"I Thought It Would Have Been like a Scene from a Show. but It Wasn't": A Qualitative Analysis of How Black LGBTQ People Experience Identity-Based Community

Background and Purpose: Black people face unique stressors related to mental health, especially considering the impact of historical trauma, systemic racism, and social inequality. For Black LGBTQ individuals, often encountering discrimination and prejudice from the broader society and within identity-based communities, research has shown that participating in, and belonging to, a supportive identity-based community can promote positive mental health outcomes in the face of challenges related to their intersectional identities. Attending to the complexity of community for Black LGBTQ individuals as racial, sexual, and gender minorities, this study explored their experiences with Black, LGBTQ, and Black LGBTQ communities, including factors that facilitate or hinder their access and connection to these communities, in an effort to garner important insights about the role of community in their lives.

Methods: Data for this analysis are drawn from a larger cross-sectional, mixed-method online survey of Black LGBTQ adults (n=345) in the United States focusing on community belongingness, mental health, and well-being experiences. In the qualitative portion, participants were specifically asked to discuss (1) their first experience of LGBTQ community; (2) their first experience of Black LGBTQ community; (3) challenges or difficulties physically accessing community spaces; (4) if feelings of belongingness to a Black, LGBTQ, and/or Black LGBTQ community supported their coping with social stressors experienced due to these identities; and (5) how feelings of belongingness to the Black, LGBTQ, and/or Black LGBTQ community affected their overall well-being. Given the exploratory nature of the study, the qualitative nature of the data, and the positionalities of the researchers, reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) undergirded by an interpretive paradigm was chosen as the analytic approach. In alignment with RTA, the researchers explicitly incorporated theoretical assumptions about the relationships between community, belongingness, and well-being into the analytic process, and used “the researcher’s subjectivity as an analytic resource” (Braun & Clarke, 2021).

Results: Emergent themes include: (1) “what even is community?”; (2) community is (not) a place to belong; (3) what’s out there is in here; (4) building a bubble to escape what’s out there; and (5) people through community, community through people - making spaces and taking spaces. The interconnectedness of the themes highlights the ways in which identity-based community – in terms of both accessing and experiencing it – is situated in a broader sociopolitical context for Black LGBTQ community members. Participants described a variety of ways that identity-based community is formed and negotiated to minimize harm and maximize well-being.

Conclusion and Implications: Findings highlight the multiplex, amorphous nature of community, and the range of experiences in accessing and feeling a sense of belongingness to identity-based community among this sample of Black LGBTQ adults. Although these community spaces are not impervious to the influence of oppressive social and structural forces pervading our society, they can provide a reprieve from such stressors and group-level coping resources that buffer against their deleterious impact on mental health and well-being, offering valuable insight into how social workers can support Black LGBTQ people in drawing on identity-based community as a resource.