Characteristics of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Racial/Ethnic Minority Emerging Adults Experiencing Microaggressions

Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) rights have shown substantial social and political advances in recent years.  Despite these advances, a significant proportion of the population continues to suffer from ongoing systematic disenfranchisement.  A recent Gallup Poll (2012) survey found that 63% of Americans and 88% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults believe that discrimination based on sexual orientation is still a serious problem in the United States.  Recent studies have also shown a significant shift in the form of discrimination from overt and direct to microaggressions, subtle signs or behaviors that communicate hostile and derogatory insults.  Microaggressions are associated with lower psychological well-being in both racial/ethnic minorities and the LGBT community.  What is not known is the compounding impact of microaggressions among those who are both LGBT and racial/ethnic minorities (i.e. intersectionalities).  Due to these intersections, it is possible that, racial/ethnic LGBT minorities may be at a greater risk for lower psychological well-being.  However, research examining this area is scant.  Therefore to bridge this gap in the literature, we the present study attempts to gain a better understanding of the experiences of microaggressions among racial/ethnic lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) emerging adults.  Participants (N=431) were recruited at local LGBT-related events, using snowballing techniques.  Survey questions included demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and education), level of outness (family, friends, and the community), history of microaggressions based on sexual orientation and race/ethnicity, and overall psychological well-being and were collected via an online survey.  For the current study, descriptive analyses were conducted (SPSS, ver. 20) in order to explore the prevalence and profile of racial/ethnic minority LGBT participants.  Nearly 19% (n=83) identified themselves as LGB (24.1% lesbian, 24.1% gay, and 51.8% bisexual).  The average age of this sample was 23.2 years (SD= 3.51, range= 18 – 29 years), 45.7% were college students, and 83% had some college experience.  Half of the population reported part-time employment and 39.4% reported a household income of less than $20,000.  The racial/ethnic distribution was as follows: 39.8% Hispanic/Latino, 28.9% White, 9.6% Black, 13% Mixed race/ethnicity, 6.02% Native American/Pacific Islander, and 2.4% Asian.  Regarding outness, only 5% of the sample reported that they sometimes talked openly with their family about their sexual orientation.  Of the LGBs who were also racial/ethnic minorities (n=61), 75.5% reported experiencing racial microaggressions within the LGBT community over the past 12months (10.2% reported being bothered by them ‘quite a bit/extremely’) and 77.6% reported experiencing LGB microaggressions within their racial/ethnic communities (10.1% being bothered by them ‘quite a bit/extremely’).  Findings from this study suggest that a significant proportion of racial/ethnic LGB emerging adults suffer from microaggressions both from within the LGB community and/or their racial/ethnic communities.  Given the overlap in experiences of discrimination which can compound the negative impact on psychological well-being, these findings illustrate the need to examine the intersection of these multiply marginalized identities.  Future studies could examine the compounding effects of additional marginalized identities such as the intersections of gender, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity.