, original emphasis)
In other words, in power relations, class and ethnicity will reinforce each other in
some circumstances while they will contradict each other in different circumstances.
This approach can account for the complexities of whiteness as it intersects with
class, ethnicity, and gender. Table 1 attempts to sort out the possible intersections
between whiteness and middle-classness (and ethnicity and gender) using Anthias
framework.
In terms of social position and of social positioning, whiteness and middleclassness are reinforcing (Table 1). However, when ethnicity intersects with middleclassness, the outcome may be contradictory. Ethnicity is differentiated from the
norm and is thus a focal point of exclusion regardless of race. ‘Foreign’, ‘immigrant’,
‘minority’, and ‘ethnic’ and categories like ‘Arab’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Spanish’, ‘mixed’,
‘Native’, ‘Asian’, all signal an essentialized difference regardless of social class. They
contradict the effects of middle-classness. Historical and contemporary political contexts, deployment in social policy, and position/positioning in social institutions all affect conditions of treatment for ethnic or racialized groups who may have
social class or gender in common. Within one particular ‘ethnic’ group, social class
differences may undermine solidarity (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983). The impact of
social forces on the construction of ethnicity such as the global scale of commerce,
communication, media, popular culture, commodification, urban life, migration, the
‘war on terror’, and the interdependence of labour and markets and production are
significant but must be left for another forum.
Table 1.
A scheme for theorizing intersections of whiteness, middle-classness, and gender.
Whiteness and middle-classness
Whiteness and middle-classness and
ethnicity
Whiteness and middle-classness and
gender
Whiteness and middle-classness and
ethnicity and gender
Adapted from Anthias, 2005.
Social position
(in relation to resources)
Social positioning
(within social position)
Reinforcing
Contradictory
Reinforcing
Reinforcing and
contradictory
Reinforcing and
contradictory
Contradictory
Reinforcing
Contradictory
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Social Identities
249
Further complexities arise with consideration of specifically white ethnicity.
Jewish ethnicity serves as an example. The image of the North American Jew of
European origin and perceptibly ‘white’ represents only one ethnicity among Jewry
that also includes Sephardi (Spanish, Portuguese, and Moroccan) and Mizrachi
(Middle Eastern) Jewish minorities. Other groups of racialized Jews include the Beta
Israel from Ethiopia, the Bene Israel from India, and the Kaifeng Jews from China.
In the conventional meaning conveyed by ‘white’ therefore, many Jews are excluded.
Jews of European origin affirm this themselves in the most conventional of ways:
their racism against fellow Jews. Yet, general patterns of social mobility among Jews
in North America are well known. In Canada, Jews’ relatively high socio-economic
status is well documented (Pendakur & Pendakur, 1996; Dean & DeVoretz, 1996;
Lautard & Guppy, 1999). Jews may be positioned unambiguously with respect to
economic claims of white privilege but because of historical purges and current
resentment against them (partly due to fantasies of their links to Israel), the claim of
unequivocal white privilege becomes difficult to make. But it’s also difficult to deny.
It’s ambiguous (Levine-Rasky, 2008). Social positioning for Jews is both reinforcing and contradictory. Two consequences of an ambiguous Jewish ethnicity are a
distance from collective ethnic memory and contradiction with liberal values arising
from that memory. For most Jews, whiteness facilitates their denial and distance from
their own racialization. It suppresses a collective experience that could be valuable in
joining with others in their struggles for equity. Kaye/Kantrowitz remarks that
‘Jewish success like any other US success has been achieved inside a severe class
structure, and Jews, like many other ethnic and racial minorities, have benefited in
concrete ways from racism against African Americans . . .’ (1996, p. 129). The ability
for most Jews to maintain a cultural identity and to integrate or even ‘pass’ for white
Christian has sacrificed the political dialogue they once had with African-Americans
during the civil rights movement in the US and Canada.
