One DSD People, Access and Culture · Practice note · Deeper method
Intersectionality for DSD Practice
Intersectionality is a theoretical framework — and a practical analytical tool — for understanding how multiple, overlapping systems of power and marginalization shape individuals' lived experiences in ways that cannot be understood by examining any single identity dimension alone.

CONTENT
Intersectionality for DSD Practice

Resource type: Tier 1 Flagship — Methodology / Framework
Adapted from: Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991); Patricia Hill Collins (1990, 2000); Angela Davis; bell hooks
Library home: L01 Equity and DEAI Library
Companion to: T04_04 Cultural Humility; T04_12 Disability Justice; T04_13 Historical Trauma; T04_10 Berry Acculturation

What this framework is

Intersectionality is a theoretical framework — and a practical analytical tool — for understanding how multiple, overlapping systems of power and marginalization shape individuals' lived experiences in ways that cannot be understood by examining any single identity dimension alone. The term was coined by legal scholar and civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 paper "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex" (https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later) and elaborated in her 1991 paper "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color."

As Crenshaw has described (https://relayresources.org/blog/intersectionality-and-disability), "Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and privilege."

Crenshaw developed intersectionality in the context of employment discrimination law, observing that Black women faced discrimination that was not captured by either "race discrimination" (which treated Black men as the template) or "sex discrimination" (which treated white women as the template). The specific experience of being a Black woman — at the intersection of race and gender — was invisible to legal frameworks that treated these as separate categories.

Intersectionality has since expanded into sociology, public health, disability studies, and human services — including as a core analytic tool for understanding disparate outcomes in disability services.

Why DSD uses this framework

DSD serves individuals and families whose experiences of disability, service access, and service quality are profoundly shaped by the intersection of multiple identity dimensions: race, ethnicity, disability type and severity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, class and economic status, immigration status, primary language, geographic location (urban/suburban/rural), tribal membership, age, and more.

These dimensions do not operate independently. A Black woman with an intellectual disability who is an undocumented immigrant experiences DSD's services through a specific, compounded location at the intersection of racism, sexism, ableism, and immigration status — in ways that no single-axis analysis can capture. Designing services that address only one axis (disability accommodation, without attending to language access, without attending to immigration-related fear of government, without attending to the history of racist institutional disability practices) will systematically fail this person.

Without an intersectional lens, DSD risks producing services that are:
• Accessible for some people with disabilities but not others.
• Culturally responsive to some communities but not others.
• Equitable by one measure (race) while being inequitable by another (disability type or severity).

Intersectionality is not a complication of the work; it is the work.

The core concepts (plain language with citations)

The foundations: Crenshaw's insight

Crenshaw's original insight was that legal frameworks — and, by extension, service frameworks — that address discrimination one category at a time will systematically miss the experiences of people at the intersections. As described by PMC/Clinics in Colon and Rectal Surgery (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10411112/), "A marginalized person intersecting with biased medical and societal infrastructures does, however, create an accumulation of risk factors lending to increased rates of disparate health outcomes."

This "accumulation" is not arithmetic. The experience of being a Black woman with a disability is not simply the sum of racism + sexism + ableism. It is a qualitatively distinct experience — different from what a white woman with the same disability experiences, different from what a Black man with the same disability experiences, and different from what a Black woman without a disability experiences.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University's anti-racism toolkit (https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/antiracismtoolkit/chapter/tool-intersectionality-of-race-and-disability/) notes: "Racialized people with disabilities experience lower diagnosis rates of cognitive or mental disabilities, decreased access to medical and healthcare resources, increased poverty rates, and lower graduation rates, compared with white individuals with disabilities or with racialized individuals with no disabilities."

Key intersecting dimensions in DSD work

Race and disability:
The intersection of race and disability produces compounded marginalization in disability service access, diagnosis, quality of support, and outcomes. Black and Latino individuals with disabilities are disproportionately subject to guardianship rather than supported decision-making (T04_08); are more likely to receive services in more restrictive settings; and are less likely to receive individualized, person-centered services.

