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LGBTQ people of color are more than twice as likely as whites to say they've been discriminated against when applying for jobs and encountering the police. It's according to a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As Deena Prichep reports, the discrimination they experience and the resources they have to combat it are complicated by these intersecting identities.
DEENA PRICHEP: As Bangladeshi immigrants, Nancy Haque's parents understood discrimination - threats, glass under the tires of the family car. But Haque says the discrimination she faces as a queer woman is different.
NANCY HAQUE: As the child of immigrant parents, it's not like I had to come out as being South Asian, but I think that we didn't talk about discrimination.
PRICHEP: Haque is the co-director of Basic Rights Oregon. She's committed to bringing these civil rights issues to the forefront of LGBTQ organizing because, she says, it's the same fight.
HAQUE: It's 2017. And if you're an LGBTQ organization that hasn't taken on racial justice as a key part of who you are and what you do, then you're irrelevant.
ISAIAH WILSON: Be it trans military service, be it access to health care or if you look at employment - the most impacted communities are often LGBTQ people of color.
PRICHEP: Isaiah Wilson works with the National Black Justice Coalition. He says given this compounded discrimination, LGBTQ people of color need support. But they don't always get it because the movement at large has had different priorities.
WILSON: When you are continuing as a community to face discrimination, harassment even violence - right? - marriage is a luxury. Surviving, being able to live in a community, being able to provide for our families - if I can't do that, who's thinking about a marriage certificate?
PRICHEP: And while communities of color come together around the discrimination and harassment they face, they may not always see LGBTQ issues as part of the same struggle.
INGRID DURAN: The perception of the Latino community is that it's always been a conservative community. And I think that conservative element comes along with religious beliefs.
PRICHEP: Ingrid Duran is the co-founder of Familia es Familia. She says her Latino community is changing on queer issues - in part because it values family.
DURAN: Nine times out of 10, a grandparent or a parent is going to accept their child because it is their family. And they still hold the same values that they held five minutes before they came out to you.
PRICHEP: At Basic Rights Oregon's leadership program for LGBTQ people of color, many participants' families had concerns about the additional discrimination they would face. But some people, like Geeta Lewis, didn't even get a chance to come out to their families.
GEETA LEWIS: Because of the kinds of systemic oppression that is typical of people of color - particularly black people - I, at 61, have lived longer than anybody else in my family.
PRICHEP: And Lewis wants to spend her life fighting this discrimination.
LEWIS: And moving forward to bring this country to live up to the ideals that the founders accidentally put in writing.
PRICHEP: As a trans woman of color, Lewis' lived experience is beyond what this country's founders likely ever imagined. But she - and a growing number of people - see it as their right and their duty to build a different future.
For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep in Portland, Ore.
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