So 82% said yes and 18% said no.

*deep breath*

Here are my personal thoughts on the question of whether LGBTQI+ people should count as URM for funding/diversity/inclusion and related metrics and opportunities. https://twitter.com/av_rose_ev/status/1301217461925183489

Short answer: I disagree with the majority. I don’t think LGBTQI+ should count as underrepresented minorities. Here’s why:

URM is specifically an attempt (albeit at times a meager or even performative one) at combating systemic racism in higher education and in research.

This is why it’s specifically Black, Indigenous, and Latinx folks (and some Asian Pacific Islander folks) who are eligible for URM funding and other opportunities.

And while I’m skeptical of strictly empirical methods to measure what counts as underrepresented and mindful

That should also account for geography, we do have numbers to back this up.

What we don’t have are accurate numbers about how many LGBTQI people there are and for a lot of reasons. So that’s issue one: dearth of data and a lack of outside metrics beyond the academy to track it.

Issue two is that there is likely a big difference between inclusion and opportunities for cis LGBQ people versus trans and intersex people. What’s even MORE important than that is that there are QTPOC who may qualify as URM but whose work may be undervalued or whose experiences

Have discouraged them from continuing. Not having to battle racism simultaneous to the rampant transphobia and homophobia would mean that white LGBTQI people would face less frequent or less intense barriers to their progress.

So this is the question I pose:

Who would benefit if LGBTQI+ people were included as URM? And who would lose? (And then I’ll ask what are possible alternative solutions).

First and foremost there would be a sudden influx of white people applying for and likely receiving accolades, opportunities and funding

That has been previously earmarked only for racial/ethnic “minorities” (scare quotes because NSF et al use minority in a statistics sense but not a sense of social power).

I’d benefit from this because I’d suddenly be able to apply for URM opportunities and have a head start

Against my BIPOC peers who are battling systemic racism to get their applications in and move their careers or education along.

So who loses out?

QTBIPOC first and foremost. If funding were earmarked for LGBTQI+ researchers or initiatives then suddenly they’d be competing

On two fronts against their peers who would be facing overall fewer barriers, their cishet BI/POC peers and their white LGBTQI+ peers.

But BI/POC researchers would also lose out because including LGBTQI+ into URM would not, in all likelihood, mean an increase in $$ for URM

It would only mean a larger pool of competitors for the same small pots of money that are already stretched thin in a higher education job market and especially STEM and biomedical fields.

When only white people gain something, and POC stand to lose big, we should stop & think

So then what are the alternatives?

I see two approaches:

1) earmark funds or initiatives specifically for QT research and researchers within URM funding

Or

2) create opportunities for LGBTQI+ scholars and make benchmarks for URM within those

For option 1) this preserves the integrity of the original intent of URM which I think is vital. But it does mean that LGBTQI+ scholars continue to get shit on, and for QTPOC that’s compounded by transphobia and homophobia within and racism without URM streams.

Option 2 means creating an entirely new architecture and infrastructure for valuing the work of trans and queer people from the ground up. Some of this is happening (eg opportunities in SGM research within NIH) but it’s mirroring traditional issues where the most privileged

Get first dibs on new opportunities.

But by building something new we’d have the option to create something truly empowering and representative from the ground up (if you believe that that is even possible within academic and research world that is).

And all of this is likely influenced by my own experiences as a white trans woman who’s only ever lived in the US and Canada while going through academia. Idk the situation in other places and race and Indigeneity (and even what “LGBTQI+” is) varied A LOT across geographies.

But I hope that we can have this conversation because it’s a really important one. And hopefully no one hates me lol.