Office of
Strategic Partnerships

No matter your organization or program, LGBTQIA+ folks, people with disabilities, people of color, multilingual speakers, and so many others will be a part of your community. It is important to acknowledge and support the multitude of interlocking identities that exist within your program and student population.

While OSP’s guidance documents have been separated into distinct resources to help partners conceptualize strategies for supporting different groups, it is crucial to understand that students contain a wide variety of multifaceted identities. To support students in their total personhood, we need to use an intersectional framework. An intersectional view of identity holds that aspects of identity, such as gender and race, do not just stack on top of each other; they mix.

The concept of Intersectionality was coined by legal scholar, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, in her 1989 work “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” Her original concept was about how society and the law are not equipped to protect black women because anti-discrimination laws separated out race and gender in a way that does not account for discrimination against specifically women of color (Crenshaw, 1989). Where society often silos away different characteristics, treating them like building blocks, discrete ingredients to a whole person, an intersectional view sees the multiple facets as melded together, inextricably linked to one another, producing a person with a unique perspective on each of their identities. For example, a gay white man will experience queerness differently than a Latino transgender gay man, despite both being gay men.

Philadelphia is an incredibly diverse city, and that extends to our youth. Students’ identities are often minimized due to their age, but supporting them in respecting their peers’ and their own identities is key to creating healthy relationships and views of self (Bonsu & Smith, 2023). Regardless of grade level, students are always growing and learning more about themselves and the world around them. Creating a space where students can feel respected and connected while embracing all aspects of themselves is critical to creating solid foundations of self and society into adulthood.