Race, Poverty and LGBT rights

Michelle Chen

Race, Poverty and LGBT rights

Is gay rights a white, middle class issue? Not if you’re a gay, poor person of color. Emerging research around socioeconomic status and the LGBT community underscores how the movement for LGBT equality operates neither in isolation nor at the expense of other civil rights struggles.

The Center for American Progress notes that in civil-rights debates around same-sex marriage and anti-LGBT hate crime, access to these rights is seldom discussed in relation to how it impacts people’s everyday lives. “Despite recent advances,” writes Nico Sifra Quintana in a new issue brief, “LGBT civil rights are rarely addressed in policy debates surrounding poverty.”

In a recent analysis of census data, the Williams Institute at UCLA law school examined the socioeconomic status of same-sex couple households along racial and gender lines. The study found that “After adjusting for a range of family characteristics that help explain poverty, gay and lesbian couple families are significantly more likely to be poor than are heterosexual married couple families.” Lesbian couples and families face especially high rates of poverty.

When you add race to the mix, the disparities widen. Although in general, white male same-sex couple households have a lower poverty rate than heterosexual married couples, significantly higher poverty rates are seen in Black, Asian American and Latino same-sex couples.

Poverty rates are higher for children living in same-sex male and female households. Compared to a child poverty rate of about 7 percent for white heterosexual couples, about 28 percent of children in Black male same-sex households are impoverished. For children in Black lesbian couple households, the rate is 32 percent.

We can make some educated guesses about why poverty, race and sexual orientation overlap. The Williams Institute points to a litany of social and political factors:

--LGBT people are vulnerable to employment discrimination, and they have no legal recourse in most states.

--Most same-sex couples are shut out of some institutions that enhance the economic position of families, such as marriage.

--Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are more likely than heterosexuals to lack health insurance coverage, making them vulnerable to the economic consequences of a health crisis.

--LGBT families are less likely to receive family support, which could translate into greater economic vulnerability.

--Family conflict about coming out and violence in group homes results in high rates of homelessness for young LGBT people.

A separate report by the Transgender Law Center found that transgender people in California experience disturbing rates of workplace harassment and discrimination in getting medical treatment. About one in five people surveyed said they had experienced homelessness since first identifying as transgender.

“The myth of gay affluence” encircling the LGBT community is a powerful and divisive one, driven by media portrayals and underlying patterns of social stratification. A closer look reveals that, even within a community that struggles with unequal treatment, race and gender privilege determine political visibility.

Posted at 3:10 PM, Jul 02, 2009 in LGBT | Permalink | View Comments

Comments

How did the selection of same-sex couple households affect the conclusions of this study?

Good question. The Williams Institute actually goes into this issue in some depth when explaining their data sources in the beginning of the report. An excerpt:

"We draw on data from three different surveys that come closest to meeting these needs for measuring LGB poverty.2 The first comes from the 2000 Decennial Census. Since 1990, the Census Bureau has allowed researchers to identity households that include same-sex ―unmarried partners.‖ Several studies suggest that people who have same-sex unmarried partners are very likely to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual (Black et al. 2000; Carpenter 2004; Gates and Ost 2004). The long form of the decennial census asks detailed questions about each household member’s income from various sources, including public cash assistance and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The Census Bureau makes a subsample of the detailed Census 2000 data from 5% of the U.S. population available to researchers, which we use for this report.
As the Census Bureau does not explicitly ask questions about sexual orientation, researchers are left to identify same-sex couples by exploring the composition of households. We identify those people who call themselves ―unmarried partners‖ of the householder, and categorize the households by the gender composition of those couples."

Thank you for this insightful piece! I couldn't agree with the analysis more that LGBT discrimination plays out economically, and that this discrimination additionally stratifies by race and gender. As a transman I have experienced discrimination in the workplace and in medical settings. I earn significantly less than the area median income, but have avoided career moves to avoid anticipated discrimination. I have also avoided necessary medical care to avoid likely discrimination.

At the same time, I earn significantly more than most transpeople where I live, and also have not experienced nearly as much hardship. I am constantly amazed at the stories of discrimination I hear from my trans friends of color. While I too experience significant discrimination, my experience as a white transman is different from the experiences of trans people of color.

Benjamin Doherty asks a good question. I find this study problematic not because of the data it produces, but because of how it has steadily, since the months of its original release, become yet another tool in the conservative gay marriage movement. As I recall, when the Williams study was first released, presenters were cautious about presenting it as a rationale for marriage or of tying marriage to poverty. Now, increasingly, articles like this overemphasise the relationship between marriage and poverty, as if gay marriage would be a panacea for poverty. They fail to note that queers in general, and single people in particular, are more likely to be poor because of institutional heterosexim and homophobia, not because they can't get married. Two poor queers without healthcare who are married = two poor queers. Period.

As for: “Despite recent advances,” writes Nico Sifra Quintana in a new issue brief, “LGBT civil rights are rarely addressed in policy debates surrounding poverty.” Yes, but stop reframing what little policy debate there is into one about gay marriage.

And just in case people out there are wondering if I'm a right-winger against gay marriage, I offer my queer lefty thoughts on the topic:

http://tinyurl.com/n2zq72

Thanks for commenting. Good points all. Though, I would say that this article in no way argues that marriage would be a panacea for poverty. That's why it's important to note the many factors identified by the Williams study that attest to the link between poverty, sexual orientation, race and gender. (The study, by the way, doesn't even get into the issues transgender people face, hence the additional citation of the TLC report). The main point of both this post and these studies, in my view, is that the LGBT community is not a monolith, and different forms of institutionalized discrimination play out within this group just as it does in society as a whole. The "marriage debate" could be one lens through which to analyze this, but not the only, and certainly not the most important one.