Intersectionality and Criminology

Disrupting and revolutionizing studies of crime

Hillary Potter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781136207464
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

The use of intersectionality theory in the social sciences has proliferated in the past several years, putting forward the argument that the interconnected identities of individuals, and the way these identities are perceived and responded to by others, must be a necessary part of any analysis. Fundamentally, intersectionality claims that not only are people's lived experiences affected by their racial identity and by their gender identity, but that these identities, and others, continually operate together and affect each other.

With "official" statistical data that indicate people of Color have higher offending and victimization rates than White people, and with the overrepresentation of men and people of Color in the criminal legal system, new theories are required that address these phenomena and that are devoid of stereotypical or debasing underpinnings.

Intersectionality and Criminology provides a comprehensive review of the need for, and use of, intersectionality in the study of crime, criminality, and the criminal legal system. This is essential reading for academics and students researching and studying in the fields of crime, criminal justice, theoretical criminology, and gender, race, and socioeconomic class.

1
Disrupting Criminology

The need to integrate intersectionality into criminological research and theory

Black feminist¹ legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw is acknowledged as originating the term intersectionality. Crenshaw has indicated that her conceptualization of intersectionality is based in Black feminist theory and critical race theory. Critical race theory, developed by legal scholars, lawyers, and activists, was built on critical legal studies and “radical feminism” and maintains that race is socially constructed, racism is ordinary in society and cannot be easily resolved with law, and that the legal system privileges some races over others (Delgado and Stefancic 2012). Critical race theory also promotes a “voice-of-Color thesis,” which maintains that because of their experiences of oppression, people of Color “may be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that the whites are unlikely to know” and encourages “black and brown writers to recount their experiences with racism and the legal system and to apply their own unique perspectives to assess law’s master narratives” (Delgado and Stefancic 2012:10). Similar doctrine is found in Black feminist theory, which preceded critical race theory. In Crenshaw’s (1991) article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity, Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” she specified that she unequivocally utilized a Black feminist perspective in her appraisal of violence experienced by women of Color. Black feminist theory is the theoretical perspective that places the lived experiences, including any forms of resistance to their situations, of Black women at the center of the analysis, considering her as an individual encompassing numerous and interwoven identities including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, and socioeconomic class. The standpoint is that Black women are typically oppressed within both the Black community and society-at-large based on subordinated statuses within each of these areas of classification, and that research on Black women should be conducted based on this perspective. But all women of Color fit within this definition; for instance, feminist theorizing and activism engaged in by and about Latina and Indigenous women unveils intersectional views like those proffered by Black feminists. While there may be some variations in the foci among the groups of women of Color feminists, their subordination by race, ethnicity, sex, and gender yields a shared philosophy. The enduring effects of colonialism, patriarchy, racism and gendered racism, and sexism or genderism are clearly evident among women of Color feminisms and activism. Although Black feminists have produced the greatest amount of published works and are, arguably, the most visible among feminists of Color in the United States, the long overdue recognition of the work of Asian, Indigenous (North America), and Latina feminists is now occurring to a greater extent, and other feminisms are emerging, such as Arab and Arab American feminism (Jarmakani 2011; Naber 2006).

Thus, contrary to indications by some scholars and academic references that an intersectional ideology only surfaced three to four decades ago, the conceptual foundations of intersectionality had been in development long before Crenshaw’s seminal articles. Intersectionality was particularized in Crenshaw’s articles and, essentially, was a retooling and special application of Black feminist thought and critical race theory. Consequently, to understand intersectionality, it is important to understand on what it is based. In Chapter 2, I trace the history and development of activism and theory by Black women feminists and other women of Color feminists before describing what intersectionality is and what it does and its use (or potential use) by academics. In Chapters 3 and 4, I describe the use of intersectionality in criminology specifically. For now, I provide a brief definition here. I use the terms intersectionality and intersectional to mean the same thing, referring to the concept or conceptualization that each person has an assortment of coalesced socially constructed identities that are ordered into an inequitable social stratum. The interchangeable use of intersectionality and intersectional is seen in many other academic publications addressing the concept delineated in my definition, thus only further complicating the “what is” question regarding intersectionality.

In its entirety, this book offers an explication of and a justification for intersectional criminology. Intersectional criminology is a perspective that incorporates the intersectional or intersectionality concept into criminological research and theory and into the evaluation of crime or crime-related policies and laws and the governmental administration of “justice.” Because girls and women of Color experience life differently from boys and men and White girls and women, scholars argue that male- and White-oriented criminological theories may be inadequate for explaining criminal behavior by women of Color and the responses of women of Color to victimization (Joseph 2006; Potter 2008; Russell-Brown 2004). Likewise, criminological theories on White boys and men may not provide the most adequate explanations for the criminal activities of boys and men of Color, or vice versa. Further, scholars who include in their research a diverse sample population by race and gender often fail to conduct comparisons between the distinct groups (Joseph 2006; Russell-Brown 2004). Criminologist Ruth Peterson (2012:319) admonished, “When a society is organized along race/ethnic lines, we cannot assume that the sources and responses to crime, or the application of criminal justice, are race neutral in their effects and consequences.” The same can be said for sex or gender and for the interaction of race/ethnicity and sex/gender and other identities and statuses. These identities and statuses, as well as the designation of acts as crimes and the practices in “criminal justice” systems, are social constructs. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to making some sense of these social constructs, and serves as a foundation for the overarching theme of Intersectionality and Criminology.

