Intersectional Political Consciousness: Appreciation for Intragroup Differences and Solidarity in Diverse Groups

Abstract

This article introduces an intersectional approach to political consciousness and presents data to demonstrate its importance for predicting solidarity in diverse social change organizations. Women activists (N = 174) completed measures of political consciousness, diversity, and solidarity. As expected, women differed in the degree to which their political consciousness reflected intersectionality (sensitivity to intragroup differences arising from intersections of social identities, such as ethnicity with gender) and singularity (focus on intragroup similarities arising from a shared social identity, such as gender). Although high group diversity related to lower solidarity, the content of political consciousness moderated the negative association of diversity to solidarity. High diversity had a negative association with solidarity only when political consciousness reflected a high degree of singularity and a low degree of intersectionality. These findings challenge the common assumption that diversity undermines a group's ability to work together and suggest that, when appreciation of difference is an important aspect of an individual's identity, solidarity with a social change organization may be greater when group diversity is high rather than low.

What Happens When We Unpack the Invisible Knapsack? Intersectional Political Consciousness and Inter-group Appraisals

“…In a previous correlational study of intersectional and singular consciousness, it was found that group solidarity was negatively associated with group diversity, but only when political consciousness was strongly singular and not when it was strongly intersectional (Greenwood 2008). The present research builds on this previous study by directly manipulating intersectional and singular consciousness to determine their effects on appraisals of intra-group differences.…”

“…A new approach does account for the role of high status group membership in political consciousness (Greenwood 2008). This perspective builds on the theory of intersectionality (Collins 2000;Crenshaw 1994;Dill 1983).…”

“…Our second expectation is that white women's political orientation toward progressivism or conservatism (i.e., toward the left or right end of the political spectrum) will moderate the effects of intersectional consciousness on beliefs about Muslim women and their covering practices. In the following sections, we briefly review self-categorization theory (Turner et al 1987), describe the intersectional approach to political consciousness (Greenwood 2008), and address the issue of political orientation.…”

“…In the context of the British veiling controversy, we sought to determine how the content of white (non-Muslim) women's gender consciousness shapes their beliefs about Muslim women. We take an intersectional approach (Greenwood 2008) to the selfcategorization perspective (e.g., Turner et al 1987) on social perception and investigate the role of political consciousness in white women's appraisals of outgroup members, Muslim women, who share the inclusive category, women.…”

Interconnecting Race and Gender Relations: Racism, Sexism and the Attribution of Sexism to the Racialized Other

“…Similar questions have been addressed by Ronni Michelle Greenwood (2008), who asked how feminists could unite themselves when race relations structure activist groups. Her results showed that solidarity in an ethnically heterogeneous group is made possible by the development of an intersectional political consciousness.…”