Kimberlé Crenshaw: the Woman Who Invented Intersectionality

The far right holds power in the US, inflaming tension along racial lines. ICE agents terrorise the streets, while Black history is erased from school curricula. In the UK too, Nigel Farage’s far right party Reform is on the ascendancy, riding a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment that he himself helped to stoke.

Our guest on Downstream this week is Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, civil rights advocate and legal scholar. Crenshaw is known for coining the term ‘intersectionality’ to describe the ways different forms of discrimination combine or intersect, and is a leading figure within the field of Critical Race Theory.  Born into segregation, her new memoir Backtalker (2026) tells her life story, tracking 60 turbulent years of American history in the process.

How have the forces of race, class and gender shaped Crenshaw’s own life? What is Critical Race Theory – the academic field Crenshaw founded – really about? Was Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign a  failure because she was a weak candidate, or because she was a victim of the forces of misogynoir? And in these times of rising fascism, should progressives put their efforts into tackling inequality based on race, or class?