Intersectionality gets co-opted

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality was a precise legal tool for understanding how Black women faced discrimination that existing frameworks couldn’t capture. It has become corporate training modules and diversity metrics.

This transformation isn’t accidental. It’s systematic value extraction.

The Original Value Proposition

Intersectionality emerged from a specific problem: legal systems that could recognize racial discrimination OR gender discrimination, but not both simultaneously.

Crenshaw documented how Black women’s experiences fell through the cracks. Courts would dismiss their cases by saying “we don’t see racial discrimination (look, we hired Black men)” or “we don’t see gender discrimination (look, we hired white women).”

The framework exposed how single-axis thinking creates blind spots that systematically exclude the most vulnerable.

This was structural analysis with legal precision. Not identity celebration. Not diversity marketing.

Corporate Digestive System

Corporations don’t adopt radical frameworks. They metabolize them.

The process is predictable:

1. Extract the language while discarding the analysis
2. Transform structural critique into individual categories
3. Convert radical diagnosis into manageable solutions
4. Monetize the simplified version

“Intersectionality” becomes a way to count different types of people rather than analyze how power systems interact to create unique forms of oppression.

The word survives. The meaning dies.

Bureaucratic Appropriation

Institutions love intersectionality because it appears sophisticated while avoiding fundamental questions about power.

HR departments can now tick intersectional boxes:

• Gender: ✓
• Race: ✓
• Sexual orientation: ✓
• Disability: ✓

This checklist approach is precisely what Crenshaw’s analysis warned against. But it allows institutions to claim progressive values while maintaining existing power structures.

“We’re being intersectional” becomes shorthand for “we’ve considered all the demographics.”

Academic Dilution

Universities transformed intersectionality from analytical tool to identity taxonomy.

The framework that once exposed how systems of oppression reinforce each other becomes a way to catalog different types of marginalized identities. Students learn to list their intersections rather than analyze how power operates.

This academic version serves institutional needs perfectly. It generates endless conferences, publications, and programs without threatening existing hierarchies.

Complex analysis becomes simple addition: racism + sexism + classism = triple oppression.

The Algorithmic Version

Tech companies have digitized intersectionality into targeting algorithms.

Instead of analyzing how different systems of power create unique forms of discrimination, platforms use intersectional categories for more precise advertising segmentation.

“Intersectional marketing” targets “Black women aged 25-34 with college degrees” with different products than “white women aged 25-34 with college degrees.”

The framework designed to reveal invisible discrimination becomes invisible discrimination with better data.

NGO Industrial Complex

Non-profit organizations use intersectionality as funding language.

Grant applications must demonstrate intersectional awareness. This translates to mentioning multiple identity categories rather than analyzing how different power systems interact.

Programs get funded for being “intersectionally inclusive” rather than structurally transformative.

The result: more services for diverse populations, same fundamental systems intact.

Political Co-option

Politicians invoke intersectionality while enacting policies that harm intersectionally vulnerable populations.

“As an intersectional feminist…” becomes a way to signal progressive values while supporting legislation that reinforces the same structural inequalities Crenshaw identified.

The language provides progressive cover for status quo politics.

Value System Inversion

The co-option process inverts intersectionality’s core values:

Original: Reveal hidden structural problems Co-opted: Celebrate visible diversity

Original: Analyze how systems interact Co-opted: Count different identities

Original: Legal/political tool for change Co-opted: Cultural symbol of inclusion

Original: Expose institutional blind spots Co-opted: Help institutions appear enlightened

This isn’t misunderstanding. It’s systematic revaluation to serve existing power structures.

The Extraction Mechanism

Co-option follows a predictable pattern:

1. Appropriation: Take the language and symbols
2. Simplification: Remove analytical complexity
3. Institutionalization: Embed in existing structures
4. Monetization: Create products and services
5. Displacement: Replace original with sanitized version

The co-opted version becomes more visible and better funded than the original. Eventually, it becomes the “real” intersectionality in public discourse.

Resistance to Co-option

Some scholars and activists maintain intersectionality’s original analytical edge. They continue using it to expose how systems of oppression interact rather than simply cataloging identities.

But they fight an uphill battle against institutions with vast resources for promoting the digestible version.

Beyond Intersectionality

The co-option of intersectionality reveals something fundamental about how power systems absorb challenges.

Radical frameworks become management tools. Structural critiques become diversity initiatives. Analytical precision becomes bureaucratic categories.

This pattern repeats across different movements and frameworks. The system’s ability to metabolize opposition is perhaps its most sophisticated defense mechanism.

Understanding this process is crucial for developing frameworks that resist co-option or at least maintain parallel versions that preserve original analytical value.

The goal isn’t to mourn intersectionality’s transformation but to learn from it for future analytical and political work.

Value systems that threaten existing power structures will be systematically revalued to serve those same structures. The question isn’t whether co-option will happen, but how to maintain alternative value frameworks alongside their corporate-friendly versions.