By: Aniya Hatten
Discrimination is something that people experience daily in the United States and it becomes more difficult to navigate when an individual associates with more than one marginalized identity. This notion is known as intersectionality. When different social categories such as race, gender, class, religion or sexuality intersect they have the potential to oppress an individual, causing serious health concerns for the future.
“When we look at the health outcomes and health behaviors of marginalized communities…” said Jessica Styles, a Ph.D. candidate in the Psychology Program at the University of Georgia. “There is no coincidence that black and brown communities are the ones that are leading in heart disease, strokes and hypertension.”
People of color usually experience more microaggressions around their race because it is more visible during daily interactions rather than one's sexual orientation or gender. So when another identity that is viewed as inferior to society is added to this individual their chances increase to experience more discrimination, especially if they are gender nonconforming.
“There’s some data that suggest that for LGBT people of color, particularly trans people of color, they stand at the intersection of multiple sources of potential discrimination,” said Elizabeth Rahilly, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southern University. “And sometimes there is this tug-of-war about which community they feel safer with or indebted to. Is it the black community, is it the LGBT community, to what do I owe my family, what do I owe the movement?”
These identity crises usually lead to loads of stress, even feelings of regret, and this has been dated back to the civil rights movement era. Rahilly says during this period, it was very important for African Americans to present a hetero normative family face to combat racism-- so that left LGBT people of color feeling like traders if they came out. These standards and expectations of the gender binary still affect modern-day society and have impacted marginalized communities negatively.
“No matter what we consider in the U.S., we have to consider race. We have to consider the end fact of slavery and I think it's harder to be trans in the south for anyone,” said Baker Rogers, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southern University. “In trans women of color, we see the highest rates of discrimination and oppression. For trans men, they have to try and fit into this masculine binary stereotype to really receive acknowledgment.”
Oftentimes in marginalized communities, there is a lack of access to appropriate resources and there are many barriers to overcome to achieve reliable, trustworthy healthcare. According to Styles, these factors can contribute to mental health concerns like anxiety, depression, self-esteem, substance abuse, isolation and social rejection. An individual’s socioeconomic status plays a large role in the extent to which one is able to combat discrimination and deal with the mental repercussions of it.
“My work is primarily on parents who raise transgender children and one thing I did notice is that most people in my studies are white, middle to upper-class parents who are college-educated,” said Rahilly. “I don’t think that is a coincidence. The parents I interviewed were meeting with superintendents, rewriting school policies, threatening to sue over bathrooms… they were forces to be reckoned with to protect their kids. But you have to be of a certain socioeconomic status and privilege to do that.”
The fact of the matter is that marginalized groups are not presented with the same opportunities and resources to aid them in their suffering of discrimination. The fact that they suffer from discrimination is bad enough but studies have proven that when their mental health is not being taken care of, it creates stress and a sense of wear and tear on the body from experiencing discrimination over multiple years. It is important to find healthy coping strategies suitable for you that help you cope in an adaptive way and try to find a support system group to help ease the stress.