53 pages • 1 hour read
Alicia GarzaThe Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Ideological Context: Black Feminism and Critical Race Theory of the Late 20th Century
The Purpose of Power is based in the conceptual framework of critical race theory (CRT), a movement launched by American scholars who sought to create a cross-disciplinary field reevaluating race, society, and American law. Critical race theory finds fault in the current liberal movement for failing to uphold racial justice. It emerged in the mid-1970s after the gains of the civil rights movement of the 1960s were rolled back or unenforced. CRT highlights the failure of the American legal and social systems to uphold “colorblindness.”
At the core of critical race theory is law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, which she coined in 1989. This analytical framework seeks to demonstrate how an individual can exist within multiple social and political identities, which can force them to endure different modes of discrimination or enjoy various forms of privilege. Intersectionality and critical race theory encouraged the rise of Third-wave Feminism, which critiqued the First and Second waves for considering the rights and needs of only cisgender, heterosexual white women at the expense of women of color, lesbian and bisexual women, and trans women. Like critical race theory, Third-wave Feminism addresses 
