O ver the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared expe- rience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also charac- terized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, howev- er, has been in tension with dominant con- ceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination – that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginal- ize those who are different. 7 Mapping the margins Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color AF KIMBERLÉ WILLIAMS CRENSHAW Intersectionality offers a way of me- diating the tension between asserti- ons of multiple identities and the ongoing necessity of group politics. While the descriptive project of post- modernism of questioning the ways in which meaning is socially con- structed is generally sound, this cri- tique sometimes misreads the mea- ning of social construction and di- storts its political relevance. To say that a category such as race or gen- der is socially constructed is not to say that that category has no signifi- cance in our world, on the contrary.