Downstream: The Woman Who Invented Intersectionality w/ Kimberlé Crenshaw

Novara Media

News, Society & Culture, Politics, Philosophy

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2026

⏱️ 115 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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’ 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?

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are few concepts which have been popularised to the extent,
0:11.5	weaponised to the extent, and demonised to the extent as intersectionality.
0:17.0	It has come to mean everything from thinking about race, class and gender at the same time
0:22.0	to creating a new inverted hierarchy where white men are at the bottom
0:28.2	and those of us who happen to be brown and female at the same time are sitting at the top.
0:34.7	Well, instead of just debating the concept and the word, its uses and misuses,
0:41.5	I thought I would talk instead to the woman who invented it. Kimberly Crenshaw is a legal scholar
0:48.7	whose work on critical race theory and intersectionality has literally been era defining.
0:56.3	Now, as well as her work in the legal field, she is now the author of a memoir called Backtalker,
1:03.6	which charts her upbringing through the civil rights era, her losses, her loves,
1:09.2	and her participation in the field of politics.
1:13.6	Now, this was an absolutely mammoth recording.
1:17.0	I don't know where we're going to end up with the edit,
1:19.1	but we spoke for two hours without a break.
1:22.6	So hydrate, get a snack and lock in.
1:26.1	I hope you enjoy it.
1:30.3	Kimberly Crenshaw, welcome to downstream. Thank you. I'm so honored to be here.
1:32.3	We were just talking before we went live and you were talking about being in Europe and being in France and being in Italy and being in Portugal.
1:40.3	And you said something about the way in which your blackness was being, I think, metabolized was the word you use.
1:47.8	I'm just, I'm so fascinated by that.
1:50.0	Well, you know, I came here a couple years ago to get away from the United States to actually think more clearly in writing the memoir. And so I went to a lot of my
2:05.0	favorite places, Italy, Portugal, France. And I noted the difference in the way people engaged
	...

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