History of Black LGBTQ Justice

Black LGBTQ Justice Canada emerged from the first-ever Canadian and Black Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) national bilingual study focused on formerly incarcerated Black Gay, Trans, Queer (BGTQ), gender-expansive, and same-sex/gender-loving men. This landmark study, titled Carceral Intersections of Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation and Trans Experience in Confronting Anti-Black Racism and Structural Violence in Prisoner Re-entry, was led by Dr. Wesley Crichlow at Ontario Tech University and conducted between August 2023 and April 2024, during the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and anti-Black racism.

Building on this foundational, SSHRC-funded research, Dr. Crichlow undertook a nine-month inquiry that surveyed more than 200 formerly incarcerated GBTQM and gender-expansive individuals and conducted in-depth interviews with 25 others. This phase examined how compounding and intersecting forces of homophobia, transphobia, stigma, institutional same-gender love humiliation, systemic trauma, and anti-Black racism, shaped the justice-impacted re-entry experiences of Black GBTQM and gender-expansive people. The study captured their navigational experiences and aspirations as they negotiated the criminal justice system from arrest through community transition, reintegration and or re-entry.

Based on these findings, Black LGBTQ Justice Canada will prioritize expanding access to legal representation and professional services delivered by practitioners certified through our in-house Expert Black LGBTQ Impact, Race, and Culture-Affirming Assessment (CEBLGBTQIRCA) certification and training for our beneficiaries. This phase will also advance efforts to decolonize sexuality, promote policy and criminal justice reform, and implement innovative educational strategies.

This phase builds on insights from Dr. Crichlow’s SSHRC  survey and interviews on BGTBM. These findings revealed pervasive homophobic and transphobic violence, profound pain, traumatic suffering, and significant gaps, a lacunae in tailored justice support systems for Black LGBTQ and gender-expansive populations, who are often compelled to conceal their identities and are frequently cast or perceived as heterosexual, except when conforming to or performing stereotypical tropes imposed upon Black LGBTQ bodies and or identities. These experiences exemplify what Du Bois (1903) theorized as “Black folks double consciousness,” now compounded into a “triple consciousness” for those navigating the intersecting realities of being Black, LGBTQ, and justice-impacted, while expanding upon Ellison’s (1952) metaphor of the Black invisible (man) by situating cisheteronormativity, enforced compulsory heterosexuality, and enforced invisibility as structural conditions shaping these realities. 

These findings further underscore the urgent need for tailored criminal justice navigation supports, from arrest through community transition, reintegration and or re-entry programs and community resources, to facilitate successful second chance with Black LGBTQ affirming supports.  As David Marriott (2023) poignantly observes, “There is no ontology of Black pain: it is either reduced to self-deception or dismissed as non-existent” (p. 936), reminding us of the structural erasure, institutional humiliation, and denial that Black LGBTQ communities continue to endure.

From our surveys and interviews about their immediate needs and hopes for after leaving prison, the gay and trans Black men we spoke to repeat the same wishes, over and over. They seek “a job, job training skills, education, legal rights post-incarceration and to find a home” were top priorities. They also “wish they had support in the court during their trial, wish they knew more about pre-sentence reports for judges to assist them in sentencing, needed to know more about who to obtain support from once released, needed more support accessing medical care, including gender affirming and psychiatric, programming for Black LGBTQ justice impacted individuals, would have liked to meet other Black LGBTQ justice impacted folks for peer support or have a Black LGBTQ criminal justice support group for support, phone cards and phones for reaching family and making appointments, support to attend probation and parole appointments and more”.  Unlike most research on white gay criminology which focuses on identity, for Black GBTQM+ it is about survival in which immediate needs, for livelihood/employment and for housing, overwhelm all other considerations as they consider their futures after prison. Clearly, the right to housing and jobs is rooted in the intersections of race and sexual orientation. Taking up these concerns demands that we move beyond the concept of race alone to consider the interactions of race, sexual orientation, gender expression and being justice impacted, on access to housing and jobs.

This survival imperative brings us to a critical intersection, where the right to housing and jobs is rooted in the intersections of race, sexual orientation, and property. Addressing these concerns requires moving beyond the concept of race alone to consider the interactions of race, sexual orientation, gender expression, and justice-impacted status on access to housing and employment. For Black LGBTQ justice-impacted individuals, experiences of anti-Black racism (ABR) are compounded by multiple intersecting and specific forms of violence, homophobia, transphobia, religious phobia, and gender-based discrimination, social, communal and institutional humiliation, alienation, cutting across all borders and communities. These factors are often excluded from everyday general Black social justice work on housing, education, employment, and criminal justice. As Cheryl Harris (1993) argues in Whiteness as Property, whiteness operates as a form of property that confers access, legitimacy, and protection, particularly in relation to housing, employment, and legal recognition. Within this framework, Black LGBTQ justice-impacted individuals are denied access to these “property rights” not only through racial exclusion but also through compounded marginalizations based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The denial of housing and employment is not accidental but structurally embedded in a system where whiteness and compulsory cisheterosexuality is the normative standard for entitlement and belonging (Harris, 1993).

This structural exclusion is compounded by internal community dynamics, where despite laudable Black community activism, Black communities at large have tended generally to be homophobic and transphobic toward Black LGBTQ bodies, especially trans men and trans people. Black LGBTQ Justice Canada loves the Black community deeply, abidingly, and wholeheartedly, and sees itself as integral to Black struggles. More importantly, our work should be contextualized not as a replacement for the focus on Black heterosexual and cisgender women and men’s experiences, but as a logical expansion of existing understandings of injustice and multiple marginalizations experienced by Black LGBTQ and gender expansive justice-impacted individuals.

To move forward, addressing the vital, immediate need for housing, jobs, and employment training is a direct pathway to meeting the needs of justice-impacted Black GBTQM+ individuals. This requires centered supports that challenge anti-Black racism and related discriminations within Black LGBTQI+ communities. If we are to open the political horizons of these men and genderqueer individuals, we must first meet their immediate needs for gainful employment and housing.

In response to these urgent needs and systemic gaps, Black LGBTQ Justice Canada was formed as a direct response to these findings, providing education and advocacy to strengthen Black LGBTQ justice-impacted and gender expansive struggles within the justice system. We believe the struggles to end anti-Black racism, gender-based violence in all its forms, heterosexism, transmisogynoir, and homophobia are not contradictory (Crichlow, 2022–2025); rather, they are deeply interconnected and foundational to the work of Black LGBTQ Justice Canada.

Black LGBTQ Justice Canada will work to advance substantive equality through policy advocacy that drives systemic change within the justice system, specifically targeting intersectional invisibility and inequities faced by Black LGBTQ and gender expansive justice-impacted people. We aim to advance substantive equality by documenting the diverse ways Black LGBTQ and gender expansive minority communities experience multiple and compounding marginalizations, including how criminalization and Anti-Black racism intersects with identity formation and how institutional & communal humiliation, homophobia, transphobia, and cisnormativity shape these experiences. We also advocate for resources and support that affirm and sustain these identities. Our work should be understood not as replacing a focus on Black heterosexual and cisgender women’s and men’s experiences, but as expanding extant understandings of injustice and the multiple marginalizations experienced by Black LGBTQ and gender expansive individuals impacted by the justice system. These individuals have too often been erased or rendered invisible within dominant narratives.