The most cited legal scholar in America and the architect of the two biggest ideas to reshape the American conversation?intersectionality and critical race theory?offers the intimate story of how her life gave birth to these ideas.
It is not very often that a public intellectual comes along and permanently reshapes the way Americans think about two of the most important issues of the day. In this case: race and gender. But that is what Crenshaw did when she invented two bodies of thought that have forever transformed how people understand the law and how discrimination really works.
Forty years ago, Crenshaw invented the concept of intersectionality and the concept of critical race theory. Since then, generations of American citizens, in schools and in the public sphere, have been taught to deploy these ideas to reimagine a better system. Intersectionality means that discrimination isn't just Black versus white, or rich versus poor, of gay versus straight, or male versus female: the categories all work together, and we must understand their interdependence if we want to root out discrimination of all kinds. Critical race theory means that racism doesn't just exist in the heart and soul of humans?it is built into our social and judicial structures, and we have to see inside those structures if we want to root it out.
Backtalker is the powerful and intimate story of how a little girl from Canton, Ohio, came up with these ideas. Crenshaw's memoir traces the way her lived experience made her see things others didn't as the daughter of a strong-minded teacher and a traditional public servant, and as the sister of a bullying brother. She starts to talk back, and that backtalking has continued throughout her life. It happens when she is the only girl denied a role in the kindergarten school play. When she learns the rules of Monopoly. When the civil rights movement comes to her church. When a boyfriend beats her up in college. When two Black male friends invite her to join a club while she is attending Harvard Law and agree on her behalf to enter through the back door. When she helps Anita Hill testify against Clarence Thomas. When OJ Simpson goes on trial. When a white woman (Hillary) runs against a Black man (Obama). When Obama decides to launch My Brother's Keeper, a movement focused on Black males only. When the Black Lives Movement overlooks women. Crenshaw is there for all of it.
In the vein of Ta-Nahisi Coates and Bryan Stevenson, Crenshaw evokes each time and place like a gifted novelist with extreme honesty and specificity. And because of that, her book is a series of awe-inspiring, deep revelations. As a result of her work, Crenshaw is the most cited legal scholar in the history of the law, and according to several journals, one of the ten most important thinkers in the world. If women of the boomer generation had Simone de Beauvoir and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, people under forty now have Kimberle Crenshaw. Crenshaw's influence has become a force to be reckoned with across America?at schools, in the workplace, at dinner tables, and, of course, on the stump.
