Queer and Trans* Students of Color: Navigating Identity Disclosure and College Contexts

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to explore outness among undergraduate students who identify as queer and trans* people of color (QTPOC). Data for this study originated from The National LGBT Alumni Survey and included 386 QTPOC respondents. We utilized analysis of variance (ANOVA) to explore differences in outness across racial identities for QTPOC students and linear regression to understand the relationship between contextual influences and outness using Abes, Jones, and McEwen’s (2007) reconceptualized model of multiple dimensions of identity as a framework. We also analyzed participants’ open-ended responses to understand how QTPOC students navigate meaning making across their gender, racial, and sexual identities. The ANOVA was significant for outness, F(3, 382) = 6.93, p < .001, with a medium effect size (ƞ² = .05). The linear regression analysis explained 44% of the variance in outness among QTPOC student respondents (p < .001). Narratives from the open-ended responses offered additional perspectives and further informed how QTPOC students navigated and made meaning of their identity disclosures. Overall, our results emphasize that QTPOC students navigate their racial, gender, and sexual identities in complex manners as they negotiate their levels of outness while in college.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• identity disclosure
• outness
• QTPOC
• queer
• race
• sexuality
• trans*

Notes

1. Alumni/ae and alumnus/a are plural and singular designations, respectively, for graduates based on gender. Rather than relying on terms that reinforce gender as a binary construct, we chose to use alumnx for both plural and singular designations to represent graduates across the spectrum of gender identities.