Intersectional Identities and Education Organizing: How Social Identities Influence Community Organizers' Understanding and Practice of Intersectional Organizing

• In Event: Power, Intersectionality, and Solidarity Within Youth and Community Organizing

Abstract

Over the past two decades, a growing number of studies have highlighted the ways that community organizers have worked to address racial inequities and educational justice in underserved and oppressed communities (Evans, 2009; McLaughlin, 2009; Warren and Goodman, 2018; Warren, 2001). More recently, education organizers working with youth and parents have taken intersectional approaches to their organizing, and initial research has shown that there is significant variation in their understanding and practice of intersectional organizing. (Terriquez, 2015; Warren, King, Ortiz-Wythe, Belloy, & Calderon, 2020). Little research, however, considers how social locations like gender identity, class, race, immigration status and parenthood inform these understandings and approaches organizers take. Our exploratory study seeks to address the question: How does the lived experience, social and personal identities of educational justice organizers influence their understanding and practice of intersectional organizing?

We interviewed eight community, parent, and youth organizers with a variety of racial and gender identities. The organizers are members of the People’s Think Tank (PTT), an idea and strategy space that includes organizers and activist scholars working together to strengthen and expand the educational justice movement. We conducted one-hour, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with each organizer. We used narrative analysis and an intersectional framework to analyze the transcribed interview data and identify themes to reveal the interconnectedness of the personal identities of individual organizers and their work as education justice organizers (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Collins, 2019; Crenshaw, 1991).

We found that 1) people’s social identities influenced how they understood and practiced intersectional organizing and 2) through intersectional organizing they came to understand their social identities in new ways. We support theme 1 but not 2 in this proposal. While not mutually exclusive, we found that organizers emphasized three different understandings and practices of intersectional organizing. One subgroup of organizers, composed of organizers who come from middle class or white social locations, understands intersectional organizing as a tool for interrogating power and privilege. As parent organizer M* states, intersectional organizing is “just a critical consciousness of power and privilege across the board and that’s how I really view intersectionality, is through the lens of power and privilege.” A second subgroup composed of several black and Latinx working-class organizers stated that terms like “interconnected” and “intergenerational” are preferred terms when talking about intersectional organizing. Lastly, the third subgroup of trans and queer organizers understands intersectional organizing as centering the lives of the most marginalized. As K*, a white trans organizer explains, “it's not enough for me to just advocate for queer and trans youth in school, because if I'm not doing it from a racial and gender justice lens then I'm just going to benefit the most privileged within that group with my work.”

Although social movement scholars have increasingly highlighted intersectional organizing strategies, very rarely have scholars examined the sources of different approaches. Our analysis finds that an individuals’ lived experience and social identities impact how they understand intersectional organizing and that engagement in intersectional organizing helps individuals better understand their social identities.

Authors

• Bianca Ortiz-Wythe, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Andrew King, University of Massachusetts - Boston