Or: Why Kimberlé Crenshaw’s E.T. Keeps Calling Home and Getting No Answer
Part I: The Woman Who Gave Us the Prism
Let’s start with Kimberlé Crenshaw. If you’ve heard the word “intersectionality” — and if you’ve been conscious in the last decade, you have — you’ve encountered her work. She’s the legal scholar who, in 1989, gave us a way of understanding how race, gender, class, and other axes of identity don’t just sit next to each other like neat little boxes in a spreadsheet. They collide. They overlap. They create entirely distinct experiences of discrimination that you can’t see if you’re only looking at one category at a time.
But here’s the thing Crenshaw doesn’t get enough credit for: she didn’t think her concept was a one-size-fits-all export.
In 2009, she was the guest of honour at a conference in Frankfurt celebrating the 20th anniversary of intersectionality. Three hundred academics showed up. Lots of speeches. Lots of self-congratulation. And then Crenshaw gave her postscript — and she basically told the room they’d gotten it wrong.
She admitted that the discussions about intersectionality’s “objectives, dynamics, and trajectories were, as she put it, ‘quite foreign to my own sensibilities about intersectionality’.” She pointed out that when the concept was transferred to the German context, “the substantial foundation of intersectionality in critical race theory and the CRT movement of Black legal scholars was ignored and effectively erased.”
This is where she deployed the metaphor that should be etched onto every policymaker’s desk: intersectionality, she said, is like E.T. from the children’s film. The alien lands somewhere new and desperately tries to “phone home” — but it can’t establish a connection because the crucial elements that made the connection possible are missing.
That, right there, is the problem in a nutshell. And it’s a problem that has only gotten worse in the fifteen years since she said it.
Part II: The European Commission Meets the Buzzword
Now let’s fast-forward to 2019. Ursula von der Leyen takes office as President of the European Commission and makes a “strong and unambiguous pledge” to build a ‘Union of Equality’, with an “intersectional approach” serving as a “fundamental cross-cutting principle”.
Great, right? Crenshaw’s ideas have arrived. They’re official. They’re policy.
Except.
Soon after, a string of EU policy documents followed, explicitly incorporating intersectionality: the EU Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020–2025, the Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025, the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy. The European Commission adopted a more holistic approach, using the word “intersectionality” in all revised or newly published documents.
But here’s where the E.T. metaphor kicks in. Because what actually happened?
A 2025 academic analysis found that “the use of intersectionality remains superficial and largely maintains the status quo.” The authors caution against “the co-optation of intersectionality in EU policymaking.” Another paper notes that “in practice, intersectionality rarely informs the design of specific policy instruments and has largely faded from the European Commission’s current policy agenda.”
Let me translate that from academese: They put the word in the documents. They did not put the concept in the policies.
The EU’s legal system, one analysis explains, is “structurally ill-equipped to address intersecting forms of discrimination.” Jurisprudence requires clearly defined concepts for law-making. As a concept “rooted in critical theory rather than specific legal categories, intersectionality cannot be easily embedded in the EU’s existing legislative framework.”
The Greens in the European Parliament called it out directly: “The Commission seems to be using intersectionality as a buzzword while offering no concrete solutions to support these groups.”
Buzzword. Not policy. Copy-paste, not adaptation.
Part III: The Copy-Paste Machine
Now let’s zoom out from Brussels and look at the broader phenomenon. Because this isn’t just an EU problem. It’s a corporate problem. It’s an NGO problem. It’s an every-institution-with-a-DEI-budget problem.
For decades, multinational corporations and universities have treated DEI as a “franchise model,” “exporting American definitions of race, gender, and identity to subsidiaries in Bangkok, Berlin, and Johannesburg, expecting identical results.” As The European Business Review put it — and this is worth quoting in full — “the demise of ‘copy-paste’ DEI clears the wreckage for something far more robust: Contextual Inclusion.“
What’s dying is “not the value of inclusion, but the hegemony of a specific, Western-centric, largely American delivery mechanism.”
Let’s break down what this looks like on the ground.
The UK and Ireland: Heavy importation, visible backlash. Despite “heavy reliance on US FDI,” there is “little evidence yet of a row-back on DEI policies in Irish workplaces.” But the British debate has become a culture war proxy, with diversity training accused of creating “hostile work environments for minority groups.”
Benelux: The most direct academic critique. A master’s thesis from Ghent University is titled “This is not America! The Americanization of the discourse about anti-Black racism in Flanders.” That’s not a subtitle. That’s the title. The Dutch explicitly reject “a copy-paste version of the American backlash.”
