Intersectionality Matters!

African American Policy Forum

Intersectionality Matters! is a podcast hosted by…

  • 1 hour 5 minutes
    54. #SayHerName - the Art of Bearing Witness on the Page and Stage

    It's the 11th anniversary of the #SayHerName Campaign. To commemorate, we're uplifting a favourite #SayHerName episode from our archive.


    Please join us on Dec 8 in NYC for a staged reading of #SayHerName - The Lives That Should have been, featuring a star-studded cast of performers, a talkback with the mothers of the #SayHerName Mothers Network, and a post-show party with performances by special guests. Get your tickets here.



    This episode highlights a new milestone for the #SayHerName campaign: a new book, entitled #SayHerName: Black Women’s Stories of Police Violence and Public Silence. 

    Co-authored by podcast host Kimberlé Crenshaw and the team at the African American Policy Forum, this book helps readers better understand Black women's susceptibility to police brutality and state-sanctioned violence. It explains —through Black feminist storytelling and ritual — how we can effectively mobilize various communities and empower them to advocate for racial justice for Black women, girls, and femmes.

    In this podcast episode, you'll hear incredible performances from actors at each of our #SayHerName book tour stops in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Baltimore. You'll also hear from members from the #SayHerName Mothers Network, a sisterhood of women who have lost other women, girls and femmes in their family to police violence.

    You'll also hear from Dr. Kaye Wise Whitehead, Dr. Dorothy Roberts, and Kali Holloway, each of whom served as cohosts at book tour stops in their respective cities. They reflected with Dr. Crenshaw on the power of the tour, the calls to action from the book, and the urgency of the lessons the book contains.

    Centering Black women’s experiences in police and gender violence discourses sends the powerful message that, in fact, all #BlackLivesMatter, and that the police cannot kill without consequence. Supporting AAPF ensures that this important research and testimony continues to inspire change.

    To purchase your copy, click ⁠here⁠.

    Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw (@sandylocks), with Dorothy Roberts @DorothyERoberts, Kaye Wise Whitehead @kayewhitehead, and Kali Holloway @kalihollowayftw.

    Produced by Nicole Edwards and the team at the African American Policy Forum.

    Mixing by Sean Dunnam

    Music by Blue Dot Sessions

    Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram.

    5 December 2025, 11:15 pm
  • 1 hour 36 minutes
    72. Why Authoritarians Fear Democracy

    This episode features Legal Defense Fund President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson with professors Carol Anderson and Nancy MacLean, in conversation with our host Kimberlé Crenshaw. This riveting and timely conversation shows how anti-Blackness can be weaponized to harm democracy for all through voter suppression, money in politics, and the erosion of democratic safeguards.

    2 December 2025, 6:59 pm
  • 57 minutes 26 seconds
    71. Why Authoritarians Fear Education

    Host Kimberlé Crenshaw is joined by authors Jason Stanley and Randi Weingarten to discuss why authoritarians and fascists target education on the path to destabilizing democracy. They unpack how book bans, attacks on teachers, and efforts to erase history from public institutions threaten the democratic project, and what we can do to fight back.



    13 November 2025, 9:52 am
  • 1 hour 16 minutes
    70. How Anti-Blackness Destroys Democracy

    As we slide into autocracy, disparities impacting Black Americans are being ignored while Black excellence is actively erased from our workplaces, museums, and history books. These attacks are no longer cloaked with dog whistles. They're happening in plain sight, and endangering our health, eliminating our jobs, and gutting our civil rights infrastructure. Despite the scale of this attack, the response remains muted—even within our own communities. What must we do to sound the alarm and ensure that others hear it? Where do we go from here?

    Featuring:

    • Kimberlé Crenshaw, African American Policy Forum
    • Melanie Campbell, Convener of Black Women's Roundtable
    • Evelynn Hammonds, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African American Studies
    • Lisa Coleman, President of Adler University
    • Kaye Wise Whitehead, President & CEO National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP)
    15 October 2025, 3:21 pm
  • 40 minutes 32 seconds
    Part 2: United States of Amnesia: The Real Histories of CRT - Weaponizing (White) Parents' Rights

    In part 2 of this series, host Kimberlé Crenshaw, refutes the myth that book and curricula bans seek to restore “parental choice” over what kids are exposed to, linking attacks on school lessons about race, gender and more to a broader attack against public education and democracy itself. Join as she traces the history of today's prominent, pro-censorship parent groups throughout American history, back to the Daughters of the Confederacy. 


    Featuring:

    - Karen Cox, professor of History at UNC-Charlotte

    - David Yacovone, lifetime associate at Harvard University’s Hutchin’s Centre for African and African American Research, and author of author of Teaching White Supremacy


    This is an Intersectionality Matters! podcast, produced by the African American Policy Forum.


