ABSTRACT
Intersectionality, like “diversity, equity and inclusion”, seems to be the topic of the decade in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Today, “intersectional feminism” in science is widely understood to mean “promoting women of color in science,” often forgetting its roots in thinking by and about Black women. This chapter proposes that a Black feminist physics and astronomy is possible. A Black woman is, in some sense, the total opposite of the ideal patriarch. This is to say that a Black woman, according to the social traditions that governed scientific practice, could not be an ideal, trustworthy observer. Black women are prefigured as the opposite of an “ideal physicist.” Black feminist physics can use intersectionality as an analytic frame and solidarity as an operating basis to advance transnational freedom dreaming from a Black queer feminist perspective.
