This Week's Inquirer: Ron DeSantis defines ‘intersectionality’ differently than everyone else does ... including the dictionary

The right already conquered "woke"; "intersectionality" is next. Here's what the word actually means.

You’re about to start hearing about intersectionality. A lot.

My anticipatory condolences.

The right already conquered woke. Logically, intersectionality is next.

Evidence for woke’s defeat is blazing across Merriam-Webster’s homepage, where — as I write this — woke is currently, and frequently, the most looked-up term. Why? Many politicians and pundits, who would rather be asleep than woke, often struggle to define it. Some have even launched a yearslong campaign of obfuscation and appropriation, leaving people rightly confused about what woke means. So they look it up a lot.

I’ve written previously about how the right stole woke and turned it into a derisive insult. A surge in national conversations about antiracism in recent years provoked a desire for an anti-antiracist response that didn’t sound so … racist. Woke — with its shifting parts of speech and malleable definition — provided an opening.

Now it’s intersectionality’s turn.

Read the full column at Inquirer.com.