UCLA

This thesis employs the theory of intersectionality to broaden our understanding of the social construction of race. To do so, the thesis explicates a 1806 Virginia Supreme Court decision, Hudgins v. Wright, to illustrate how race is intersectionally constituted. I employ the term "intra-categorical intersectionality" to describe this dynamic. By intra-categorical intersectionality I mean to the process by which a number of factors intersect to construct race. First, the thesis discusses both Crenshaw's 1989 article on the theory of intersectionality, and Ian F. Haney Lopez's 1994 article on the Social Construction of Race in its Theoretical Framework section. The thesis then provides some background on Virginia during the early eighteenth and nineteenth century as a predicate to explicating Hudgins v Wrights to reveal how the court's opinion reflects an intra-categorical intersectional approach. In the context of doing so, the thesis demonstrates how skin-color, hair texture, performance, family lineage, white witnesses testimony, reputation, judges' personal views on slavery, and gender intersect to determine race.