The intersection of whiteness, middle-classness, and gender further complicates
the picture. Paralleling a classic statement by Marilyn Frye (1983), Caroline Andrew
(1996) discusses the limitations in claiming a simple reinforcing relationship between
the two for white women. She acknowledges the relative ease of claiming sexism but
admits that her whiteness mitigates her full appreciation of racism. She struggles with
developing a critical whiteness stance since whiteness is invisible and its advantage is
normalized for white women. So while the disempowerment lodged in womanhood is
known, it is contradicted by white womanhood. Indeed, whiteness confers advantage
upon white women, certainly for middle-class white women. This may explain the
defensiveness and emotional investment in whiteness despite political values of social
justice, even for radical white feminists. In terms of joining struggles across intersectionalities, it is a barrier for them and others. Using Anthias’ concepts of reinforcement and contradiction for white women, gender can reinforce their whiteness
and middle-classness relative to racialized, middle-class women. They are likely to
have more resources attached to their social position and they are likely to have more
freedom to contest, challenge, or define their social positioning. However, this is
reinforcement at the expense of political collaboration with racialized women. Thus
it is also contradictory for white women since it is clear that they have much to gain
from such collaboration.
250
C. Levine-Rasky
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Conclusion
This brief exploration of intersectionality theory as an approach to whiteness and
middle-classness is an attempt to elaborate the practice of domination in its relation
to oppression. I borrow the apparatus of intersectionality theory for its expansiveness and potential to accommodate complexity. To this apparatus, Anthias adds
the important dimension of social position/positioning and of reinforcement/
contradiction. I suggest that whether we are studying school choice (as I have), or
any other specific sets of social relations, an intersectional approach is required to
explain the problem of inequality as an effect of differentiation economic, political,
cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential as Brah and Phoenix observe. Continuing neglect of domination as intersectional reproduces inequality. White feminist
scholars are amiss in framing it as a theoretical instrument pertaining exclusively to
racialized groups. However, applying intersectionality theory should not be construed as an individualistic project. Fixation on individual culpability serves the
contradictory dynamics of guilt and defensiveness rather than the more effective
purpose of social exclusion embedded in relations between groups and evident in
social institutions and practices. The aim is to preserve relationality. Consistent with
a Foucaultian analytics of power, power in this sense constructs new capacities and
modes of activity. At the intersections of middle-classness and whiteness, it confers
legitimacy in its distance from the difficult, immunity from complicity in racism,
confirmation of merit and entitlement, a pleasure in itself, and a positive personal
identity. It produces forms of knowledge, defines normalcy, delineates inclusion,
accords value. Processes of differentiation and normalization, of discrimination and
affirmation are coextensive in social relations.
More questions arise than have been answered. For example, the study of
whiteness and middle-classness could problematically furnish white feminists with a
rationale to turn away from social justice movements organized for racialized
women. It could make such groups disappear as white feminists become preoccupied
with their own dilemmas, forming a scholarly-sanctioned self-centredness. How can
the ‘psychic, subjective and experiential’ aspects of intersectionality be broached by
white, middle-class women? What if, by definition, ‘we’ can never ‘get it?’ Are these
questions sufficiently serious to dissuade us from learning more or from taking the
risk of being thoroughly wrong?
The risks are many. Even though virtually all feminists now share the criticism
that ‘woman’ is a singular group (McCall, 2005, p. 1779), keeping intersectionality
theory at an abstract level risks essentializing the categories of ‘whiteness’ and
‘middle-classness’. Without empirical exploration of the processes through which
these and any other social categories accrue meaning in relation to the state, civil
society, the economy, cultural representation, and so on, language remains abstract
from the kind of subjectivity that impels ethical commitment to social justice.
Further, it is undesirable to ‘add’ whiteness and middle-classness to the purview of
intersectionality theory if that results in a further explosion of identity categories
diverting attention away from social positioning in the relations between groups as
problems of power, action, and resistance. My inquiry is to be read as a desire to
coalesce analysis around a broader albeit more complex theory about the practice of
power. Proposing new ways to think about intersecting dynamics that sometimes
Social Identities
251
reinforce and sometimes contradict the impact of power may contribute to its more
equitable distribution among disparate groups.
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