When and where we enter²

Sociologist Joe R. Feagin (2010) has established that throughout North America and Europe, a White racial frame is what we are all expected to follow. Since the 1600s, a White racial frame “has provided the vantage point from which whites and others have regularly viewed and interpreted [US] society…. [T]his strong framing has had a very positive orientation to whites and whiteness and a negative orientation to the racial ‘others’ who are oppressed” (Feagin 2010:25). Within a White racial frame, White and Whiteness is the default identity; for example, if race is not identified in the description of a protagonist in a novel, we are typically expected to assume that, naturally, the subject is a White person. This assumption is solidified when “non-White” characters in the novel are described with a race label. Sociologist Elijah Anderson (2011:258) exemplified the labeling of those who are racialized (people of Color) in his assessment of the Black experience: “A person with black skin is viewed as black long before he or she is viewed as a doctor, lawyer, or professor. Blackness is a ‘master status’ that supersedes whatever else a person may claim to be; he or she is viewed as a black doctor, a black lawyer, or a black professor, whatever that adjective might mean.” Arguably, as globalization has flourished, a White racial frame has been indoctrinated throughout the world. The popular use of skin lightening products in India and parts of Africa illustrates the breadth and power of the White racial frame. Feagin (2010) paid minimal attention to gender within the context of race, but, clearly, the White racial frame also prioritizes male perspectives above other sexes or genders, so the White racial frame is more aptly referenced as the White male racial frame. This White male racial frame also bleeds into the production of theory and research and into the determination of who is considered a valid practitioner and producer of academic enterprise.

In the academic discipline of criminology,³ not only do the factors related to crime-related transgressions committed by and against subjugated populations need to be brought to the center, so too do the scholars who are marginalized and who utilize “alternative” theoretical perspectives and propositions. This is an issue of old and of new, as evidenced in an examination of the life and works of William E. Burghardt Du Bois. Du Bois was born in 1868 in Massachusetts, received undergraduate degrees at Fisk University and Harvard University and a doctorate degree at Harvard (as the first Black person to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard), and, after several rejections from White colleges not wishing to hire him because of his denounced racial classification, began his first faculty position at Wilberforce University, an historically all-Black student institution in Ohio (for extensive Du Bois biographies see Gabbidon 2007; Horne 2010). After a brief stint at Wilberforce, Du Bois accepted a temporary position as a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. His studies at his new post led to his book The Philadelphia Negro (1899), in which he expounded on the unique social conditions and problems of Blacks living in northern US urban settings, including their experiences with crime and the criminal legal system. He concluded, “Crime is a phenomenon of organized social life, and is the open rebellion of an individual against its social environment” (p. 235). One of Du Bois’s earliest statements on crime and justice, however, appeared in his 1892 report on the rarely or poorly enforced US slave trade act of 1807 that made it illegal for individuals to traffic into the United States “any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, with intent to hold, sell, or dispose of such negro, mulatto, or person of colour, as a slave, or to be held to service or labour” (2 Stat. 426). Throughout his career, Du Bois continued to consider the perplexing intersected subject of race, crime, and justice, including the convict-lease system as an extension of slavery, the impact of racial segregation on Blacks participating in criminal activity, and the unevenly distributed “justice” by race in criminal courts. Undoubtedly, few scholars and students are aware of the contribution Du Bois could have made to the academic field of criminology. I use “could have” because, but for his being marginalized (Gabbidon 2007; Hanson 2010), we might have been at least decades ahead of where we are now in the social-scientific study and theorization of crime, and because Du Bois’s criminological research and theory continues to go widely unrecognized.

Race theorist and criminologist Shaun L. Gabbidon’s (2007) thorough evaluation of the criminology-related works of Du Bois supports an argument for changing the way the history of criminological theory is presented. As Gabbidon underscores, findings of the Chicago School of criminology – specifically, the work of Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay (1931, 1942) – were not an especially novel concept. In the 1920s, Shaw and McKay were heralded as the leaders of a new way of considering criminal behavior; a way that was not focused on biological or psychological determinism, but on the influences of the social or environmental setting on the commission of crime. Granted, Shaw and McKay should be lauded for their achievements and for advancing sociological theories of crime causation. But Gabbidon’s substantiation of Du Bois’s research and findings in criminology necessitate that we not continue to disregard the contributions Du Bois made at the time of his research and the contributions that can still be made to criminology based in a Du Boisian conceptualization. Du Bois’s work made a widespread reappearance in the late 1990s around the time of the first centurial anniversary of The Philadelphia Negro, particularly in the field of sociology, and some sociologists now consider him as a “founding father” of US sociology (Anderson 1996; Jones 2009). Regrettably, Du Bois’s criminological scholarship is still overwhelmingly ignored in criminological research and in criminology program curricula and textbooks. Still, Black feminist criminologist Nikki Jones (2009:246) foretold, “Embracing Du Bois as a founding father of American criminological thought will allow future criminologists to inherit a scholarship committed to the study of crime as a social problem and not a biological or genetic deficiency.”⁴

