Homegrown Empathy & Multiple Marginality: How race and LGBTQ status affect racial consciousness

• In Event: 30655 - Race, Class, and Gender

Abstract

Drawing from interviews with seventeen White and non-White self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people living in predominately-White Oregon, this article asks: How does racial status and gender/sexuality marginality among LGBTQ people affect awareness of race? Racial contact literature stipulates that interracial relations reduce prejudice yet leaves open the question of how this outcome is achieved. LGBTQ people hold progressive views and yet how racial consciousness arises for White LGBTQ people remains uncharted. This article finds that oppression can facilitate empathy in another domain: sharing a single axis of marginality (e.g., gender/sexuality) with people who vary on another social category (e.g., race) allows for perspective-taking and learning across racial groups. Paths to racial consciousness vary by racial status: White LGBTQ respondents became aware of racial inequality by struggling for gender/sexuality equality alongside LGBTQ people of color and learning from them whereas the racial awareness of LGBTQ respondents of color predated consolidation of their gender/sexual orientation identities. We introduce the novel term “homegrown empathy” which refers to compassion for a subordinated group that begins by sharing a single dimension of oppression with people who occupy an additional marginalized status. Homegrown empathy that addresses race requires sharing at least one axis of oppression (i.e. gender and/or sexuality) with people in a racially diverse social network, plus one of two mechanisms: 1) engaging in cross-group storytelling that unveils different racialized experiences and 2) critical self-reflection regarding gender or sexuality oppression that reckons with differential experiences by racial status.

Authors

• Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, University of Oregon

• Megan Betts, University of Oregon