Learning from “Racism, Not Race” for Intersectionality Research and the Research Enterprise

Abstract

T o understand and address better the myriad and entrenched disparities faced by Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), researchers have increasingly begun to focus on racism rather than race itself as a driver of health and social inequities (Boyd, Lindo, Weeks, & McLemore, 2020; James & Iacopetti, 2021; Mateo & Williams, 2021). Racism, sexism, ciscentrism and transphobia, heterocentrism and homophobia, and ableism, among other “isms,” and health and social inequities all have long-standing and entrenched histories, but recently attention to intersectionality has been increasing in frequency and depth (Bowleg, 2020). Coined by Crenshaw (1989), intersectionality refers to the interaction and interplay of multiple forms of discrimination, marginalization, exclusion, and stigma (herein referred to as “oppression” for the sake of brevity). Research on intersectionality has mirrored the growth in attention, including challenges for state-of-theart research (for reviews, see Bauer et al., 2021; Jackson-Best & Edwards, 2018; Layland et al., 2020; Nichols & Stahl, 2019). This article builds on the “racism, not race” imperative to (a) derive lessons learned for more valid and rigorous intersectionality research; (b) identify gaps, challenges, and opportunities that have received less, if any, attention in the literature; and (c) describe action steps for social work researchers and the larger research enterprise.