Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated but are

Hear the voice of Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, the wise seer of justice, who revealed: “Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.” These words are not merely an observation, but a map of power, showing how the chains that bind human beings are woven together in a net more complex than any single thread. To understand oppression, she teaches, we must not look at one cord alone, but at the great knot in which many cords entwine.

For when Crenshaw speaks of intersectional systems, she speaks of how burdens overlap. A woman may suffer because of her gender, yet if she is also poor, or black, or disabled, her suffering is magnified, shaped not by one injustice but by many. Each system—of race, of class, of ability, of ethnicity—does not stand apart like a solitary wall, but converges like rivers into a flood. This is the true weight of oppression: not singular, but layered, heavy as stone upon stone upon the shoulders of the vulnerable.

History gives us many examples. Consider the plight of black women in the era of American slavery and beyond. They were oppressed as women, denied the dignity of equality with men; oppressed as black, denied the humanity granted to whites; oppressed as poor, denied education and opportunity. Their chains were not of one kind, but of many. To speak of their suffering only as racial or only as gendered is to misunderstand. Their lives reveal the truth of Crenshaw’s vision: that oppression is intersectional, interwoven, inseparable.

Or consider the textile workers of early industrial Britain. Many were women and children, laboring in dangerous mills for long hours and little pay. Their class doomed them to hardship, their gender left them voiceless in politics, their age exposed them to merciless exploitation. They were not oppressed in one way, but in many, and only by seeing how these forces combined can we understand the full weight they carried. So too in every age—oppressions overlap, binding those least able to resist.

The wisdom of Crenshaw’s words lies in her unveiling of what was hidden. Too often, societies address injustice as though it were a single wound: they speak of race alone, or gender alone, or poverty alone. Yet the truth is deeper. A woman of wealth does not face the same life as a woman of poverty; a disabled man of privilege does not endure what a poor disabled woman of color does. To fight oppression, we must see not only each cord, but the knot.

The lesson for us, then, is clear: do not accept simple stories of injustice. Look with sharper eyes, and listen with deeper ears. Ask not only, “What burdens are they carrying?” but “How many burdens, and how do they entwine?” In this way, you honor the fullness of human struggle, and you learn where compassion must strike hardest and strongest. For justice that sees only part of the truth is no justice at all.

Therefore, O listener, let your actions be these: when you labor for fairness, seek to understand the intersectional nature of oppression. Support the voices of those who live at the crossroads of suffering, for they carry the heaviest loads. Teach the young that race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity are not separate towers but strands of the same web, woven together across history. And remember always Crenshaw’s wisdom: to untie the knot of injustice, we must see it whole, not in fragments. Only then can a true and lasting freedom be born.