ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how racism and heterosexism are two systems of oppression that rely upon one another for meaning. In Western culture, it is common, for example, to assume that all those who identify as Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual are White, and also assume that all Blacks identify as heterosexual, which has the effect of marginalizing and erasing queer people of color. American history is filled with examples of how Black sexuality has been socially constructed as “primitive” and “deviant” and this “deviance” has been used to justify institutionalized brutality against Black bodies whether from slavery, science, or the prison industrial complex. Collins illustrates how prisons, residential segregation of African Americans into ghettos and the admonition for queer Black women and men to stay in the closet are all overlapping strategies of oppression based on separation, hierarchy, and marginalization.
