Beyond the Sole Category of Race: Using a CRT Intersectional Framework to Map Identity Projects

Using student narratives, the authors argue for a heuristic tool, the identity project, claiming that identity projects are artifacts of identity as both process and category. Identity projects can offer teachers, researchers, and students insights into socio-historical structures and contexts, and the individual’s existential relationship to these contexts. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Critical Race Theory (CRT) intersectional framework allows us to map the terrain of identity projects, which may incorporate features of CRT counterstories, but they also act as context stories, reinscribing oppressive discourses. Understanding identity projects serves research and practice by invigorating critical multiculturalism, and by opening spaces for affirmation, solidarity, and critique.