BIPOC + LGBT+ = The Compounded Jeopardy of Multiple Minorities
In the wake of colonization, slavery, Black Codes, and other more recent extreme measures, BIPOC people are forming stronger coalitions. Mutual support helps BIPOC trans-spiritual leaders make strides despite being just a tiny percentage of the larger American queer community. Members of the national trans community continue to pursue for the religious freedom for BIPOC trans people and others despite the resurgence of far-right ideologues whose anti-trans, anti-abortion, and anti-black religious postures seek to curtail or deny the freedoms of trans people.
As a hyper-minority, BIPOC trans people have several race, gender, and class identities that subject them to triple oppression. They endure efforts to cut funding where gains had been made to protect trans body-autonomy and civil rights, to curtail their right to sacred space, and to repress their right to have spiritual practices available to them without religious trauma. Therefore, the BIPOC trans-spiritual leaders must be highly skilled at forming solid coalitional relationships to serve their constituencies well.
To achieve their goals, the BIPOC trans leaders develop strong working relationships within the queer community (with whites and other BIPOC people). They also work with various entities and factions in the larger heterosexual community beyond the confines of the queer community.
While it is a blessing when these relationships are vibrant, supportive, and vital, the BIPOC trans-spiritual leaders can face intense challenges. Things have improved but heterosexual and homosexual communities still tend to confront them with trans-phobic anti-blackness. Add to the mix a lower-class existence, and throw in a dash of transmisogyny, and the risk that the BIPOC trans-leaders and their constituents experience can increase exponentially. Compounded jeopardy can be even more challenging where ethnic friction and anti-blackness surfaces among BIPOC identities.
So developing the skill to build and sustain alliances is necessary. Not only must BIPOC trans people defend themselves from anti-trans forces external to their communities. They also must fight queer communities where whiteness rules or where some organizations catering to LGBs ignore or minimize their needs. To illustrate, there has emerged in Britain an LGB Alliance group. It allies with the far-right to force a divorce of the LGB's from the T's. Their hashtag is trending on X (formerly Twitter).
Racism and transphobia in the queer community is a typical US-trans problem. Consider, for example, that a coalition of Queer, trans, and Black, Indigenous, BIPOC activists began calling on Boston Pride in 2015 to change its governance and funding structure to be more inclusive.
Because there had been no change for years, Black Lives Matter laid out a strategic plan requesting Boston Pride to diversify its board, allow BIPOC activists control of Black and Latino Pride events, and re-examine its corporate sponsorships, among other things.
According to The Globe, the coalition demanding change included Trans Resistance, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, Urban Pride, the Transemergency Fund, the Center for Black Equity, Boston Black Pride, Boston Dyke March, and Pride for the People.
These organizations insisted on change because they contributed to and supported Boston Pride regardless of its practices of inequitable staffing and resource distribution. They stood in firm opposition when Boston Pride allocated just $10,000 to help Black Trans people organize in their defense. Yet the total Boston Pride budget was $500,000. Boston Pride was comfortable with allocating just 2% of their budget to Black Trans people who were quite significant participants in Boston Pride's annual parade and other activities.
Reverend Athena Vaughn, a black transwoman interviewed in this project, organized opposition to Boston Pride's practices. Asserting her determination to work around Boston Pride, she told WBZ News, a CBS affiliate, "The chains that they tried to put on us are broken, and we're no longer being shackled. We will not be held down. We will fight back."
The support her coalition garnered was incredible. Numerous organizations broke up with Boston Pride. For example, the History Project publicly disapproved of Boston Pride's recalcitrance.
Jo Trigilio, who resigned from Boston Pride's communications team around this issue, told Boston.com, as a former insider, that Boston Pride saw itself being attacked when non-dominant members of the pride community asked for a fair budget share to better serve their needs. Instead of responding like "these are our people," Boston Pride regarded their insistence on better service "as antagonistic," Trigilio explains.
The coalition decided to hold its own Pride Parade when Boston Pride "removed a statement from its newsletter supporting Black Lives Matter." The coalition members protested by organizing an alternate pride march instead of supporting and attending the annual Boston Pride event.
With very little funding, the coalition's rally drew a thousand people. They recognized that Boston Pride had mishandled the mandate it got from the trans and non-binary people who rioted at Stonewall. Even the mayoral candidates switched from speaking at the Boston Pride venue to the coalition's venue.
Boston Pride, which began fifty years earlier as a gay organization, decided to disband. Its leaders preferred to cease operation rather than to democratize its board, policies, and funding priorities.
This was one fight in which the organized Black Trans communities and their allies prevailed, but confrontations with power can turn out quite differently in their personal lives. Consider these outcomes, to note just a few:
