FOCUS: The Biggest Barrier: Poverty by Intolerance

When privileged people (that’s most of us here) talk about poverty, we often do so in economic terms: the poverty line, the living wage, the cost of living, the unemployment rate. And to the extent that poverty is an economic phenomenon, we’re not completely off base. But poverty is also about intolerance.

If you ask the question, “How many Americans make how much money?” you can verify that poverty exists in America. If you want to end povert y in America, you need to ask the question, “What keeps Americans who are already impoverished, in poverty?” And that is where intolerance comes in.

Most people see the queer rights movement as having nothing whatsoever to do with poverty. While queer rights are vitally linked to issues of poverty and race, there is good reason for this misconception: the vast majority of the most visible leaders of the queer-rights movement have been wealthy, white, and male. But the fact that this phenomenon exists is itself an illustration of why poverty and race are such important problems for queer communities in America. The reason the vast majority of the most visible leaders of the queer rights movement—and the most prominent queer Americans in general—are wealthy and white is not because the majority of queer Americans are wealthy and white. Rather, it is because if you are queer and you are living in poverty and/or are not white, you are likely to face daunting structural barriers that can make dealing with everyday life difficult, let alone achieving prominence.

Case in point: being homeless isn’t easy, but try being homeless as a transgender person. The streets aren’t safe. Homeless shelters aren’t safe. Bathrooms aren’t safe. In 44 out of 50 states, employers can (and often do) legally refuse to hire you based solely on your gender identity/expression. In 43 out of 50 states, landlords can (and often do) legally refuse to rent to you based solely on your gender identity/expression. And maybe you get used to all that. Maybe it’s the little things that get to you: the grocery clerk who sneers at you, the person at the housing authority who whispers whenever you enter the room, or the doctor who thinks she’s doing you a favor just by treating you with an iota of dignity. Maybe that’s what makes you too emotionally taxed to go to the $2,000 class that will teach you a skill in six months that might land you a job if your employer doesn’t mind that you may not look like a “real” man or “real” woman.

And while these problems are worse for transgender people than they are for just about everyone else, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people also deal with similar issues to varying extents across the nation. Only 17 states have laws that protect citizens from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and even where those laws exist, it is almost impossible to show that your sexual orientation (or gender identity/expression) is the reason an employer refused to hire you. And while public opinion is improving with regard to bisexual, gay, and lesbian Americans, discrimination is still a fact of life for those in all but the most accepting industries and regions of the country. Moreover, discrimination based on gender identity/expression and sexual orientation disproportionately impacts queer Americans who are poor. So while McKinsey might be hosting BGLT recruiting sessions at Harvard, managers at fast-food restaurants may still be refusing to hire openly queer people. That’s what keeps the disproportionate percentage of impoverished queer Americans in poverty.

The principle is simple: intolerance keeps you down. Intolerance makes it harder get hired, harder to keep a job, harder to get social services, harder to go to the doctor, harder to get listened to, harder to get treated fairly, and harder to deal with all the crap that you have to deal with when you’ve got more bills to pay than income to pay them with.

So if you want to take economic steps to end poverty, please do, because they will make a difference. But if you want to end poverty for everyone, then you’ll have to look past economics and end intolerance as well.

Michael A. Feldstein ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Mather House.