On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states of he United States of America. On that day, Jim Obergefell was granted the right of recognition on his late husband’s death certificate in the State of Ohio, a state that previously disregarded Obergefell and his late husband’s twenty-year marriage. Proven through the due process and Equal Protection clause found in the fourteenth amendment of the the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court case of Obergefell vs Hodges found that it was a fundamental right that same-sex couples be allowed to marry. In a statement titled “My Husband,” Obergefell details:
We wanted respect and dignity for our 20-year relationship, and as he lay dying of ALS, John had the right to know his last official record as a person would be accurate. We wanted to live up to the promises we made to love, honor, and protect each other as a committed and lawfully married couple…I can finally relax knowing that Ohio can never erase our marriage from John’s death certificate, and my husband can now truly rest in peace.
Considered the zenith of gay rights, critics have argued that there are no longer critical issues facing the queer community. However, this notion is absolutely false.
A recurring issue in American politics has been the erasure of people of color and this truth is no different for the political endeavors of the LGBTQ community. With the rise of social media and the ability to send and receive information easily, LGBT rights has recently become relevant in popular culture. But, as queer rights take center stage in pop culture, queer people of color, continue to be erased from queer spaces. One can examine white privilege and lack of intersectionality in contemporary LGBT politics through the historical and contemporary racism in queer movements, systemic political institutions that continue to plague queer communities of color, as well as the systemic murders of queer black and brown bodies. Although the LGBT community has gained strides in regards to equal rights in regards to marriage, lack of equal opportunity, transphobia, and hate crimes continue to plague queer individuals, especially trans and queer people of color.
Following the historic Supreme Court ruling, predominantly white queer organizations have wondered what to do next. In September of 2015, the Gender and Sexuality Caucus and the Alumni Association of Harvard University hosted a conference titled, “What Should We Do After ‘I Do’?: Conversations on the Challenges that Remain for the LGBTQ Community.” One of the key points of the conference was to address white privilege in the queer community and uplift LGBTQ individuals that are not white, middle-class, or cisgender.
Like oppression, privilege is a power structure that is relative and can vary by the individual. In Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege and Male Privilege,” she explains the difference between the social constructs. McIntosh defines white privilege as “an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides…emergency gear and blank checks.” White privilege is a collective term to describe the privileges white people have simply for the color of their skin. Men of color have male privilege and although white women face sexism, white privilege keeps white women from facing adversity due to their race. This analogy carries out for queer people versus queer people of color, gays versus lesbians, etc. In one of her examples, McIntosh, a white woman details one of her privileges of knowing that she does not have to educate her white children on systematic racism for their own protection. Due to the sexism white lesbians face and the homophobia white gay men face, they fail to recognize the privileges they have for being white. The issue of contemporary queer politics is the failure to address intersectional theory in queer issues.
Intersectionality is the study of the interconnected issues in race, class, gender, and sexuality and how they influence the individual. Audre Lorde’s “There is no Hierarchy in Oppression,” explains that for women of color, their experiences in sexuality and gender are influenced by their race. She explains, “Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am lesbian. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black.”
In Gay Rights for Gay Whites?: Race Sexual Identity, and Equal Protection Discourse, Darren Lenard Hutchinson discusses the lack of intersectionality in contemporary LGBT political discourse. He argues that scholars and activists tend to create analogies between racial discrimination and sexual orientation discriminations. This comparative approach to race and gender, however diminishes the existence of of people that face intersectional subordination. Hutchinson argues that intersectionality, or complex subordination debunks essentialist views in LGBT political discourse. Viewing LGBT political discourse under only the white, cis and male lens fails to recognize the entire queer community. He details:
Theorizing multilayered subordination and identity as universal phenomena… allows for a more nuanced examination of identity and oppression and pushes advocates of essentialized politics and theory into a precarious position…the role of sexuality in the legal and social marginalization of heterosexuals of color and the antiracist response to such ‘sexualized racism’ challenges the discounting of progressive gay and lesbian concerns within contemporary antiracist discourse
In other words, one cannot simply separate one’s gender from their race, sexuality, and social class position. All of these aspects influence an individual’s life. Intersectionality focuses on the experience of the individual, examines the complexities of marginality, and divulges in the simultaneous phenomenon of oppression and privilege.
