Greater Than the Sum of Racism and Heterosexism: Intersectional Microaggressions Toward Racial/Ethnic and Sexual Minority Group Members

Objectives: Discrimination, once unmistakable, has taken on subtler forms as exemplified by microaggressions-daily, seemingly harmless indignities that send negative messages to minority group members (Sue, Capodilupo, et al., 2007). Furthermore, unique microaggressions exist for individuals who possess more than one stigmatized identity. For example, racial/ethnic minorities who are also lesbian, gay, or bisexual face discrimination that is unlike racism or heterosexism alone or in combination. Thus, to meaningfully investigate how dually marginalized individuals experience various forms of contemporary, covert discrimination, scholars need access to paradigms that better capture their existential realities. Specifically, greater attention must be paid to how interlocking social categories shape experiences of subtle discrimination. To this end, we demonstrate how to conceptualize quantitative research that is mindful of intersectionality-or the interconnection of social identities in creating overlapping and interdependent systems of oppression. Method: We conducted a 2-phase study to examine whether an intersectional methodology better predicted adverse health outcomes for 801 lesbian, gay, and bisexual people of color as compared to an additive/multiplicative approach (i.e., combining scores from two different measures of experiences with racism and heterosexism). Results: Results indicated that intersectionality (vs. additive/multiplicative approach) better measured symptomology for racially diverse sexual minority group members who experienced microaggressions. Conclusions: These findings provide quantitative evidence in support of intersectionality, an achievable methodological approach that captures subtle encounters with discrimination for individuals with interlocking marginalized identities-encounters that would otherwise remain on the fringe of research.