different aspect of their identity. Some people believe that racial discrimination is on its way to being eradicated from the United States when they look as people like Colin Powell, a very successful, African-American, middle-aged man. Although Powell obtains the characteristics of a person that may not face oppression (upper-class, middle-aged, male), he is still discriminated against because of his race. This shows one of the key components of the matrix of domination; the idea that one cannot look at the individual facets of someone's identity, but rather that they are all interconnected. Matrix of domination compared to intersectionality Historical background on the matrix of domination In Collins' Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, she first describes the concept of matrix thinking within the context of how black women in America encounter institutional discrimination based upon their race and gender. A prominent example of this in the 1990s was racial segregation, especially as it related to housing, education, and employment. At the time, there was very little encouraged interaction between whites and blacks in these common sectors of society. Collins argues that this demonstrates how being black and female in America continues to perpetuate certain common experiences for African-American women. As such, African-American women live in a different world than those who are not black and female. Collins notes how this shared social struggle can actually result in the formation of a group-based collective effort, citing how the high concentration of African-American women in the domestic labor sector in combination with racial segregation in housing and schooling contributed directly to the organization of the black feminist movement. The collective wisdom shared by black women that held these specific experiences constituted a distinct viewpoint for African-American women concerning correlations between their race and gender and the resulting economic consequences. Moolman points out the main issue concerning matrix thinking is how one accounts for the power dynamics between varying identifying categories that are ingrained in both oppression and domination instead of the traditional approach, reducing experiences to a single identity. For instance, black women's experiences with society are used to illustrate how even though white scholars have attempted to use intersectionality in their research, they may still be inclined to default towards single-identity thinking that often fails to address all aspects of black women's experiences, thus ignoring the organization the matrix objectively offers. The matrix of domination in