“We Can Only Go So Far”: Employing Intersectionality in Research with Middle-Class Black Women and Black Muslim Women

How to engage and apply intersectionality is still a point of contention among scholars. In this conceptual paper, we use examples from our preliminary research on the experiences of middle-class Black women with depression and Black Muslim women who have experienced intimate partner violence to illustrate how we applied intersectionality as a framework and a method. We highlight the foundational literature that informed our applications. We then describe how we employed intersectionality in our respective studies. Through our reflections, we conclude that intersectionality was, and continues to be, a necessary frame for guiding our work due to its rendering visible for critique and intervention categories of privilege and oppression and our centering the experiences of Black women. We, however, note having felt limited in our ability to fully apply intersectionality in our preliminary research. We conclude that what was missing for us reflects critiques of a gap in social work feminist scholarship that is a central tenet of intersectionality: liberation. We posit ways of doing intersectional research that liberates by offering recommendations for research, education, and policy.