In social revolutions like the suffrage movement and feminist movements, straight white women have used their privileges to advance their political beliefs, but have erased women of color and queer women from its history and political endeavors. The suffrage movement was racist in regards to its stance on people of color. For example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton focused on the ideals of middle-class white women instead of all women. Stanton’s periodical, the Revolution, used racist representations of black women to perpetuate the hierarchy of white women amongst other women. In later feminist movements, its leaders were rather homophobic and made sure lesbians were kept from joining their organizations. This ideology limited the visibility of queer activists of color in women’s history.
In the queer community, the idea of what makes a respectable queer person is similar to the plight for women’s rights; straight-passing white middle class men are put into the forefront of LGBT issues and legislation, and trans people, queer people of color, and lesbians are put in the backburner of LGBT politics and history. Trans people of color have advocated for legal and social reform in the United States as early as the nineteenth century, however they fail to be recognized in LGBT history. To further exemplify this claim, one can use the erasure of black and brown people in what is to be considered one of the the most critical events in queer rights; the Stonewall Riots.
In the 1960s, the Stonewall Inn was one of the few bars in New York City that allowed same sex individuals to dance with one another. Although the bar was generally accepting of all patrons, The Stonewall Inn was also known to be popular among marginalized groups in the queer community: poor male prostitutes, trans and queer people of color. On June 28, 1969, The Stonewall Riots was a series of violent demonstrations against police raids that terrorized queer communities in the United States. The act of the patrons fighting back against the abuse of the police force led to the modern gay rights movement. Two people who had critical roles in the riots were Sylvia Rivera, a latina trans woman and Marsha P. Johnson, a trans black woman.
Following the riots, Rivera and Johnson founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, or STAR. Ahead of its time, STAR was a safe haven for homeless trans women of color and drag queens. Johnson and Rivera were also founding members of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. However, as the gay rights movement began to flourish in the 1970s, the retelling of the Stonewall Riots was dominated by the narrative of white gay men, which also moved lesbians and people of color to the side lines. This blatant whitewashing of critical events on LGBT history diminishes the importance of trans people and people of color in the queer community.
In contemporary society these aforementioned themes of privilege, cultural erasure and lack of opportunity continue to exist. Today, there is a discouraging gap between the quality of life between the white queer community and queer communities of color. As of 2015, one third of the LGBTQ community identify as a person of color. Due to discrimination and the lack of legal protection, LGBTQ people of color face a higher risk of economic insecurity. This is because same sex couples of color are more likely to be poor compared to their white counterpart. Transgender people of color are also more likely to live below the poverty line than any other queer group. For example, Asian and Pacific Islander transgender individuals alone are six times more likely to live in extreme poverty compared to their cisgender counterpart. The economic disparity within queer communities of color is the caused by the law failing to protect these individuals.
Although same-sex couples are now able to marry in all fifty states, there are still lack of protection for LGBTQ people of color from discrimination. Employment discrimination leads to a lower wage and lifetime earning, keeping queer people of color from moving out of poor, unsafe neighborhoods. Since the cost of living in a safer area is more expensive, housing discrimination keeps LGBTQ people of color from rising in the social ladder. Although federal and state laws ban housing discrimination, people of color still face difficulties finding housing. In a study by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development conducted in 2012, home seekers of color were shown fewer properties compared to white home seekers. Since people of color are also paid significantly less than white people they have a harder time obtaining and maintaining credit, which is a form of credit discrimination. Due to the intersectional subordination because of class, race, gender, and sexuality, queer and trans communities are color are less likely to address their grievances with racist, anti-LGBT political institutions because they simply cannot afford the representation of a lawyer. Ineke Mushovic, Executive Director of the Movement Advancement Project elaborates:
Disproportionate numbers of LGBT people of color live in places that lack any explicit state-level protections for LGBT people. This means that LGBT people of color face a high risk of economic harm from anti-LGBT laws. Based on the connection between poverty and an individual’s race or ethnicity, many LGBT people of color are less able to absorb the financial penalties created by anti-LGBT laws when compared to white LGBT people.
Along with facing discrimination in housing and employment, trans people of color face police brutality and hate crimes due to their sexual orientation and racial identity. For example, trans women of color
In summation, the complex intersectional subordination queer people of color face must be addressed when discussing LGBTQ rights. To further the success of queer rights, cis and white queer people must recognize the historical and current issues that face queer people of color today. The phenomenon of white privilege and the lack of intersectionality in the queer community must be addressed so a more inclusive space can exist in the future.