A cartoon about chess in which the black and white chess pieces are mixed.
In the layout of the chess board depicted the black and white chess pieces don’t occupy opposite ends of the board, but are mixed equally at each end.
The mixing of the black and white chess pieces symbolises the mixing of different types of people (not necessarily linked to race) rather than the polarising effect of each colour of piece congregating at one end.
As a result of the mixing of the pieces, with each ‘side’ in the chess game being made up of the two colours, it’s impossible for the two sides to engage in ‘battle’.
The outcome of multiple life conditions on opportunity and outcome – intersectionality cartoon
This illustration was drawn for Marxism Today magazine in the mid 1980s.
It features a machine into which babies enter at the top and adults leave at the bottom.
The machine represents the workings of society, with tubes and pipes representing functions such as education, class, race, gender etc.
The adults leaving the machine have all been filtered through the various parts of the machine to produce different types of people. The types of people are produced to suit the conditions and needs of society.
The illustration could be interpreted as being about what is now called intersectionality (although it was drawn in about 1984 or 1985, before the term intersectionality was coined in 1989 by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw).
