Intersectionality and Moral Theory

Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" in "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics" (University of Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 1989, issue 1), an analysis centered on the case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors (1976), in which a U.S. federal court rejected a discrimination claim brought by Black women employees on the ground that General Motors had hired both women, who were white, and Black employees, who were men — so that neither the category of sex nor the category of race, considered separately, captured the compounded discrimination Black women specifically experienced.