Most scholars of intersectionality argue that categories of inequality transform one another. In their empirical analysis, they routinely situate specific categories as master statuses, for example, “black woman” or “immigrant woman.” A growing group of scholars has begun to question the stability of these categories, arguing that context complicates even seemingly stable categories. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a hair-braiding salon located in the Las Vegas valley, where black West African immigrant women professionally braid black American women’s hair, I provide an empirical case that underlines how identity categories usually constructed as stable by sociocultural theorists are often internally contested within the communities that occupy them. My observations demonstrate that both West African and black American women contest competing explanations of what it means to be black women through boundaries. They rely on pejorative stories about the other group at a time when both antiblack racism and antiimmigrant sentiments are on the rise in the contemporary United States. In engaging in the politics of defining black womanhood within white patriarchy, the women reproduce gendered racial hierarchies.

中文翻译：

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有争议的身份：非洲侨民和发辫沙龙中的身份塑造

大多数交叉性学者认为不平等的类别会相互转化。在他们的实证分析中，他们通常将特定类别定位为主要地位，例如“黑人女性”或“移民女性”。越来越多的学者开始质疑这些类别的稳定性，认为即使是看似稳定的类别，上下文也会变得复杂。在位于拉斯维加斯山谷的一家发辫沙龙中进行了两年的民族志实地考察，在那里西非黑人移民妇女专业地为美国黑人妇女的头发编辫子，我提供了一个实证案例，强调了社会文化理论家通常如何将身份类别构建为稳定的经常在占领它们的社区内发生内部争执。我的观察表明，西非女性和美国黑人女性都对通过界限成为黑人女性意味着什么进行了相互竞争的解释。在当代美国反黑人种族主义和反移民情绪都在上升的时候，他们依赖于关于另一个群体的贬义故事。在参与在白人父权制中定义黑人女性的政治活动中，女性再现了性别化的种族等级制度。