Nearly 125 years after Du Bois’s first publication that laid the foundation for his criminological research and conceptualization, feminist, critical, and progressive race⁵ criminologists continue to stress the importance of addressing race, gender, socioeconomics, inequality, and oppression in the study of crime. Criminologists Kathleen Daly and Lisa Maher (1998) and James W. Messerschmidt (2013) have challenged the dominant views in criminology for the way the White male racial frame affects knowledge production within the discipline. Even though most individuals who participate in criminal activity in the United States are White, Messerschmidt (2013:123) has observed that Whiteness “is an invisible variable throughout criminological theory and research.” And Daly and Maher (1998:5) declared, “White criminology avoids ‘the race issue’ because of racism both in the discipline and the wider society, a lack of theoretical grounding in what racial-ethnic relations and identities are, and too few scholars of color in criminology who are in a position to take on white criminology.” Although, worldwide, people of Color outnumber Whites (US Census Bureau 2004) and it is projected for the year 2060 that people of Color in the United States, with Latinas and Latinos comprising the largest proportion, will represent 57 percent of the US population (US Census Bureau 2012), some race scholars believe that White dominance (Haney López 2006) or the White male racial frame will persevere. Hence, what incentive is there for members of “White criminology” to become more attuned to the significance of power and identity in our social worlds? Unlike legal race scholar Ian Haney López (2006), but consistent with Feagin (2010), I have an outlook (perhaps utopian) that a critical mass of critical scholars can cause a paradigm shift and that a critical mass of consciousness-raising can work toward dismantling Whitemaleness as the default and the standard on which we measure all people. One of the paths that will aid in disrupting the norm is the incorporation of intersectionality into criminological theory and research.

Overwhelmingly, feminist criminologists working on women’s and girls’ experiences with crime, victimization, and the criminal legal system have been the enthusiasts to take up the project of incorporating an intersectional approach in criminological research. Feminist criminology originated during the 1960s (Daly and Chesney-Lind 1988), and Daly and Maher (1998) referred to the intersectional incorporation as the second phase of feminist criminology, which began in the late 1980s and resulted in the start of the shift away from essentialist and singular views of women within feminist criminology. Advocating for an intersectional approach to consider race, gender, and class, feminist criminologist Dana M. Britton (2000:72–73) argued, “The challenge for feminist criminology in the years to come will lie in formulating theory and carrying out empirical studies that prioritize all of these dimensions rather than relegating one or more of them to the background for the sake of methodological convenience.” Critical criminologists⁶ (Barak et al. 2010; DeKeseredy 2011; Schwartz and Milovanovic 1996) and progressive race criminologists (Gabbidon 2010; Russell-Brown 2004) have also advocated for an intersectional approach. Utilizing intersectionality in criminological research has focused mainly on the experiences of women of Color; however, the concept has been applied to men of Color, White women, and White men. In this book, I review the debate surrounding extended applications of intersectionality or an intersectional perspective, and provide relevant examples of where it has been and how it could be used with these other populations.

In any diverse society – or, arguably, in all societies – the effect of one’s identity/ies must be considered to understand individuals’ participation in crime, individuals’ responses to being a victim of crime, and the processes of the criminal legal system. Variations in identity and levels of privilege can lead to variations in the treatment of certain groups within a society, particularly for those identities deemed deviant or subordinate. Because of the overrepresentation of subordinated people of Color and the poor in many criminal legal systems in racially or ethnically diverse societies throughout the world, it is imperative that people of Color are centered in the analysis. Intersectional criminology will assure this centering, as the concept necessitates that social identities and social power and privilege be given top billing.

Defining identities

Because the concept of intersectionality is a practice of interrogating and understanding the role of identities, we must understand the social construction of the major identities categorized within our societies. The defining, and naming, of identities is a slippery task because of the ever-changing perceptions and self-perceptions of identities. Thus, the following summary serves to chronicle contemporary context on the major identities attended to in the social sciences and throughout this book. A contemporary context shows that a commonly used term such as “non-White” (which I am guilty of using previously) upholds the continued subordination of people of Color. We would be less inclined to use counterpart terms like non-male, non-man, non-heterosexual, non-straight – which demonstrates the devaluing also embedded in the non-White identifier. As illuminated by intersectionality and women of Color feminist thought, it is inevitable that social definitions of race and ethnicity are impacted by gender and sexuality, and that social definitions of gender and sexuality are impacted by race and ethnicity. Social class, nationality, and any multitude of other identities further compound a race/gender/sexuality identity. This is evidenced in the overview to follow, which is separated into sections on race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and socioeconomic class for the purposes of defining the social aspects of each category. While these are often treated as social elements that can be independently assessed, intersectional scholarship insists that doing so is incomplete. The identity attributes given the most attention in this book are race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class; but it is important to remember that any identity/ies an individual holds and believes to be significant in...