The 50th Anniversary Of The March On Washington And The Trans Community

Today is the actual 50th Anniversary of the March On Washington which was capped by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's speech for the ages. 

I spent most of last Saturday afternoon glued to the couch watching the  commemoration march that happened Saturday and seeing friends like Donna Payne and Aisha Moodie-Mills either speaking during the event or getting to comment on it afterward. 

While I'm happy the gay and lesbain segment of the African-American community got to participate last Saturday, it still bothered me that there was no T and B representation at the event.

Now that I've gotten the obvious point of contention out of the way, time to use this anniversary date to ponder where the African-American trans community is as of August 28, 2013.

We are now sixty years past the February date in which Christine Jorgensen stepped off the plane from Denmark to the glare of the world's media in New York.  The Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit-In and Protest we would jump off in Philly happened two years after the March On Washington.

Just as it was pointed out by of African-American cis brothers and cis sisters, while the African-American trans community has made some fantastic progress since 1953, in many ways it has still been the same old same old dynamic. 

And yes, as I continue to point out, Black transgender issues are black community issues.   Like our cisgender counterparts we face Stop and Frisk policing.   The voter suppression issues affect us too.  And yes, while I may have morphed into a different body shape, I still because of my Black skin and heritage face the same bigotry and old racism like every other African American    

Being transgender didn't change that, just the way I experience it.

Speaking of the transgender community,  we're still invisible when it comes to the leadership ranks of this community.   We still face crushing unemployment-underemployment, and yes, we're taking along with our Latina transsisters the brunt of the casualties as last week's deaths of Islan nettles and Domonique Newburn painfully pointed out.

And we have to deal with the scourge of transphobia inside the African-American community that is fueling some of the anti-trans hate and violence we are suffering. 

But at the same time there are encouraging signs that we're making progress.  In this decade we have more out and proud African descended trans role models than ever before.   We have TPOCC, the NBJC and a host of local organizations fighting for our human rights.   The NAACP is recognizing that their membership base contains Black trans people.   BTMI and BTWI in just three short years has inspired our transbrothers to not only step up their leadership game inside and outside our community but reclaim their history.  We have Black trans people doing some amazing things and as more of us walk off college campuses with degrees in hand I expect to see more groundbreaking and amazing leadership and things to come from my younger transsisters and transbrothers 

Yes, we've made some amazing progress, but we African descended transpeople still have like our cis African-American counterparts a long way to go and problems to solve.