Immigration status and disability:
Undocumented individuals may fear accessing DSD services because of concerns about immigration enforcement. Documentation requirements for eligibility may systematically exclude certain populations. Language access — a legal right — may not be reliably provided. The intersection of disability and immigration status creates barriers that disability-only or immigration-only policy frameworks do not address.

Gender and disability:
Women with disabilities experience rates of abuse and sexual violence significantly higher than women without disabilities. The intersection of disability and gender identity (particularly for transgender individuals with disabilities) produces compounded barriers to safety, service access, and equitable treatment.

Class and disability:
Economic status shapes access to disability services, the quality of services available, the ability to navigate bureaucratic complexity, and the amount of time and energy available for service participation. Class and disability interact in ways that make poverty both a cause and a consequence of disability in many cases.

Language and disability:
Limited English proficiency combined with disability produces layered accessibility needs — information must be both linguistically accessible and disability-accessible, and these requirements interact in specific ways (a person who communicates through AAC may need information in a format that is compatible with their device; a person who is Deaf and communicates in a language other than English needs multilingual ASL interpretation).

Geography and disability:
Rural geography limits service access for all populations, but the intersection of rural geography with disability produces specific barriers: transportation, limited service provider choice, limited emergency services, and reduced community integration opportunities.

Age and disability:
The intersection of disability and age — whether disability in childhood, the aging of people with lifelong disabilities, or newly acquired disabilities in aging — produces life-stage-specific experiences that require different service responses.

Intersectionality in service-delivery decisions

As Relay Resources describes (https://relayresources.org/blog/intersectionality-and-disability), intersectionality "challenges us to acknowledge that struggles for justice are interconnected." For DSD, this has concrete service-delivery implications:

1. Assessment: Assess across all relevant identity dimensions, not only disability. "What is this person's experience of navigating services?" is an intersectional question.

2. Service design: Design services that are accessible along multiple axes simultaneously. An outreach approach that is culturally responsive but not language-accessible is not genuinely accessible.

3. Disparity analysis: Analyze outcome data at intersections, not only by single categories. Outcome gaps between Black and white service recipients may mask further disparities when data is disaggregated by disability type, gender, or geography.

4. Alliance: Recognize that disability rights work is connected to racial justice, gender justice, immigrant rights, and economic justice — not as a political stance, but as an analytical reality. Policies that harm one of these communities typically harm the others.

What it looks like in DSD practice

Scenario 1 — Missing the intersection in assessment:
A DSD case manager conducts a needs assessment for a Latina woman with an intellectual disability. The assessment covers disability-related needs thoroughly but does not ask about language access needs, immigration-related concerns, or how gender shapes her experience of her disability (e.g., whether concerns about gender-related safety are relevant to her housing situation). The resulting service plan addresses disability adequately but fails the person at the intersections.

Intersectional scenario 2 — Compound access barriers:
A Hmong elder with dementia and limited English proficiency needs DSD services. Their disability intersects with language, culture, age, and the specific cultural context of dementia in Hmong communities (where dementia may be understood differently than in Western biomedical frameworks). A service plan that treats this person's needs through a disability-only or language-only lens will fail to address the full picture.

Scenario 3 — Disparity analysis:
DSD's outcome data shows that transition-age youth with disabilities who are Black achieve competitive integrated employment at lower rates than their white peers. Further disaggregation reveals that the gap is largest for Black young men with psychiatric disabilities in urban settings — a specific intersection that points to specific service and structural interventions, not a general "race gap" amenable to generic diversity programming.

Scenario 4 — Alliance in practice:
An Equity Champion in DSD's employment services unit hears from a Somali community partner that families are concerned about immigration-related information-sharing between DSD and other government agencies. The concern is at the intersection of immigration status and disability service access. The Equity Champion brings the concern to program leadership as a service-access and trust issue — not a political issue — and advocates for clear, public communication about DSD's data practices.

How to apply this in your role

In assessment and planning:
• Build intersectional questions into your assessment practice. "How does [this dimension] shape your experience of [this other dimension]?" is an intersectional question.
• Do not treat "disability" as the only relevant identity in a disability services context.

