Growing up, being Black usually came first when addressing my identity. It didn’t matter that I was half white. It didn’t matter that I am rather racially ambiguous in appearance. Most of the time I was around children who were white and that made me “the Black kid”, be it when I was with my extended family or at school. It wasn’t until I was with other Black children that my Blackness came into question, but, even then, the series of reminders I received the rest of the time left me without question of who I was. However, life became much more complicated when I figured out that I was also “the queer kid”. That was a secret that was kept from both groups of children, even my closest friends. It was then that I truly became an outsider. Eventually, I became more open about my gender identity and sexuality with people who I knew would be accepting of it. However, with the heightened organizing for racial justice in the U.S., many seemed indifferent to the brutality Black people were experiencing and this hurt as I felt like it invalidated another part of me entirely. Perhaps it didn’t affect them directly, but shouldn’t two marginalized groups band together in the face of injustice? Oftentimes, prominent rights organizations choose one thing to focus on when organizing, discarding what is in the fringes. This has been seen historically in the different fights for the rights of people of color, women, and the LGBTQIA+ community. The Civil Rights Movement had a specific model the wanted to be followed for those who made the news. The teenage mother, Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat to a white person did not fit the bill as well as the respectable Rosa Parks, who would do the same nine months after Colvin did. Feminist Betty Friedan referred to lesbians as the “lavender menace” and did not believe they fit into the movement she was in. The biggest contemporary example that I can think of were how many people who were predominantly gay, white, and cisgender denounced the protesting against police brutality in the month of June, the 51st anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. While this may seem like blatant hypocrisy, much of these attitudes stem from the same racism, sexism, and transphobia that was present in the LGBTQIA+ at the time of the Stonewall Riots. How the event itself is memorialized often whitewashes and sanitizes who was involved and what took place. Many do not know the names of Marsha P. Johnson and Stormé DeLarverie, both of whom were people of color and transgender and gender nonconforming, respectively. People were assaulted by the police just for being who they were, be it because of their race, sexuality, or gender identity, and the oppressed said that enough was enough. Pride as we know it today is not to commemorate a party, but a protest. Too many from our own community displayed this year that this fact has been forgotten. Being a part of one marginalized group doesn’t prevent one from upholding and imposing systems of oppression onto others. Not in organizing, not in academia, and not in one’s personal relationships. This is very difficult for many to grasp, and it can have devastating effects. It was an issue I didn’t know existed until I realized that I had experienced it almost every day and had become desensitized to. Intersectionality is key to ensuring the everyone has the rights and dignity they deserve. None of this can be achieved when one group is holding another down or pushing them aside. By leaving others on the fringes, we further reinforce that it is acceptable to oppress any group simply for existing. Ultimately, I do have hope for the future. As I look at how much diversity is displayed in the streets during protests and read numerous resources educating everyone on how to build a stronger and more intersectional community, I can’t deny that progress is being made. With that said, we must continue to focus on doing better in the years to come. - Bek Resources and Further Reading Calbo-Jackson, Antonio. "An open letter to the lgbtq+ community about #blacklivesmatter and pride." GLAAD, GLAAD, 3 June 2020, www.glaad.org/amp/open-letter-lgbtq-people-pride- and-black-lives-matter. Gilmore, Stephanie, and Elizabeth Kaminski. “A Part and Apart: Lesbian and Straight Feminist Activists Negotiate Identity in a Second-Wave Organization.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 16, no. 1, 2007, pp. 95–113. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30114203. Hendrickson, Paul. “The Ladies Before Rosa: Let Us Now Praise Unfamous Women.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, vol. 8, no. 2, 2005, pp. 287–298. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41939983. McCusker, Carolyn. "Black trans perspectives and the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots." PBS, PBS, 13 June 2020, www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/daily-videos/black-trans-perspectives- and-the- anniversary-of-the-stonewall-riots/.
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January 2024
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