Necessity of Acknowledging Intersection in Moral Identity
While arguing from different points of departure, both Victoria M. Davion and
Kimberle Crenshaw express the need for understanding and acknowledging that many of
us are multiplicitous beings. The construction of a person as a moral agent should
acknowledge and encompasses the various facets of life: gender, race, sexual orientation,
body ability, etc, in order to get a complete understanding of a person. While Crenshaw
appears to paint a negative picture of the multiplicitous being, she is in fact simply
expounding on the lack of judicial understanding that a person is more than just one facet
of his or her being, such as a woman, a black person, or a person with a disability.
Crenshaw and Davion are essentially arguing similar points, which are centered on the
notion that in order to have a complete conception of one’s inner self or those around
them, one must understand that there are many defining features that compose a person’s
identity.
Crenshaw’s article, titled “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A
Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist
Politics,” outlines the argument that the understanding of the intersection of race and
gender, particularly for black women, is often lacking within in the legal realm. She uses
three court cases to illustrate the lack of judicial understanding of the multiplicitous
being. Crenshaw explains that through seeing people as only being members of one subset of society (ie. woman, black person, etc.), instead of multiple groups, antidiscrimination, racist, and gender biased ideals are perpetuated. The continuation of
these practices serve to specifically black women “imports its own theoretical limitations
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that undermine efforts to broaden feminist and anti-racist analyses” (Crenshaw, 40:
1994). As Crenshaw states, the traditional judicial understanding of the multiplicitous
being, is to see them as either one component of their identity or another, thus the
understanding of a black woman is lost or erased. It is made quite clear through her
analysis of the three court cases that black women are omitted as viable constituents of
society that are worthy of their own identity, and thus should be reevaluated to include
both components of their identity, race and gender.
Specifically in MOORE V HUGHES HELICOPTERS, INC. the court ruled in such a
way as to refuse to see black women as representative of either black people or women.
The plaintiff of the case is a black woman who claims that she had experienced gender
and race discrimination in her supervisory position with Hughes Helicopters. The
plaintiff provided ample statistical information as evidence to support the claim that there
was in fact “a significant disparity between men and women and somewhat less of a
disparity between black and white men in supervisory jobs” (Crenshaw, 41: 1994). The
court found that the plaintiff represented black women, and could not represent women
and specifically not white women. Moore suggested that her race played a significant
role in her discrimination but the court’s long held idea that discrimination is either of a
racial or gendered leaning but not both precluded her stance. The notion of white women
holding the supreme position in the hierarchy or legal understanding of women is
apparent in this case and serves to illustrate the ideal of racial privilege (Crenshaw 42:
1994).
While Crenshaw does not explicitly shed light on the multiplicitous being, like
Davion who argues for the necessity of a divergent character, she offers the idea that
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there is a need to have a greater understanding of the multiplicitous being. She uses an
eloquent analogy of an accident in a road’s intersection to elucidate the necessity for
understanding the intersectionality of a person’s moral identity. Crenshaw explains that
traffic flows from all directions in an intersection and when an accident occurs in the
middle of this, various directions could be at fault (Crenshaw 44: 1994). The multiple
points of departure that cause the accident are much like race, gender, and body ability
because all of these conceptions form a person’s character and personal point of
reference.
Davion’s article, titled “Integrity and Radical Change,” which centers upon the
desire to reconstruct commonly held conceptions of moral integrity from two other
philosophers, Lynne McFall and Sarah Hoagland. Both McFall and Hoagland explored
the understanding of moral integrity and explain what would be necessary to facilitate a
person with moral integrity. Davion delineates the need for understanding the constantly
evolving moral identity of a person, and to allow that the constant change be understood
as not undermining one’s moral identity but integral to it. The understanding that one’s
moral identity is a constantly changing facet of one’s being allows for the feminist
perspective to take root and foster notions of radical change within one’s self as well
within society as a whole. Davion responds to McFall’s idea that the moral identity of a
person must be based upon on core unconditional moral commitments, and suggests that
this notion does not leave room for the radical change necessary for the feminist
reconstruction of society and perception.
Davion says the McFall argues that the moral identity lies within these
unconditional commitments, but one must consider the source of these commitments. If
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the unconditional moral commitments are to be at the foundation of one’s identity, then
they must be acknowledged to have come from some source at a young age in one’s life.