In service design:
• Ask "accessible to whom?" every time you design a service feature. Accessible by disability standard? Also accessible by language? By geographic reach? By cultural competence?

In data and quality improvement:
• Disaggregate data at intersections, not only by single demographic categories.
• Look for compounded disparities, not just simple gaps.

In team and organizational culture:
• Recognize that intersectionality applies to DSD staff as well. A staff member who is a woman of color with a disability navigates DSD's organizational culture through an intersectional location.

Common misconceptions

"Intersectionality is just about identity." Intersectionality is about how systems of power — not just identities — interact. Identity dimensions are the sites at which systems of power operate; intersectionality is a lens for understanding how those systems intersect.

"Intersectionality is divisive." Intersectionality is an analytical tool for understanding why some people experience compounded disadvantage. Understanding compounded disadvantage is a prerequisite for addressing it.

"Addressing disability is the same as addressing all intersecting dimensions." Disability services frameworks, however well-designed, do not automatically address race, gender, language, or class. Intersectional practice requires explicit attention to each relevant dimension and their interactions.

"Intersectionality is only for marginalized identities." Everyone sits at intersections — of race, gender, class, age, ability status, and more. The framework applies to privileged as well as marginalized positions; it is useful for understanding advantage as well as disadvantage.

Connection to other frameworks

• Disability Justice (T04_12): Disability Justice centers intersectionality as a foundational principle — particularly the leadership of those most marginalized by the intersection of disability with race, gender, class, and sexuality.
• Cultural Humility (T04_04): Cultural humility that does not attend to intersectionality is incomplete. Self-examination must include examination of how identity intersections shape one's own lens and one's professional practice.
• Historical Trauma (T04_13): Historical trauma operates at intersections: the trauma experienced by Black communities with disabilities, or Indigenous women with disabilities, cannot be understood by examining race, gender, and disability separately.
• Berry Acculturation (T04_10): Acculturation strategies are shaped by the intersection of national origin, race, class, gender, and disability status. The experience of acculturation is qualitatively different at different intersectional positions.
• CLAS Standards (T04_16): Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services that are not intersectionally aware will fail populations at the intersection of multiple marginalized dimensions.

Connection to DSD's six program goals

DSD Goal — Intersectionality Connection

Goal 1 — Eliminate Disparities — Disparities in disability services are typically intersectional — they accumulate at the intersections of race, gender, disability type, and other dimensions. Disparity elimination requires intersectional analysis.
Goal 2 — Community Engagement — Communities are internally diverse; intersectionality prevents treating communities as monolithic and attends to who within a community is centered or excluded.
Goal 3 — Hiring and Retention — DSD's workforce composition is itself intersectional. Retention challenges may be concentrated at specific intersections (e.g., women of color in direct support roles).
Goal 4 — Learning and Development — Intersectionality is a core literacy for all DSD staff — a practical analytical tool for service delivery, not an abstract academic concept.
Goal 5 — Contracts and Procurement — Community-based providers often serve specific intersectional communities. Procurement that does not value intersectional expertise will miss the providers best positioned to serve specific populations.
Goal 6 — Communication and Accessibility — Communication that is accessible along one dimension (language) but not another (disability) or another (cultural relevance) is not genuinely accessible. Intersectional accessibility requires attention to multiple access dimensions simultaneously.

When to escalate / where to refer

• For intersectional data analysis: The DSD data and equity team can conduct intersectional analysis of outcome data. Surface specific concerns through your supervisor and Equity Champion.
• For community-specific intersectional context: Community-based organizations and advocacy groups serving specific intersectional communities (e.g., organizations serving women of color with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people with disabilities) have expertise DSD should partner with.
• For policy-level intersectional concerns: Bring to the Equity and Inclusion Operations Consultant; document the concern with specific data or patterns.

