The recent decrease in acceptance of LGBTQ people is an intersectional issue

For the first time in years, acceptance for LGBTQ people has decreased, according to a new study commissioned by LGBTQ rights organization GLAAD. The number of people who felt “uncomfortable” with members of the LGBTQ community increased, and a shift occurred among those who consider themselves allies: Many are now considered “detached supporters” by GLAAD. GLAAD attributes the shift to the “attacks, bias, and erasure by the Trump administration.”

What the report fails to mention, however, is that racially incited attacks and sentiments against Black people and communities of color have also increased during the Trump administration. Especially during Black History Month, it’s important to not only consider, but prioritize, those who exist at the intersection of marginalized identities.

Black members of the LGBTQ community have long been all the more hypervisibile because of their intersecting, marginalized identities, and therefore more at risk. According to the Human Rights Campaign, African American members of the LGBTQ community face disproportionate economic insecurity, violence and harassment, HIV and health inequity, religious intolerance, and criminal injustice. In December of 2017, four Black lesbians were murdered in just one week and, according to the Human Rights Campaign, 2017 was the deadliest year for trans people in at least a decade — especially trans people of color. Data from the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that there were disproportionately high arrest and incarceration rates among Black transgender people compared to other racial and ethnic groups.

This rise in violence seems undeniably tied to the bigotry being propagated by the current presidential administration. As Beverly Tillery, the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, put it in an article for the Huffington Post, “I think that there are many more instances of violence because of [the Trump administration]. People in the LGBTQ community and communities of color are experiencing a lot more fear and trauma.”

Recognizing that Black LGBTQ people are disproportionately vulnerable due to their race and sexual identity is just the first step toward justice. Now, we need to collect more data on this phenomenon so that we can take action. While it is important to track homicide rates for members of the LGBTQ community, it’s also important that we pay attention to specific subsets — especially those who are the most vulnerable. In the same way that we wouldn’t couple homicide rates for women and trans women the same way, we shouldn’t consider all trans women within the same statistics. For example, the Anti-Violence Project might consider specifically tracking cases involving Black lesbian women, so as to better understand the ways in which both racism and cisheteronormativity operate on a specific subset of the LGBTQ community.

While we might not be able to immediately change the bigotry the president has unleashed, there are still things we can do to make change — like considering the intersections of race, sexual identity, and other marginalized identities when we collect and analyze data about the discrimination LGBTQ members face. Even better, we can actively stand with those who are being targeted by this bigotry and push back against the presidential administration’s perpetuation of these attitudes. It’s critical that those of us with privilege actively demonstrate allyship in order to ensure the safety of LGBTQ communities.