    Hosted and co-written by Kimberlé Crenshaw (@sandylocks)

    Sr Producer and co-writer Nicole Edwards

    Associate Producers Madison Belo and Sana Hashmi

    Mixing by Reza Daya with support from Sean Dunnam

    Follow us on Bluesky and Instagram , or via aapf.org

    17 September 2025, 9:15 am
  • 42 minutes 11 seconds
    69. The Battle for America's Memory, Part 2

    A special collaboration with Today with Dr. Kaye, this episode was taped live at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.


    Host Kimberlé Crenshaw, with Kaye Wise Whitehead and guests Time Wise, Karen Attiah, Melanie Campbell, Janel George, Ambassador Elizabeth McKune, and Barbara Arnwine, discuss the importance of protecting Black American history through fighting for the Smithsonian, and why the struggle to protect museums goes hand in hand with the struggle to protect democracy.


    Learn more about the Freedom to Learn Coalition and the annual National Week of Action at freedomtolearn.net


    This episode was produced by the team at the African American Policy Forum and the team at Today With Dr. Kaye from WEAA.


    Music by Blue Dot Sessions

    7 May 2025, 5:47 pm
  • 47 minutes 40 seconds
    68. The Battle for America's Memory

    At the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, Kimberlé Crenshaw is joined by Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. They explore how museums shape national identity. They also historicize the current political attacks aiming to erase Black narratives, as institutions like the Smithsonian and Whitney Plantation face censorship and defunding because of executive orders.


    This episode outlines why defending America's memory is essential to defending democracy itself.


    Dive deeper:


    This episode used clips from:


    Hosted and co-written by Kimberlé Crenshaw

    Sr Producer and co-writer Nicole Edwards

    Mixing by Sean Dunnam

    Scripting support from Kevin Minofu, Kristin Penner, Meredith Shiner, and Tim Wise.

    Music by Blue Dot Sessions


    1 May 2025, 11:52 am
  • 45 minutes 1 second
    67. Bloody Sunday, 60 Years Later

    Host Kimberlé Crenshaw takes listeners to Alabama to learn about the contemporary importance of Bloody Sunday and the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.


    Featuring:

    Cliff Albright, co-founder, Black Voters Matter

    LaTosha Brown, co-founder, Black Voters Matter

    Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF)

    1965 foot soldiers Denise Jaringan-Holt and Alice Moore


    Click here to listen an uncut conversation about the Selma Jubilee with Kimberlé Crenshaw on the Laura Flanders and Friends podcast.


    Podcast co-written and produced by Sr. Producer Nicole Edwards

    Mixing and sound design by Sean Dunnam

    Podcast art by Ashley Julien

    Music by Blue Dot Sessions


    Follow us at @intersectionalitymatters (Twitter), @IMKC_podcast (Instagram + Bluesky)

    14 April 2025, 5:19 pm
  • 1 hour 11 minutes
    66. Executive Disorder

    In this episode, host Kimberlé Crenshaw is joined by some of the country's brightest legal minds to discuss the Trump administration's executive orders, how they'll affect progressive movements, and what communities can do to defend those affected.



    Featuring:

    Damon Hewitt

    David J. Johns

    Russel Robinson

    Nina Turner



    Podcast mixed and produced by Sr. Producer Nicole Edwards

    Under the Blacklight is produced by Kevin Minofu

    Podcast art by Ashley Julien

    Music by Blue Dot Sessions


    Follow us at @intersectionalitymatters (Twitter), @IMKC_podcast (Instagram + Bluesky)

    12 March 2025, 2:56 pm
  • 40 minutes 6 seconds
    Part 1: United States of Amnesia: The Real Histories of CRT - The Students Who Protested

    In the first episode of this limited series, Critical Race Theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw takes listeners on a journey through the origin story of Critical Race Theory (CRT), from her days as a student demanding desegregation at Harvard, to the moment she learned President Trump banned CRT in his 2020 executive order. This episode delves into the hopes and inspiration that birthed the CRT legal movement, and how the current opposition to CRT is history repeating itself.


    Support our work: https://www.aapf.org/donate


    Host: Kimberlé Crenshaw

    Sr. producer/Writer: Nicole Edwards

    Mixing and Sound Design: Reza Daya

    Addition mixing support: Sean Dunnam

    Associate Producers: Madison Bello, Gordon Curry, Sana Hashmi, Kaila Philo, African American Policy Forum team.

    Art: Work By Index

    29 January 2025, 4:38 pm
  • 4 minutes 45 seconds
    Coming Soon - United States of Amnesia: The Real History of Critical Race Theory

    In a new series, host Kimberlé Crenshaw takes listeners on a journey through the real history of critical race theory (CRT). She explores the "anti-CRT" legislative attacks against public education, and as a founding critical race theorist, Prof. Crenshaw provides a first-hand account of the origin of the theory, from its inception at Harvard Law School to the current backlash against it.

    Through interviews with thought leaders, activists, academics and the communities affected by anti-CRT and anti-DEI legislation, in this series, Kimberlé Crenshaw uplifts the cycles of history we see repeating before us in the present day, all in the hopes of curing the amnesia that keeps us stuck in the cycles of history.

    22 January 2025, 5:00 am
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