Gay and Asian prejudice

Apparently, white heterosexuals don't have a monopoly on bigotry:

A groundbreaking study released Tuesday reveals that 82 percent of LGBT Americans whose background is from the Pacific rim experienced discrimination based on their sexuality over the past 12 months, and the same percentage had experienced discrimination based on their race or ethnicity.

The study was undertaken by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. Researchers Alain Dang and Mandy Hu, based their report on an analysis of survey data from the first phase of what will be the largest multi-gender sample of APA LGBT people ever undertaken.

The 124 study participants were drawn from the pool of attendees at the March 2004 Queer Asian Pacific Legacy regional conference at New York University in New York City. In the next phase of the study, survey data will be collected from APA LGBT people in U.S. cities with large APA populations, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"Asian Pacific American lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are often at the margins, experiencing discrimination in both the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities and the Asian Pacific American communities, said Dang, who is the NGLTF Policy Analyst and the study's lead researcher.

"The Queer movement must combat racism and the Asian Pacific American community must combat homophobia to create truly inclusive movements for social change," he said.

In addition to finding that discrimination against gay Asian Pacific Americans was widespread, the study found that the three most important issues facing APA LGBT community members were immigration, hate violence/harassment, and media representation.

Nearly all respondents (96%) agreed that homophobia and/or transphobia is a problem within the APA community. And, over 80% agreed that APA LGBT people experience racism within the predominantly white LGBT community.

So gays and Asians are just as bigoted as the rest of us. Who would have thunk it?