Race, Class and Gender as a Matrix of Domination

Race, class, and gender shape the experiences of all people in the United States. This fact has been widely documented in research and, to some extent, is com- monly understood. For years, social scientists have studied the consequences of race, class, and gender inequality for different groups in society. The framework of race, class, and gender studies presented here, however, explores how race, class, and gender operate together in people’s lives. Fundamentally, race, class, and gender are intersecting categories of experience that affect all aspects of human life; they simultaneously structure the experiences of all people in this soci- ety. At any moment, race, class, or gender may feel more salient or meaningful in a given person’s life, but they are overlapping and cumulative in their effects. In this volume, we focus on several core features of this intersectional frame- work for studying race, class, and gender. First, we emphasize social structure in our efforts to conceptualize intersections of race, class, and gender. We use the approach of a matrix of domination to analyze race, class, and gender. A matrix of domination sees social structure as having multiple, interlocking levels of domination that stem from the societal configuration of race, class, and gender relations. This structural pattern affects individual consciousness, group interaction, and group access to institutional power and privileges (Collins 2000). Within this structural framework, we focus less on comparing race, class, and gender as separate systems of power than on investigating the structural patterns that join them. Because of the simultaneity of race, class, and gender in people’s lives, intersections of race, class, and gender can be seen in individual stories and personal experience. In fact, much exciting work on the intersections of race, class, and gender appears in autobiographies, fiction, and personal essays. We do recognize the significance of these individual narratives and include many here, but we also emphasize social structures that provide the context for individual experiences.
Second, studying interconnections among race, class, and gender within a context of social structures helps us understand how race, class, and gender are manifested differently, depending on their configuration with the others. Thus, one might say African American men are privileged as men, but this may not be true when their race and class are also taken into account. Otherwise, how can we possibly explain the particular disadvantages African American men experience in the criminal justice system, in education, and in the labor market? For that matter, how can we explain the experiences that Native American women undergo—disadvantaged by the unique experiences that they have based on race, class, and gender—none of which is isolated from the effects of the others? Studying the connections among race, class, and gender reveals that divisions by race and by class and by gender are not as clear-cut as they may seem. White women, for example, may be disadvantaged because of gender but privileged by race and perhaps (but not necessarily) by class. Increasing class differentiation within racial-ethnic groups also reminds us that race is not a monolithic category, as can be seen in the fact that poverty among White people is increasing more than poverty among other groups, even while some Whites are the most powerful members of society.
Third, the matrix of domination approach to race, class, and gender studies is historically grounded. We have chosen to emphasize the intersections of race, class, and gender as institutional systems that have had a special impact in the United States. Yet race, class, and gender intersect with other categories of experience, such as sexuality, ethnicity, age, ability, religion, and nationality. Historically, these intersections have taken varying forms from one society to the next; within any given society, the connections among them also shift. Thus, race is not inherently more important than gender, just as sexuality is not inherently more significant than class and ethnicity.
Given the complex and changing relationships among these categories of analysis, we ground our analysis in the historical, institutional context of the United States. Doing so means that race, class, and gender emerge as fundamental categories of analysis in the U.S. setting, so significant that in many ways they influence all of the other categories. Systems of race, class, and gender have been so consistently and deeply codified in U.S. laws that they have had intergenerational effects on economic, political, and social institutions. For example, the capitalist class relations that have characterized all phases of U.S. history have routinely privileged or penalized groups organized by gender and by race. U.S. social institutions have reproduced economic equalities for poor people, women, and people of color from one generation to the next. Thus, in the United States, race, class, and gender demonstrate visible, long-standing, material effects that in many ways foreshadow more recently visible categories of ethnicity, religion, age, ability, and/or sexuality.