Teaching Intersectionality with Punk 🤘🏿🤘🏼🤘🏽
Since it was first coined by scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989, the concept of intersectionality has grown to become a powerful educational tool.
Through a vantage point of intersectionality, students will gain an understanding of how oppression and discrimination have operated in U.S. History. They also discover how their own intersections – whether related to race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, or class – uniquely contribute to their lived experience.
Intersectionality examines injustice with the goal of collective liberation. It recognizes social categories so that one day we might transcend them.
That sounds pretty Punk Rock to us! So why not teach intersectionality with Punk?
In Teachrock’s latest lesson, Intersectionality and Punk Music in the 2020s, students hear from the members of two contemporary Punk Bands – Proper. and The Loneliers, and learn how each band member’s position as Queer, Femme, Black, and Mexican American has played a role in their lives as Punk musicians. Through interviews produced by TeachRock, students learn the highs and lows of each artist’s career, from facing discrimination to finding joy among a community of friends, bandmates, and fans. Then, students consider their own intersections and the difficulties and opportunities such intersections might bring.