Arizona Attorney - April 2017

endnotes

1. I use “LGBT+” In this article to refer to what most people call the LGBT or the LGBTQ community. I use LGBT+ to denote that I am not limiting my discussion of this community to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans individuals, but rather including everyone who counts themselves as part of this incredibly multifaceted community.

2. We the Podcast: #SayHerName with Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw,

REPRESENTATIVE KEITH ELLISON (May 11, 2016), http:// wethepodcast.podomatic. com/entry/2016-05-

11T07_ 37_23-07_00. See also Kimberlé Crenshaw, Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance Feminism and Intersectionality, 46 TULSA L. REV. 151 (2010-2011);

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, 1989 U.

CHI. LEGAL F. 139 (1989).

3. See Crenshaw, Close Encounters, supra note 2, at 175, for contributions by Vinson and Garland.

4. Discussed as sameness or difference frames by Crenshaw, referencing Catharine MacKin-non, in Close Encounters, supra note 2.

5. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, 43

STAN. L. REV. 1241, 1245

(1990-1991). See also Crenshaw, Demarginalizing, supra note 2.

6. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Twenty Years of Critical Race Theory,

43 CONN. L. REV. 1253, 1262-

1300 (2010-11).

7. I use the term “Negro” here
as Murray states this is her
preferred term in her auto-
biography. This remained
her preferred term even after
significant encounters with the
Black Nationalist movement
and the idea of reclaiming
the term Black. In addition, al-
though there is much evidence
of her questioning her gender,
she continually refers to herself
as a woman in her autobiog-
raphy, so I will also use she/
her pronouns. PAULI MURRAY,
PAULI MURRAY: THE AUTOBI-
OGRAPHY OF A BLACK ACTIVIST,
FEMINIST, LAWYER, PRIEST, AND
POET (4th ed. 1987).

8. Id. ANNE PAULI MURRAY PROJECT, http://sites.fhi.duke. edu/paulimurrayproject/ (last visited Feb. 20, 2017).

9. MURRAY, supra note 7, at 356-

57.

10. Id. at 106.

11. Id. at 107.

12. Id.

13. Id. at 356-57 (emphasis in original).

14. Id. at 107.

15. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Whose Story Is It, Anyway? Feminism and Antiracist Appropriations of Anita Hill, in Race-ing Justice, EN-GENDERING POWER: ESSAYS ON ANITA HILL, CLARENCE THOMAS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL REALITY 403 (Toni Morrison ed., 1992).

16. Id. at 406.

17. Liane Jackson, Minority Women are Disappearing From BigLaw—And Here’s Why, ABA J. (March 2016), at www. abajournal.com/magazine/ article/minority_women_are_ disappearing_from_biglaw_ and_heres_why

18. American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, A Current Glance at Women in the Law (May 2016).

19. Jackson, supra note 17.

20. New York City Bar Association, 2011 Diversity Benchmarking Study: A Report to

Signatory Law Firms, at 16. 21. Id.

22. Jackson, supra note 17.

23. Id.

24. Id.

25. S.K., Why Lesbians Tend To Earn More Than Heterosexual Women, ECONOMIST (Feb. 15, 2016), at http:// www.economist.com/blogs/ economist-explains/2016/02/ economist-explains- 8

26. Id.

27. MURRAY, supra note 7, at 416.

intersectional ways. This could be as simple as making sure to talk about both #say-hisname and #sayhername on social media when referencing Black Lives Matter. Or it could be as complicated as researching and trying to understand the way the lack of intersectionality in the main antiracism agenda at the time of Anita Hill’s testimony contributed to the way the public reacted, the way Congress reacted, and Justice Thomas’s eventual confirmation.

Then I realized that, in certain ways, I
could be considered intersectional. I am a
woman, but I am also not in the middle
class. Whether you want to call that “lower-
class” or “working class” or “poor,” it’s
where I am currently and it’s where I grew
up. I have long been aware of the ways that
have made my experience entering the le-
gal profession different from many of my
peers. However, before learning about in-
tersectionality, I had not really considered
how being a woman and being from a poor
background had combined in my life in
different ways at different times to create
experiences for me that were different from
“the struggles of the poor” or “the strug-
gles of women.”
Then I noticed that, when I look around
myself at any given location, most of the
people I see could probably be considered
intersectional in some way. And I found my-
self wondering, what are their stories? Why
are they where they are today? Have they
encountered difficulties similar to my own?
Or different ones?

Asking myself these questions from an
intersectional perspective drove home to me
why this concept is so important. Once you
start considering all the many different cate-
gories an individual could fall into and all the
ways in which those aspects of their identity
could combine to create very different ex-
periences for them, you recognize the limits
of the ways we usually talk about groups of
people. The really important questions that
come out of this exploration are questions
like: When I talk about diversity in the le-
gal profession, do I actually think of the in-
credibly broad reality of what that means?
Or am I only thinking about white women
and men of color? When I talk about Mus-
lims, am I only thinking of them as Mid-
dle Eastern? Am I only thinking of them as
straight and cis-gendered? When I suggest
changes to my profession or my profession-
al organizations, what kind of perspective
am I coming from? And whose perspectives
might I be overlooking? When I talk to my
colleagues or my clients, how much do I re-
ally understand about their identity?

Viewing the world through an intersectional prism has changed my life. It’s changed the way I examine my own biases, interact with others, and choose to engage with and contribute to my profession. What does it do for you? How does it change the way you engage with diversity in the legal profession?