France: Paradox central. The French have “strict ‘colorblind’ policies that prohibit the collection of race-based data, stemming from republican ideals of universalism.” This can obscure efforts to measure racial disparities. Yet when the U.S. Embassy sent letters to French companies demanding they comply with federal anti-discrimination laws, the French government called it “unacceptable.”
Italy: Performative adoption. A PwC Italia survey found that while over 40% of companies claim to provide DEI training, only 10% deliver programs that are actually relevant. Italy remains “one of the countries with the lowest spending on DEI” in Europe.
Scandinavia: Political resistance to U.S. pressure. In May 2025, the Stockholm City Council rejected U.S. Embassy demands that it comply with the Trump administration’s rollback of DEI policies. The Deputy Mayor called it a “bizarre request.”
But here’s the twist: even as they resist U.S. political pressure, Scandinavian companies have long relied on “D&I programs overseas—intended for non-US audiences—that were created and vetted exclusively in the United States.”
Part IV: The Perverse Outcomes
Now we get to the really interesting part. Because the copy-paste problem doesn’t just make things ineffective. It makes things perverse.
Let’s start with Pride. Brighton Pride in the UK now attracts over 300,000 attendees and generated an estimated £20.5 million in revenue in 2018. But members of the LGBTQ+ community claim the event has “become too commercial, lost its meaning and no longer feels like their space.” Companies sponsor Pride as a “huge marketing opportunity” — a practice known as “pink-washing,” pretending to support LGBTQ+ causes while maintaining discriminatory practices.
The global “pink money” market is estimated at 3.5 trillion euros, with around 874 billion euros in the EU. That’s not activism. That’s marketing.
Or take anti-racism training. The European Roma Rights Centre states that “there is no compelling evidence that implicit bias training prevents ethnic profiling.” In the UK, a hospital’s “unconscious bias” anti-racism training “reportedly makes no mention of Jews” — a spectacular failure of contextual adaptation in a country with significant antisemitism concerns.
The problem isn’t that these initiatives are wrong. It’s that they’re maladapted. They’re like a suit that was tailored for someone else and doesn’t fit.
As Laís Rodrigues puts it in a 2026 paper, the institutionalization of intersectionality, diversity, and inclusion “facilitates their assimilation into procedural, compliance-driven practices that risk depoliticizing feminist and anti-oppression struggles.” The result? “Sanitized forms of intersectionality, a notion of inclusion that can be exclusionary, and a notion of diversity that primarily serves institutional branding.”
This is the perverse outcome: a radical concept from Black feminist legal scholarship becomes a bureaucratic buzzword that preserves the status quo.
Part V: The Backlash We Shouldn’t Mistake for Rejection
Now, here’s where the data gets really interesting. Because the pushback against DEI in Europe — and there is pushback — is not what it appears to be.
The Netherlands Inclusivity Monitor, which surveyed nearly 38,000 employees, found a much more nuanced picture of support for D&I policy.
Almost one in five HR professionals supported statements like “diversity policy is nonsense” or “it is woke and leads to unnecessary polarization.”
But hold on: that means over 80% disagreed with those statements. Even among younger participants, whose judgments were on average more critical, over 70% disagreed.
The group that is “truly against D&I policy is smaller than expected.” More often, resistance involves “unfamiliarity, insecurity or critical questions.”
There are not only distinct advocates and opponents, but also “employees who support the policy and mainly question the execution.”
Let me say that again: the resistance is to the execution, not the principle. It’s to the copy-paste, not the idea.
As one analysis put it, many Europeans view DEI as “American imports, tied to a specific socio-political context.” But “Europe is not new to equity and inclusion. Human rights frameworks, labor protections, and anti-discrimination statutes are deeply woven into the fabric of the EU.”
What’s different is the language. What’s different is the delivery mechanism. What’s different is the assumption that what works in New York will work in Naples.
Part VI: The Way Forward (Or: The E.T. Finally Calls Home)
So what do we do about this?
The smart money — and the smart companies — are moving toward regional models that “affirm global values while tailoring language and deployment locally.”
This means:
- Acknowledging that Europe has its own structural inequalities — anti-Roma discrimination, anti-Muslim bias, nationality-based exploitation, post-colonial hierarchies — that don’t map neatly onto U.S. racial categories.
- Recognizing that legal frameworks differ — the EU’s legal system is “structurally ill-equipped” to handle intersectionality — and adapting accordingly.
- Replacing performative compliance with what one analyst calls “Contextual Intelligence” — “the ability to interpret and react to changing surroundings.”
- Accepting that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Crenshaw herself has been working on this. Since 2009, she has been coming to Berlin at least once a year, trying to build what she calls a “CRT Europe” — a version of critical race theory that is grounded in European realities.
