Happy Kwanzaa Black Trans Style-The 2011 Remix: Ujamaa

TransGriot Note:  On each night of the Kwanzaa celebration, just as I did last 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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Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Haban gari    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.

Ujamaa.  Another principle that is key to solving what ails Black transpeople.   It's something that we need to consider and cultivate as a long term strategy to cut into the crushing 26% unemployment rate that we are currently grappling with.

Just imagine if we had a network of Black trans owned businesses than not only provided goods and services to our community, but also provided opportunities for employment.   There are also professional trans people who are accountants, attorneys, notary publics who could use the business and helping them helps our African American community keep a viable business going, helps us cut unemployment amongst our people and most importantly of all, keeps Black dollars circulating in our community and helps us profit from them together.

So in line with the ujamaa principle, if you are in a position to hire people, consider hiring a transperson.  They'll definitely appreciate the job and won't take it for granted knowing in the backs of our minds how hard it is for us to get them in the first place.

And transpeople use your dollars to support the businesses in our community and professionals who are us, hire us and stand up for our community.   You'll be doing us and the Black community a favor as well.

Happy Kwanzaa Black Trans Style-The 2011 Remix: Ujima

TransGriot Note:  On each night of the 2011 Kwanzaa celebration, just as I did last 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. 

***

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and to solve them together.

Haban gari?   What's the news?

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

Ujima.  Collective work and responsibility.  I saw strides in our cis brothers and sisters recognizing that the Black trans community's problems were their problems as well as I and others have been stating for years.

As for movement toward a coordinated partnership toward helping us solve them, we're getting there.

As I stated in last year's post on this principle and it bears repeating in terms of the ujima principle, seeing our problems as African-American community problems and helping us solve them helps us and the African-American community as a whole.

A healthy African-American trans community leads to us as we close ranks to build that better overall African-American community of us trans African-Americans being able to meet our responsibilities in uplifting all of our people and allow us to be in a better position to live up to the ujima principle.  

As I've said repeatedly, we Black transpeople can't help do our share of the collective work needed to uplift the race if our lives are unstable because we can't get jobs or people refuse to hire us because they can discriminate against us because of virulent anti-trans bigotry.  .

Our problem of battling anti-trans bigotry and oppression that deleteriously affects us is an African-American community problem as well as the NTDS survey pointed out. 

Dr. King once stated that 'we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."  Trans African-Americans are part of that inescapable netowrk of mutuality, and it's past time our cisgender brothers and sisters recognize that.

Happy Kwanzaa Black Trans Style-The 2011 Remix: Kujichagulia

TransGriot Note:  On each night of the 2011 Kwanzaa celebration, just as I did last 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. 

***
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Haban gari?   What's the news?

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

Kujichagulia.  Self-Determination.  It's one of the principles in 2011 I observed us making major strides in chocolate trans world in terms of achieving it since I composed last year's post  

One of the things that made 2011 different was that we had more trans people of African descent coming out and speaking their truths and lived experiences about us and our lives.  Whether it was Janet Mock or Kylar Broadus, myself, Laverne Cox, Isis King or countless others, we've been more forceful about living up to the kujichagulia.principle not only in our own lives but for our chocolate trans community.   

We've also been more active in creating space and combating the negative stereotypes associated with being Black and trans, but we still have much work to do.  This is also a principle we can draw motivation from as we seek to build stronger and closer community ties with our cis African descended brothers and sisters.

As I will continually remind you Black cis people who hate on us, I and my trans brothers and sisters did not give up our Black Like Me cards when we transitioned.  We are still dealing with the same systemic bull feces aimed at African descended people that we have dealt with since birth and transition didn't change that.  

And because I and my brothers and sisters transitioned doesn't make us any less Black, nor does it give you haters carte blanche to kill us either because you irrationally hate us.   The fact that we did transition to be the Black men and women we are is a living example of the kujichagulia.principle


We still have a long way to go to achieve it but what I am seeing in terms of us defining ourselves, naming ourselves, creating for ourselves and speaking for ourselves I like in terms of the forward momentum we're on.