Colourblind coverage: Mainstream media erasure of intersectionality in large-scale cases of anti-LGBTQ violence

Abstract

Despite extensive critique calling for greater acknowledgement of intersectionality, the LGBTQ community in North America continues to foster a White, upper- and middle-class, gender-normative culture. Media discourse has perpetuated these narratives by downplaying the racism inherent in events centring homophobic violence against racialized LBGTQ people. Through a content analysis and discourse analysis of national and local news sources in the United States and Canada, this study explores the hesitation of journalists to explicitly acknowledge the intersectionality of race and LGBTQ identity in two North American instances of large-scale anti-LGBTQ violence targeting predominantly racialized members of the community. The Bruce McArthur case in Toronto, Ontario involved the serial murder of mostly racialized gay men, while the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida was a mass shooting that took place on Latinx night at an LGBTQ nightclub. In both cases, despite superficial acknowledgement of the victims’ demographics, journalists minimized the racial aspect of the violence in order to present more palatable politicized narratives.