Reflective questions for your practice

1. When you think about a person you recently served, which identity dimensions are most present in your mental picture of them? Which are absent? Why?
2. Has an assessment process you use ever missed something important about a person because it asked about disability but not about gender, or about race but not about immigration status?
3. What compounded disadvantages are most common among the people you serve? What does DSD do well — and what gaps remain — in addressing those intersections?
4. What is your own intersectional position? How does it shape what you notice and what you miss in service interactions?
5. If you had to recommend one change to a DSD service process to make it more intersectionally responsive, what would it be?

Sources

• Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 139–167.
• Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
• Columbia Law School. (2017). Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later. https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later
• Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.
• PMC / Clinics in Colon and Rectal Surgery. (2023). Intersectionality: Understanding the Interdependent Systems of Discrimination. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10411112/
• Relay Resources. (2024). Viewing Disability Through Intersectionality. https://relayresources.org/blog/intersectionality-and-disability
• Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Tool: Intersectionality of Race and Disability. https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/antiracismtoolkit/chapter/tool-intersectionality-of-race-and-disability/
• Courtney-Long, E. A., et al. (2017). Disparities in health services and outcomes among people with disability. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
• Davis, K. (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory, 9(1), 67–85.

Always defer to the person in front of you. Frameworks describe patterns; people are individuals.
Build intersectional questions into your assessment practice. "How does [this dimension] shape your experience of [this other dimension]?" is an intersectional question.
Ask "accessible to whom?" every time you design a service feature. Accessible by disability standard? Also accessible by language? By geographic reach? By cultural competence?
Ask: When you think about a person you recently served, which identity dimensions are most present in your mental picture of them? Which are absent? Why?
Ask: What compounded disadvantages are most common among the people you serve? What does DSD do well — and what gaps remain — in addressing those intersections?
Ask: What is your own intersectional position? How does it shape what you notice and what you miss in service interactions?
Verify current authority, preserve rights and exceptions, and route interpretation questions using Intersectionality for DSD Practice.
Confirm the current purpose, audience, and decision authority before using Intersectionality for DSD Practice to verify current authority, preserve rights and exceptions, and route interpretation questions.
For policy regulatory analysts, use Intersectionality for DSD Practice to verify current authority, preserve rights and exceptions, and route interpretation questions; trace each recommendation to current authority, preserve exceptions, and document the decision record. Start by build intersectional questions into your assessment practice. "How does [this dimension] shape your experience of [this other dimension]?" is an intersectional question.
For facilitators learning leads, use Intersectionality for DSD Practice to verify current authority, preserve rights and exceptions, and route interpretation questions; build the guidance into preparation, practice, debrief, access checks, and follow-up. Start by ask "accessible to whom?" every time you design a service feature. Accessible by disability standard? Also accessible by language? By geographic reach? By cultural competence?
Use cultural and community context to ask better questions, never to predict an individual or treat a group as monolithic.
Do not replace official legal, policy, clinical, supervisory, program, or Tribal authority.
Do not infer an individual's identity, preferences, needs, or experience from group-level information.
State uncertainty, use current authoritative sources, and escalate when the decision exceeds the user's role.
Intersectionality is a theoretical framework — and a practical analytical tool — for understanding how multiple, overlapping systems of power and marginalization shape individuals' lived experiences in ways that cannot be understood by examining any single identity dimension alone. Step 1. Build intersectional questions into your assessment practice. "How does [this dimension] shape your experience of [this other dimension]?" is an intersectional question. Step 2. Ask "accessible to whom?" every time you design a service feature. Accessible by disability standard? Also accessible by language? By geographic reach? By cultural competence? Step 3. Ask: When you think about a person you recently served, which identity dimensions are most present in your mental picture of them? Which are absent? Why? Step 4. Ask: What compounded disadvantages are most common among the people you serve? What does DSD do well — and what gaps remain — in addressing those intersections? Step 5. Ask: What is your own intersectional position? How does it shape what you notice and what you miss in service interactions? Step 6. Verify current authority, preserve rights and exceptions, and route interpretation questions using Intersectionality for DSD Practice. Step 7. Confirm the current purpose, audience, and decision authority before using Intersectionality for DSD Practice to verify current authority, preserve rights and exceptions, and route interpretation questions.

One DSD People, Access and Culture