She acknowledges “the need for coalitions between Black women globally.” She asks European audiences: “When did you know you were Black?” — a question that lands differently in a context where “race” is often treated as a taboo or a foreign import.
The point isn’t to abandon intersectionality or DEI. The point is to stop treating them like software that can be installed without configuration.
Conclusion
Let’s circle back to where we started.
Kimberlé Crenshaw gave us a prism — a way of seeing how different forms of discrimination intersect. It was never meant to be a checklist. It was never meant to be a corporate training module. It was never meant to be a buzzword in a European Commission document.
When she saw what was happening to her concept in Europe, she gave us the E.T. metaphor. The alien lands. It tries to call home. It can’t connect. The crucial elements are missing.
Fifteen years later, the E.T. is still trying to call home. And the signal is still not getting through.
The good news is that the pushback we’re seeing in Europe isn’t a rejection of equality. It’s a rejection of poorly adapted, copy-paste implementation. Over 80% of Dutch employees don’t think diversity policy is “nonsense.” They just want it to actually work.
The bad news is that bureaucratic inertia, cultural mimicry, and the perceived prestige of American frameworks keep the copy-paste machine running. The result is a caricature of Crenshaw’s vision — a sanitized, commercialized, performative version that generates backlash without delivering change.
The way forward is not to abandon the principles. It’s to do the hard work of adaptation. To ground intersectionality in local legal frameworks, local histories, local struggles. To stop treating DEI like a franchise and start treating it like what it is: a set of tools that need to be sharpened for each specific job.
As The European Business Review put it: “The demise of ‘copy-paste’ DEI clears the wreckage for something far more robust.”
Let’s hope they’re right. Because the E.T. has been calling home for a long time now. It’s time someone answered.
Sources
Part I: The Woman Who Gave Us the Prism
- Crenshaw, K. (1989) on intersectionality as capturing the interwoven nature of power relations
- Crenshaw’s 2009 Frankfurt conference address and postscript
- Crenshaw on the erasure of CRT foundations when intersectionality travelled to Germany
- Crenshaw’s E.T. metaphor for the travelling theory of intersectionality
Part II: The European Commission Meets the Buzzword
- Von der Leyen Commission’s “Union of Equality” pledge with intersectional approach
- EU policy documents incorporating intersectionality (Anti-Racism Action Plan, Gender Equality Strategy, LGBTIQ Strategy)
- Debusscher & Maes (2025) finding that intersectionality use “remains superficial and largely maintains the status quo”
- Heidbreder & Kugelmeier López on intersectionality “largely faded from the European Commission’s current policy agenda”
- EU legal system “structurally ill-equipped” to address intersecting discrimination
- Greens/EFA critique of intersectionality as “buzzword” with “no concrete solutions”
Part III: The Copy-Paste Machine
- Mallory (2026) on DEI as “franchise model” exporting American definitions globally
- “Demise of ‘copy-paste’ DEI” and rise of “Contextual Inclusion”
- Ireland’s DEI position despite US FDI reliance
- Benelux academic critique: “This is not America!” thesis
- Dutch rejection of “copy-paste version of the American backlash”
- French “colorblind” policies and prohibition of race-based data collection
- US Embassy letters to French companies and French government response
- PwC Italia survey findings on DEI training gap in Italy
- Stockholm City Council rejection of US Embassy DEI demands
Part IV: The Perverse Outcomes
- Brighton Pride commercialization and “pink-washing” critique
- Global “pink money” market estimates
- Rodrigues (2026) on “sanitized intersectionality” and institutional co-optation
- European Roma Rights Centre on implicit bias training ineffectiveness
Part V: The Backlash We Shouldn’t Mistake for Rejection
- Netherlands Inclusivity Monitor findings on D&I policy support
- Over 80% disagreement with anti-DEI statements
- “Truly against D&I policy is smaller than expected”
- Resistance often involves “unfamiliarity, insecurity or critical questions”
- Employees who “support the policy and mainly question the execution”
- European view of DEI as “American imports”
- Europe’s existing human rights and anti-discrimination frameworks
Part VI: The Way Forward (Or: The E.T. Finally Calls Home)
- Multinationals moving toward regional models that “affirm global values while tailoring language and deployment locally”
- Crenshaw’s annual visits to Berlin since 2009 and “CRT Europe” project
- Crenshaw on coalitions between Black women globally
- Crenshaw’s question to European audiences: “When did you know you were Black?”
- Mallory on “Contextual Intelligence” and “culture eats strategy for breakfast”