The source of the foundation to one’s moral commitments may be from a person who
serves as a figure of personal reverence or control, or from a purely introspective belief
shaped by political or societal views of that time. Quite obviously these ideas could and
often are from sources or shaped by sources that are flawed, because nearly everything
dealing with humanity has a certain room for error or flaw. It makes sense then not to
base one’s moral integrity on unconditional commitments, because concepts of
acceptability, normalcy, and moral correctness are constantly evolving in our society and
theoretically within ourselves, although perhaps not as quickly or in a desired manner as
many would like but changing nonetheless.
According to Davion, in order for change “to be radical, it must take place at the
roots, at the deepest level” (Davion, 181: 1991). For McFall it is at the root of our being
that our integrity lies, and if a change occurs in one’s unconditional moral commitments
then a change in one’s moral identity occurs (Davion, 183:1991). Davion explains that
this idea does not give room for evolution in one’s thought or being, nor does it allow
room for understanding the context of the issue that is at the point of moral contention.
The understanding of the context of the issue help form the choice made. As we have
seen throughout our ethical discourse in the philosophical realm, choice is imperative to
morality and the study of ethics. Without the notion of choice the gravity of
responsibility is diminished. With all the problems presented with McFall’s argument,
Davion leans toward the work of Hoagland.
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In Hoagland’s article, the allowance and acknowledgement of the necessity of
change in one’s moral being is an integral feature in the makeup of the moral identity
(Davion 185, 1991). Davion argues that the moral integrity of a being must be
understood as “a whole from which no part no part can be taken” (Davion 184-5: 1991).
The whole reflects the agent’s moral growth throughout time, and each point of change or
action would be seen as a mere step in the process rather than an event to isolate.
However this whole moral being does not necessarily need to be one that is not divided
by any measures, such as various social identities (as in the case of Crenshaw’s black
women).
Davion uses the case of Maria Lugones, a Hispanic lesbian, as an example of the
necessity for understanding, and in some cases the necessity of compartmentalizing a
person’s character. Lugones decided that moral integrity is not possible for her and
instead she must create a schism of her being so that each component can be preserved.
While in the Hispanic society, machismo rules and thus she cannot play the role of a
dominant woman or woman who prefers the company of women because she desires to
preserve and respect her culture. The opposite is applied to Lugones in the queer society;
she must disenfranchise herself from the Hispanic culture in order to preserve the nonstratified society of queer life. Davion argues that Lugones and others of multiplicitous
orientations must be composed of two autokoenonous selves in order to preserve both
components of the person’s being (Davion, 190: 1991). Davion argues that it is with
these two selves that McFall’s idea of unconditional commitments are conceivable,
because the two beings must be unconditional committed to monitoring each other for
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moral consistency and they must share certain moral features that keep the being whole
(Davion, 190:1991).
While it would seem that that these two authors are arguing for opposite
understanding of the multiplicitous being, this is not completely true. Both are arguing
that there must be a greater understanding of the multiple features that compose a
person’s being in order to counter anti-feminism, anti-racism, anti-discrimination, and
other stifling modes of thought that are found in the present Caucasian-patriarchal system
that rules our society. I find Davion and Lugones’ conclusion not to be fully viable for
all people who are multiplicitous. My being is composed of my being a woman with a
disability, and these two features cannot be separated into neat components so that the
preservation of one component’s being can progress or continue as it is. The separation
of being into two components is as impossible as it is for a black woman to define herself
as a woman in one place and a black person in another location. The multiplicitous
features of my being are inextricably tied together and it is through that tie that my
identity lies. The idea of my lacking ability to separate the defining features of my
character does not preclude Crenshaw’s argument in her paper, instead it coincides with
it, as I am sure that if I were to sue a company or institution on the basis of gender and
body-ability discrimination it would be found that I could only represent one group. The
one group I represent would be disability, because of the intrinsic privilege of bodyability in our culture and the notion that I may possibly never be seen as a woman before
a person with a disability.
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Works Cited
Claudia Card, ed., Victoria M. Davion, “Integrity and Radical Change,” Feminist
Ethics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991.
Allison Jagger, ed., Kimberle Crenshaw, ““Demarginalizing the Intersection of
Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist
Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist
Social Ehthics. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994.
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