Happy Kwanzaa Black Trans Style-Kuumba

TransGriot Note:   On each night of the Kwanzaa celebration this year, I'm going to write about each one of those principles and explain how it applies to the chocolate trans community and our cis African descended brothers and sisters.  


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Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Haban gani?    What's the news? 


It's time to light the sixth candle on the Kinara and ponder the sixth principle of the seven celebrated during Kwanzaa.

Kuumba.   This principle is one that I strive to live by.   I try to do as much as I can in any way that I can to leave the communities I inhabit more beautiful and beneficial than when I arrived on the scene. 

This blog allows me to express my creativity in terms of my writing talents and use them to make the trans and African-American communities a better place.    My sister Tona Brown uses her musical talents to accomplish the same thing.   Others are doing so through spoken word, their oratorical skills, painting, poetry, written word like myself, photography or performance art.

When you think about it, even our brothers and sisters in the pageant and ballroom communities can and do role model this principle to make our community a better place.

And by striving to live up to the kuumba principle,  we hope to leave behind a world that is better and more beautiful than when we encountered it.

Happy Kwanzaa Black Trans Style-Nia

TransGriot Note:   On each night of the Kwanzaa celebration this year, I'm going to write about each one of those principles and explain how it applies to the chocolate trans community and our cis African descended brothers and sisters.  


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Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Haban gani?    What's the news?    


It's time to light the fifth candle on the Kinara and ponder the fifth principle of the seven celebrated during Kwanzaa.


Nia.   Purpose.   Another of the principles that neatly ties in with what we are seeking to do as African descended transpeople.    'Making our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness'. 

Got that right.    And we needed to get started on that like yesterday.

One of the major problems in the African American trans community has been we are disconnected from our history.   As Dr. Carter G. Woodson stated in 1922,  "The case of the Negro is well taken care of when it is shown how he has far influenced the development of civilization."  

The trans African-American has influenced the development of our community.   The trans African-American has been instrumental in fighting for this community's civil rights with the Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit In, Lady Java's work in Los Angeles to take down the odious Rule Number 9, Stonewall Rebellion veterans such as Miss Major, and Marsha P. Johnson's contributions to shape the nascent trans rights movement being prima facie evidence of that.

We are not only emerging from the shadows, but we recognize in this decade and for decades to come, we must live up to the nia principle.   

We need to get to work as soon as possible building a FUBU trans community that reflects and respects our history, our values and our traditions and allows us to determine our political destiny in order to close ranks and make ourselves stronger.

It's something chocolate transpeople have needed to do for a long time, especially since it has become crystal clear that the white run trans one doesn't want to work and play well with non white trans others. 

So yes, it's time to in conjunction within our African American family to build community together that helps lift us up as full fledged partners, and restores our people and the chocolate trans community to our traditional greatness. 

Happy Kwanzaa Black Trans Style-Ujamaa

TransGriot Note:   On each night of the Kwanzaa celebration this year, I'm going to write about each one of those principles and explain how it applies to the chocolate trans community and our cis African descended brothers and sisters.  


***

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Haban gani?    What's the news?    


It's time to light the fourth candle on the Kinara and ponder the fourth principle of the seven celebrated during Kwanzaa.

Ujamaa   Cooperative economics is definitely one of those principles that will help us and our cis family members at the same time.

We are looking at 25% unemployment in the African American community as a whole.  The unemployment rate for trans people is estimated to be at 40%, which is why we are angry about ENDA not being passed or perturbed that we have not seen the language for this bill.

If African descended people have employment, that means they have money in their purses and pockets to spend and help support Black businesses in the community.  If you are a Black business owner and take the time to hire a qualified Black transperson, it is a win-win situation that helps you, the Black community and the African descended trans community at the same time.

Some of my trans brothers and sisters are lawyers, accountants, and own various businesses.   It's time in the spirit of the principle of ujamaa to consider hiring them.   For those of us in the African descended trans community, let's consider hiring our own people first or seeking out trans owned businesses in order to help build them up.   It will help us build a stronger economic base within our community and in time build these businesses up to where they can hire other qualified trans people as well.


The reverse is also true for African descended transpeople.  We need to look to support Black owned businesses inside our community first before seeking to spend our money outside of it.  

And to expand that spirit of ujamaa still further, when the various Caribbean nations start repealing their British colonial era laws used to harass and mess with our trans cousins there and stop aiming faith-based violence at them, let's consider supporting our trans brothers and sisters by spending some vacation money in those Caribbean nations as well.   


If we can do that in the spirit of the ujamaa principle, it will benefit not only us but the entire African descended community across the Diaspora.