Triple oppression, also called double jeopardy, Jane Crow, or triple exploitation, is a theory developed by black socialists in the United States, such as Claudia Jones. The theory states that a connection exists between various types of oppression, specifically classism, racism, and sexism. It hypothesizes that all three types of oppression need to be overcome at once.
The matrix of domination or matrix of oppression is a sociological paradigm that explains issues of oppression that deal with race, class, and gender, which, though recognized as different social classifications, are all interconnected. Other forms of classification, such as sexual orientation, religion, or age, apply to this theory as well. Patricia Hill Collins is credited with introducing the theory in her work entitled Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. As the term implies, there are many different ways one might experience domination, facing many different challenges in which one obstacle, such as race, may overlap with other sociological features. Characteristics such as race, age, and sex, may intersectionally affect an individual in extremely different ways, in such simple cases as varying geography, socioeconomic status, or simply throughout time. Other scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw's Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color are credited with expanding Collins' work. The matrix of domination is a way for people to acknowledge their privileges in society. How one is able to interact, what social groups one is in, and the networks one establishes is all based on different interconnected classifications.
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how a person's various social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, weight, and physical appearance. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing. However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the theory of intersectionality.
Patricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a distinguished university professor of sociology emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and a past president of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Collins was the 100th president of the ASA and the first African-American woman to hold this position.
Siobhan Brooks is an African-American lesbian feminist sociologist known for her work with African-American women sex workers. She holds a B.A. in women's studies from San Francisco State University, and a Ph.D. in sociology from New School University in New York City. She is currently Professor of African-American studies at California State University, Fullerton.
Howard Winant is an American sociologist and race theorist. Winant is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Winant is best known for developing the theory of racial formation along with Michael Omi. Winant's research and teachings revolve around race and racism, comparative historical sociology, political sociology, social theory, and human rights.
Kathleen Marie Blee is an American sociologist. She is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her areas of interest include gender, race and racism, social movements, and sociology of space and place. Special interests include how gender influences racist movements, including work on women in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
Racial literacy is a concept developed by sociologist France Winddance Twine. She describes it as "a form of racial socialization and antiracist training that ... parents of African-descent children practiced in their efforts to defend their children against racism" in her research done in the United Kingdom with mixed-race families.
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory. She is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues.
The term social apartheid has been used to describe various aspects of economic inequality in Brazil, drawing a parallel with the legally enforced separation of whites and blacks in South African society for several decades during the 20th-century apartheid regime.
Joe Richard Feagin is an American sociologist and social theorist who has conducted extensive research on racial and gender issues in the United States. He is currently the Ella C. McFadden Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University. Feagin has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, University of California, Riverside, University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Florida.
Social privilege is a theory of special advantage or entitlement that benefits individuals belonging to certain groups, often to the detriment of others. Privileged groups can be advantaged based on social class, wealth, education, caste, age, height, skin color, physical fitness, nationality, geographic location, cultural differences, ethnic or racial category, gender, gender identity, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, physical disability, religion, and other differentiating factors. Individuals can be privileged in one area, such as education, and not privileged in another area, such as health. The amount of privilege any individual has may change over time, such as when a person becomes disabled, or when a child becomes a young adult.
The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of systemic racism, like residential segregation and other complex social processes between different racial and ethnic groups.
Concepts of race and sexuality have interacted in various ways in different historical contexts. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is understood by scientists to be a social construct rather than a biological reality. Human sexuality involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors.
Multiracial feminist theory is promoted by women of color, including Black, Latina, Asian, Native American, and anti-racist white women. In 1996, Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill wrote “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism," a piece emphasizing intersectionality and the application of intersectional analysis in feminist discourse.
Heidi Safia Mirza is a British academic, who is Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, Professor Emerita in Equalities Studies at the UCL Institute of Education, and Visiting Professor in Social Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE). She has done pioneering research on race, gender and identity in education, multiculturalism, Islamophobia and gendered violence, and was one of the first black women professors in Britain. She is author and editor of several notable books, including Young, Female and Black (1992), Black British Feminism (1997), Tackling the Roots of Racism: Lessons for Success (2005), Race Gender and Educational Desire: Why Black Women Succeed and Fail (2009), Black and Postcolonial Feminisms in New Times (2012), and Respecting Difference: Race, Faith, and Culture for Teacher Educators (2012).
Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil is a book by anthropologist France Winddance Twine published by Rutgers University Press in 1997.
Adia Harvey Wingfield is a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and the 2018 President of Sociologists for Women in Society. She is the author of several books, including No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men's Work, and articles in peer-reviewed journals including Social Problems, Gender & Society, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. She has lectured internationally on her research.
Mary Romero is an American sociologist. She is Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, with affiliations in African and African American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Asian Pacific American Studies. Before her arrival at ASU in 1995, she taught at University of Oregon, San Francisco State University, and University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Professor Romero holds a bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in Spanish from Regis College in Denver, Colorado. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Colorado. In 2019, she served as the 110th President of the American Sociological Association.
Kalwant Bhopal is Professor of Education and Social Justice and Director of the Centre for Research in Race & Education at the University of Birmingham. Her work explores the achievements and experiences of minority ethnic groups in education with a focus on how processes of racism, exclusion and marginalisation operate in predominantly White spaces.
