Text Box: Richard A. Wright Arkansas State University It was my privilege to organize the “Critical Criminology” sessions for the American Society of Criminology Meeting in San Francisco in 2000. Seeing the types and diversity of scholarship being generated worldwide by critical criminologists was intellectually invigorating. These submissions resulted in the organization of 19 sessions sponsored by the Division on Critical Criminology, applying critical perspectives to such far ranging themes as youth gangs, convict criminology, incarceration and post-incarceration, the spatialization of security and control, the impact of the new Labour government in Britain on criminal justice policy, the connections among ideology, knowledge, power, and crime, the relationship between morality and crime, and the relative influence of social action (agency) and social structure on criminal behavior. I congratulate those who submitted abstracts and sessions for the breath and depth of their scholarship. My one disappointment was that I could not piece together sessions focused on the topic of the intersection of class, gender, and race in criminology and criminal justice. Papers fell neatly into themes dealing with class, gender, or race and crime, but I seldom discerned any attempt by authors to bridge these topics. This troubled me, because I support recent calls by some critical criminologists (e.g., Barak, Flavin, and Leighton 2001; Messerschmidt 1997; Schwartz and Milovanovic 1996) to interconnect the study of the various forms of oppression in critical scholarship. After the dust settled from my mad scramble to comply with ASC deadlines and assemble coherent sessions, I decided to examine the submissions more closely to uncover patterns in the way that authors conceptualized oppression. This involved a modest content analysis of the 64 abstracts that I processed, looking for attempts to link class, gender, and/or racial oppression to criminal behavior and/or crime control responses. Of the abstracts that I received, 32 (50%) mentioned some form of class, gender, and/or racial oppression. Twenty-five (39%) dealt in isolation with class (13 abstracts), gender (6), or race (6). Seven (11%) of the contributions noted some connection among two or more forms of oppression, but only three abstracts (under 5%) mentioned class, gender, and race. Of these, two linked class, gender, and race to criminal behavior; one related these forms of oppression to the crime control responses of the state. Critical criminologists still appear to be much more comfortable compartmentalizing the types of oppression, without confronting its multiple dimensions. I won’t excuse my own work from this reproach, because I Text Box: strongly believe that self-criticism is the first duty of all critical scholars. When I’ve studied oppression through content analysis, it always has been in its gendered form; there are few references in my work to class, and even fewer to race. Several years ago, I was stung when I read the early draft of a paper that analyzed the depiction of race in criminal justice textbooks. The authors criticized my research on the images of women in texts by claiming that “Wright seems oblivious to the topic of race.” (Mercifully, this remark was deleted in the published version of the paper.) That was my wake-up call to begin thinking about oppression in a more multifacted fashion. So what can be done in San Francisco and in subsequent ASC meetings to begin connecting the themes of class, gender, and race? First, I urge authors who’ve written papers dealing with one type of oppression to devote a portion of their presentation to speculating about the implications of their research for those who endure other and/or multiple forms of oppression. Session Chairs and Discussants in particular should make an effort to intersect class, gender, and race into the comments that they make interrelating the subject matter of papers. Those who specialize in the study of class, gender, or race should search the ASC Program and Proceedings and then attend sessions sponsored by the Division on Critical Criminology that deal with the other forms of oppression. Better still, I urge DCC members (who generally know their Marx and are proud of it) to wander through the conference hallways looking for sessions sponsored by the ASC Divisions on People of Color and Crime and Women and Crime. In these sessions, listen and learn, but don’t be shy: Ask questions that challenge presenters to move beyond one-dimensional views of oppression. Perhaps those who organize critical criminology sessions at future ASC meetings should scrap the model of categorizing papers into topics pertaining to class, gender, or race, and instead combine themes. I briefly toyed with the idea of forming half a dozen generic sessions, titled “Critcal Criminology and Oppression I (through VI).” Each session would have included at least one paper on class, one paper on gender, and one paper on race, with the intention of fomenting dialogue among critical criminologists about intersections. I wasn’t bold enough to implement this plan, but it may be worth pursuing. In addition, papers that examine multiple forms of oppression could be pooled among the Divisions on Critical Criminology, People of Color and Crime, and Women and Crime to create several co-sponsored sessions. This cooperation would enhance opportunities to share insights and to forge research agendas with the members of these other Divisions. Frankly, I make these recommendations with some trepidation. I certainly do not favor a critical criminology that embraces a hegemonic view of oppression, myopically focused Text Box: A DETOUR TOWARD THE INTERSECTION OF CLASS, GENDER, AND RACE? SOME THOUGHTS ON THE ASC 2000 MEETING Text Box: Critical criminologists still appear to be much more comfortable compartmentalizing the types of oppression, without confronting its multiple dimensions