QPOC

QPOC is short for Queer People of Color. It names LGBTQ+ people who are also people of color, centering the way race and queerness overlap in a single lived experience. The term is common in activist, campus, and community settings, where QPOC groups create space that neither predominantly white LGBTQ+ organizations nor communities of color always provide. QPOC people can face racism inside queer spaces and homophobia or transphobia inside their own cultural communities, forms of exclusion that stack on top of each other. People of color have shaped LGBTQ+ history throughout, from the Black and Latinx trans women central to Stonewall to the ballroom scene and today's intersectional organizing. Related terms include QTPOC and QTBIPOC, which name transgender and Black and Indigenous experiences more explicitly.