This text is part of the special edition Pride Montreal
Lack of visibility, precariousness, difficulty accessing housing and employment, overcriminalization, harassment, violence… The effects of systemic racism – although Quebec has still not recognized this concept – are very real among racialized LGBTQ+ people. However, this is a subject that is too rarely addressed, as the LGBTQ+ community remains very much in the majoritysilently white, say activists involved in organizations dedicated to these issues.
“Generally speaking, as a society, we tend to approach systems of oppression in categories: anti-racism, anti-transphobia and anti-homophobia… We therefore ignore the people who find themselves at the intersection of systems of oppression,” says Jade Almeida, co-founder of Harambec, an organization by and for Black women and non-binary people.
This is the basis of the concept of “intersectionality,” which is much discussed in activist circles.
“In my opinion, racialized LGBTQ+ people can face double, even multiple marginalization… which exacerbates the effects of each form of discrimination on these different racialized communities,” says Mariam Manai, a member of the Board of Directors of AGIR Montréal, an organization by and for the LGBTQ+ migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking community living in Montreal.
In anti-racist circles in general, LGBTQ+ issues are often underrepresented or even ignored, while in LGBTQ+ circles, the experiences of racialized people tend to be marginalized, members of these organizations argue. As a result, a person who identifies with both communities often finds themselves having to “choose between the two,” unfortunately.
Prejudices still persistent
In the LGBTQ+ community, we also tend to imagine that a racialized person has always had a miserable journey in their country of origin, adds Jade Almeida. Not to mention that they may very well have been born here.
“For example, I come from Guadeloupe,” she explains. “When I introduce myself and say that I am a queer black woman, people automatically assume that I fled oppression, that I fled a family context where I suffered violence and that I came to seek freedom in Quebec… When no, everything is going very well with my family, I just wanted to come and do my thesis here!”
“Racialized LGBTQ+ people, when they enter the activist or associative environment, they are almost asked for allegiance to the LGBTQ+ environment and a rejection of their culture or their country of origin by saying: “ah, you are black, you must have suffered and experienced homophobia in your country,” continues the woman who is also a lecturer at UQAM.
The lack of representation of racialized people in positions of power within various LGBTQ+ organizations means that the situations that concern them are unfortunately not among their priorities, notes Mariam Manai, who with AGIR gives conferences, workshops and training to community groups, but also in institutional settings.
“There are very specific issues in these communities that neither the general public nor major institutions are aware of.”
Access to Quebec health care, or to name change or gender change services on official documents, can be quite difficult for trans and non-binary migrant people, explains Mariam Manai.
“There are people seeking asylum or refugees who are fleeing quite dangerous situations, so they have few or no papers with them. And when they want to start the procedures to change their gender and sex designations, the government asks them for a birth certificate… But they cannot ask their country to provide them with that, or even go to their country’s embassy, for security reasons.”
Fetishism and exoticization
Sexual racism and fetishism are very real subjects for racialized LGBTQ+ people, but very rarely discussed in the LGBTQ+ community, according to Jade Almeida, who notably wrote a report on the systemic racism experienced by the Montreal LGBTQ+ community, while she was a project manager at the Quebec LGBT Council.
“The black man, for example, is the dominant one, the sex machine, we consider him for ‘sex dates’, but we don’t introduce him to his family,” she explains. “I met men from Algeria or Tunisia who told me that the stereotype of the Persian prince is also very present. And the black woman is seen as the gazelle, the tigress. There are still a lot of sexual stereotypes.”
These stereotypes can have significant effects on the construction of identity and on a person’s sexual-affective imagination.
“A black man told me: my black friends have never been passive in their relationships, because as they are black, they are considered active in their imagination, so they will not even allow themselves to test, to see what they would like in a relationship, since they grew up with the idea that a black man is dominant and aggressive,” laments Jade Almeida.
Real consequences
Mariam Manai also speaks of “minority stress” to address all the daily situations that a racialized LGBTQ+ person can experience, whether it be racist, transphobic or homophobic comments on public transport, for example, or being called by their “ dead name » — its former name — in the case of trans people.
All of these experiences can lead to higher risks of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder or suicide attempts. And the discrimination experienced leads to “extreme precariousness for racialized LGBTQ+ people, whether it be for access to housing, access to employment, but also overcriminalization, due to over-police surveillance,” emphasizes Jade Almeida.
This great precariousness gives rise to a feeling of urgency in the activist.
“Yes, we can get into ideals, concepts… but the most urgent thing, for me, is to make sure that people can stay alive and have a decent life. And for that, we have to put pressure on. We have to make alliances, and go back to the streets.”
Of course, to move things forward in institutional circles, Quebec would first have to recognize systemic racism. But that’s not enough, insists Mariam Manai.
“Recognizing will not make the lives of racialized people easier.”
“What is urgent is to see how we can remedy inequalities in access to services, health care, psychosocial services, legal services… and that institutions in general work more concretely to make their policies more inclusive and take into account racialized LGBTQ+ people.”
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