LULAC Partners with the Movement Advancement Project to Release Report on LGBT People of Color
April 23, 2015
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In an effort to help address discrimination against the LGBT community, LULAC partnered with the Movement Advancement Project on a new report entitled, Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for LGBT People of Color.
The report documents how systemic failures to protect people from discrimination trap LGBT people of color into a devastating cycle of poverty. In addition, the report details the ways in which a wide array of legal failures, combined with the disparities faced by people of color, result in higher poverty rates and increased economic insecurity for the LGBT community.
The report presents the latest demographic information about LGBT people of color, including:
• One in three LGBT people identify as a person of color.
• All communities of color have higher poverty rates than their white counterparts. Of white people, 9.6% were in poverty in 2013 compared to 28.9% of Native Americans, 27.2% of black people, 23.5% of Hispanic people, and 10.5% of Asian people.
• Transgender people of color are more likely to live in extreme poverty. Asian and Pacific Islander (API) transgender people are six times more likely to report extreme poverty compared to non-transgender API people, while 34% of black transgender people have incomes at this level, compared to 9% of non-transgender black people.
LULAC hopes that the report will help bring much needed awareness to the damage that discrimination can cause and in doing so help individuals in the LGBT Community avoid such cycles of poverty.
The report, Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for LGBT People of Color, is co-authored by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), in partnership with Center for Community Change, Center for Popular Democracy, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), National Association of Social Workers, the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC,) the National Education Association, and the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA).
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The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization that empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with 1,000 councils around the United States and Puerto Rico, LULAC’s programs, services and advocacy address the most important issues for Latinos, meeting critical needs of today and the future. For more information, visit www.LULAC.org.