Jessey Shin | Making room for intersectionality at Penn

I’ve lived within a 3-minute walk from the LGBT Center for the entire academic year. Because of its proximity, I had hoped that it would serve as a source of community and interconnectedness for me at Penn. However, my time at the LGBT Center fell short of these expectations; my experience as a disabled, international, and queer student simply did not have much of a place at these events.

Penn currently has six Cultural Resource Centers (CRCs): the LGBT Center, Pan-Asian American Community House (PAACH), La Casa Latina, Greenfield Intercultural Center, Makuu, and Penn Women’s Center. These seek to provide “a sense of belonging while promoting intercultural understanding,” creating spaces and events for the diverse cultural and lived experiences of those at Penn. Furthermore, Penn First Plus provides additional resources for first-generation and low-income students.

Many of my own identities would fall under those most closely connected to the CRCs. When I have the space in my schedule, I often find myself at events hosted by (or affiliated with) one or more of these centers. Yet, I’ve found that my experiences at the LGBT Center, Penn Women’s Center, and PAACH were more isolating than I had expected.

A physical manifestation of this barrier is definitely inaccessibility: although most of the CRCs are advertised to be accessible for those with disabilities, the implementation can be lacking. The LGBT Center, for instance, occasionally requires entry through the back door, passing through unpaved ground. I have also often waved at the front entrance, waiting for someone to open the door for me. Sensory inaccessibility can be an issue as well, since these events are typically packed with people, lights, and music without much room to take a break.

Although they often collaborate on events, bringing people with different backgrounds together, it remains true that each CRC caters to one main group of people. This can prove challenging for students like myself, who have multiple marginalized identities. For instance, it was challenging to find a community at PAACH when I was typically the only person there who was visibly disabled. Although I largely shared the same cultural knowledge as others, my understanding of my Asian heritage was ultimately different because it was informed by my experiences of marginalization in areas beyond my race. I couldn’t fully appreciate the collectivist culture, for example, when it had been used to cast me out of the group based on my queerness or disability.

Additionally, I have heard from other international students that the CRCs are predominantly catered to the American immigrant experience, which meant that they did not necessarily feel welcome there even though they fit the demographic of who the CRCs were looking for.

Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality is a term that refers to the interconnectedness of social identities and labels such as race, ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, and more. It recognizes that “Black women are both Black and female, and thus subject to discrimination on the basis of both race, gender, and often, a combination of the two.” In this view, the discrimination that Black women encounter is not just the sum of racism and sexism. Their experiences of interpersonal and systemic violence are often unique and informed by the overlapping of race and gender.

Penn is growing increasingly diverse, in terms of the identities held by the student body and the spaces and resources being created. With 62% of the 2027 class identifying as Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American, and 56% of the student body consisting of women, resources and community-oriented spaces are in high demand.

Many recent developments are steps in the right direction: for instance, the Greenfield Intercultural Center brings together students with diverse cultural backgrounds and holds events such as cooking workshops, cultural holiday celebrations, and conversations around immigration and study abroad. Furthermore, collaboration between student groups and organizations with the CRCs can also provide opportunities for better integration of the various identities and interests present on campus. However, there is room for improvement as some of the CRCs and their events are not accessible for disabled students, and there are still relatively few spaces that are intentionally created with intersectionality in mind.

As we grow as a university, it is also important to consider that the effects of race, gender and class do not occur in isolation. It is important to intentionally hold space for intersectional identities at Penn, especially as we expand our student body’s demographics. Additionally, we must recognize that multiple discrimination is especially harmful: healthcare statistics, for instance, find that having more marginalized identities is associated with high psychological distress and developing chronic health conditions. Therefore, the issue of intersectionality is entwined with the pursuit of protecting some of the most vulnerable populations at Penn.

JESSEY SHIN is a College first-year studying communication and sociology from Seongnam-si, South Korea. Their email is jessey0@sas.upenn.edu.