.. A young (GLBTQ) person of color faces multiple 'identity' issues that teams from the dominant culture do not" (p. 215).
Indeed, racism within the GLBTQ community has long existed, exacerbating the conflicts between different constituents of this group. For example, white-run gay bars and clubs often excluded African-American gays and lesbians in the 1950s. Today, people of color in the GLBTQ community note that such racism still exists, often in the form of the exclusion of people of color from the larger GLBTQ community. European-Americans often had difficulty ascribing the experience of the individual over societal oppression (ColorQWorld).
One reason for such an attitude may stem from the mistaken attitude among the white GLBTQ community that "communities of color are even less 'progressive' than white communities when it came to homosexuality/transgender issues, they did not see a queer person of color as a possibility" (ColorQWorld). This racism often arose from the difficulty that many members of the white GLBTQ community had in seeing people of color as true individuals. Instead, white members of the GLBTQ community often have seeing people of color as part of the larger group. For example, Gloria Steinem has noted that people call a white feminist simply a 'feminist', but a black feminist is almost always referred to as a 'black feminist' (ColorQWorld).
At the same time, the idea that people of color are closer to 'primitive man' than whites within the GLBTQ community also has contributed to a schism within the community. In equating black Africans as a more 'primitive' race, European the culture thereby saw black individuals as closer to nature, and thus ruled the more strongly by instinct than whites. In this conception, the sexual energy of the black individual would be focused on the biological process of reproduction. Thus, black individuals, seen as the most 'primitive' of individuals, must by necessity be the most heterosexual (ColorQWorld).
While racism certainly plays a role in conflicts between different members of the GLBTQ community, more optimistic accounts indicate that overt racism lessens as time goes on, but that more subtle forms of racism exist. "In-your-face bigotry is now seldom seen in the largely PC and semi-sensitive gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender community, but ignorance and subtle discrimination still exists" (ColorQWorld).
Interaction of Racism and Sexism in the GLBTQ Community
Some subsets of the GLBTQ community embody at the struggles of both the lesbian community, and double minorities. As such, these individuals have the interests or concerns that conflict with the GLBTQ community to even larger extent that those who face only gender issues or the issues faced by double minorities. Note Jennings and Shapiro, "A Latina lesbian- mentors for body, seek sexual pleasure and doesn't need a man to complete her-is considered an insult to women who accept the conventional arrangement and integration in the community. Sometimes, Latinas feel that they can keep their place...
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Likewise the same percentages of responders assert that discrimination based on sexual orientation occurs at the companies that they work for. Eighty percent of the participants believe that a company's policy concerning discrimination against gays should not be determined by religious convictions. Fifteen participants reported that an employee of their company had been accused of discrimination based on sexual orientation. Additionally, seventy percent of participants assert that there company has
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Willa Cather Willa Sibert Cather was born in Winchester, Virginia, in the year 1873. She lived in Virginia until she turned nine years old at which point she moved to the Nebraska prairie, to the borough of Catherton, which bore her familial namesake because so many members of Cather's family already lived here. This move to the prairie and her subsequent period of growing to adulthood on the prairie would be
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