Advocating for minority Veterans in the United States: Principles for equitable public policy

Abstract: In advocating for minority Veterans in the United States, a primary issue has been confronting policy approaches that seek to maintain existing institutional structures and processes and add minority Veterans in after the fact. This approach foregrounds the needs and experiences of majority Veterans in designing and implementing policy at the expense of the unique needs of minority Veterans, creating barriers and perpetuating harms through initiatives that are often well intentioned. Drawing on work with the U.S. Senate and House Veterans’ Aff airs Committees of the 115th, 116th, and 117th Congresses, as well as with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the authors present principles for equitable Veteran public policy grounded in intersectionality theory. In addition to presenting these principles, the authors discuss the ways they communicate their framework to, and negotiate with, policy-makers in the context of advocating for minority Veterans. The authors’ work addresses the tension inherent in certain formulations of intersectionality theory that treat identity categories as stable and universal. In complicating this notion of identity and the way it is operationalized in Veteran policy, the authors demonstrate how a renewed notion of identity categories, grounded in intersectionality theory, can guide policy work to benefit minority Veterans.