User:Queerofcolor/sandbox

Queer of color critique is an interdisciplinary form of analysis that investigates the intersections between race, gender, sexuality, and class, and is informed largely by the lived experiences of queer people of color and other similarly marginalized groups. The term was coined by Roderick A. Ferguson in his book Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Queer of color critique draws heavily upon women of color feminism, radical anti-racisms, including critical race theory and critical ethnic studies, and Marxism. Queer of color theorists have criticized queer theory for failing to include race as a topic of study and dimension of analysis, arguing that the subject within queer theory is tacitly white and male and therefore fails to account for the lived experiences of queers of color. A similar argument is made about mainstream gay and lesbian politics.

Women of color feminism
Women of color feminism provides a foundation from which queer of color critique builds, informing a critical stance against racism and white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy. Women of color feminists have argued that racism and gender oppression must be viewed as interlocking forms of oppression in order to fully account for the experience of oppression by women of color. Black feminist and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw has named this idea intersectionality. Commenting on the essay in which she first introduced the concept, Crenshaw explains that her aim, "was to illustrate that many of the experiences Black women face are not subsumed within the traditional boundaries of race or gender discrimination as these boundaries are currently understood, and that the intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women's lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately." The concept of intersectionality can be traced back to the 1970s to black feminists such as Audre Lorde and the Combahee River Collective, and perhaps even much earlier, and did grapple at times with the intersections between sexuality and other social antagonisms. Queer of color critique has used intersectionality in its analysis of both historical and contemporary processes of social formation, representation, and distribution, especially as it relates to the oppression of queers of color and people of color in general in what Jafari S. Allen has termed the "current conjunctural moment." Furthermore, books such as This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color and prominent women of color feminists including Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith,...