Intersectionality

The power to change is the power of choice. "Choice" is primarily an action of the individual displaying their character, virtue, and identity. If we take away the individual's right to be judged by the content of their character and judge them by their group identity we will only loose our own right to choose in the process.

The idea

Intersectionality is supposedly the interconnected nature of social categorizations by such things as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group. These social divisions are regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

The creating of divisions in society through social categories is a social construct based on a variety of rationals. "Race" also is, at least in part, a social construct based on the appearance of biological characteristics that have been categorized.

Race

Until the 19th century, the concept of race was used in the sense of "nation" or an "ethnic group" who might also share a common descent. When the term was acquired by physical anthropologists, men like Johann Friedrich Blumenbach attempted to divide the human species into five races based on crania in order to track that shared common descent.

This eventually gave rise to a variety and often opposing theories of eugenics like the debate between polygenism verses monogenism that arose out ideas suggesting an "Inequality of the Human Races" which was opposed by many eugenicists who believed that nations were political and cultural constructs. Still, the rationale that race could become a way of rigidly dividing groups continued to prevail.

The politicization of race in forms of racism was used from time to time to divide and control people just as clan feuds and tribalism have been used throughout history to gain power in areas where diverse cultures or ethnic descendants occupied the same territory. From the dictators in Africa to the Caesars, or the Greek city-states and even Cain and Able these divisions have brought with them bloodshed.

Gender

By definition Intersectionality is clearly racist because it divides people into groups based on race. If gender is used to create one of its numerous categories then it is also sexist. Of course, none of its advocates would accept the reality of their own personal bigotry because they have already rejected the idea that they might be prejudiced in their thinking.

If a woman says, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even if her shackles are very different from my own.” the very syntax of the statement is sexist. The same is true of the slogan "Black lives matter" if equal weight and validity is not also given to the slogan "All lives matter."

In any case, anyone entertaining Intersectionality as a valid ideology is snuffing out the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. for people to not be judged by group identity, "but by the content of their character".

The idea that we all may carry many identities that come with varying levels of power and privilege may be called intersectionality but it is fundamentally untrue and can be destructive to any quest for justice.

Privilege

The term "privilege" means "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group." The keywords here are special, granted, and group.

The term "white privilege" is concerned with a vast non-homogenous group of individuals. The idea of grouping such a wide range of diverse individuals as if they are a single "identity group" or possessed of a singular character is not only absurd but it is unjustified racism. In America and many other countries, there have been no "special rights" legally "granted" to any "identity group" for a long time except for the institution of "affirmative action" and quotas.

There has been prejudices and preference by individuals they may have lead to discrimination and there likely always will. It should be the responsibility of individuals and their institutions to correct the prejudices if society wishes to resolve the injustice.

The Civil Rights Act (1866) was passed by Congress on 9th April 1866 overriding the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The act declared that all persons born in the United States were now citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition. In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was prohibited for federal and state governments as well as some public places to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Those acts regulating the activities of government are well within the right of those institutions of government.

There have been over a half-dozen Civil Rights Act since the Civil War. It is a dangerous president to attempt to legislate away all prejudice for it cannot be done without also taking away the individual's rights to freedom of choice. Looking to the government to resolve issues of the heart by force will undermine the rights of the individual and embolden the power of government. It would be far better that people learn to govern themselves which requires that we allow others to make even poor choices.

Few clarified the wisest strategy of the ages for overcoming prejudice than Booker T Washington who said, "I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong, and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

You cannot legislate love.

The Damage

One of the great harm done by Intersectionality is getting people to think that their fate is not in their own hands.

"No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts." – Booker T. Washington

And if Booker was right in saying "Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him." Then it stands to reason the greatest harm done by the government is to lift the responsibility of any man from his shoulders and then place it on the shoulder of the whole people.

We do not have a "right" to happiness at the expense of others but we have a right to pursue happiness. There is no happiness without character and to build the character you need to Humility because it is "the beginning of wisdom" and practice self-discipline and personal accountability.

"Character, not circumstances, makes the man." because "Character is power. – Booker T Washington

Booker understood that "A whining crying race may be pitied but seldom respected." but he also knew that "The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race." Booker T Washington

social strategies

The political ideologies and social strategies that depend or even leans on intersectionality to support their agendas are infected by an ideological virus that has contaminated the thinking of mankind from the most ancient of times. Its attempt to group people rather than see them as individuals not only divides society it makes an individual's character, virtue, and morals irrelevant and even obsolete. This approach allows an individual toxic and even cancerous personality to develop with social immunity that natural society can and has often rejected.

Intersectionality is a hierarchy of victimhood where masterfully playing the Blame-game create a fallacious mindset that stifles innovations, strangled initiative, and blinds people to possibility born from hope and sacrifice.

The viral nature of this defective philosophy will continue to spread in societies until there is a great die-off or the people in order to obtain herd immunity among the survivors.

"I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him – Booker T. Washington

"Let him then, who would be indeed a Christian, watch over his ways and over his heart with unceasing circumspection. Let him endeavour to learn, both from men and books, particularly from the lives of eminent Christians, what methods have been actually found most effectual for the conquest of every particular vice, and for improvement in every branch of holiness. Thus studying his own character, and observing the most secret workings of his own mind, and of our common nature; the knowledge which he will acquire of the human heart in general, and especially of his own, will be of the highest utility, in enabling him to avoid or to guard against the occasions of evil: and it will also tend, above all things, to the growth of humility, and to the maintenance of that sobriety of spirit and tenderness of conscience, which are eminently characteristic of the true Christian." William Wilberforce

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"At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence." Booker T Washington

“health equity” was just another word for social justice