Nelson Mandela's Letter To Our President-Elect

TransGriot Note: I've been comparing this historic election of our first African-American president to the 1994 one in which South Africans stood in long lines to elect Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first Black president. Here's Nelson Mandela's congratulatory letter to our president-elect.


5 November 2008

Senator Barack Obama,
Chicago

Dear Senator Obama,

We join people in your country and around the world in congratulating you on becoming the President-Elect of the United States. Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.

We note and applaud your commitment to supporting the cause of peace and security around the world. We trust that you will also make it the mission of your Presidency to combat the scourge of poverty and disease everywhere.

We wish you strength and fortitude in the challenging days and years that lie ahead. We are sure you will ultimately achieve your dream making the United States of America a full partner in a community of nations committed to peace and prosperity for all.

Sincerely,

N R Mandela

Dear Isis

TransGriot Note: I know this cycle of America's Next Top Model was shot during the summer and the winner has already been determined.

But I still cried and I'm disappointed about seeing Isis eliminated during Wednesday's broadcast.

I'm writing this open letter to my sis anyway.


Dear Isis,
I just watched the episode containing your heartbreaking elimination from Cycle 11 of America's Next Top Model, I know you wanted to go much further in the competition than you did and your brothers and sisters in the worldwide transgender community and beyond wanted just as badly to see you win it.

Sis, know that I and the entire transgender community are immensely proud of you.

Through difficult circumstances, catty remarks, borderline inappropriate questions and the ignorance of some of your fellow competitors you handled yourself with class and dignity even with a camera lens pointed at you.

I felt your pain of dealing with a transition in a fishbowl situation. My own transition was done in the middle of a major international airport in which 30,000 passengers a day transited through it. I don't know if I would have had the courage to do it with most of the planet and the unblinking eye of a television camera following my every move, But if that's what it would have taken for me to become the Phenomenal Transwoman I am today, I would have done so in a heartbeat and with a smile on my face.

I recognized that you had the weight of our community's hopes and dreams on your slender shoulders in this competition and I worried about that. I noted you were struggling with the confidence issues that many transwomen have during the early stages of transitioning from the old gender role to the new one. I'm 15 years into it and I still have nervous butterflies from time to time when I'm thrust into an unfamiliar situation or meet a relative from my extended family for the first time in decades that only remembers the old me.

The recent article I read mentioning you'd only been transitioning for two years confirmed what I'd suspected as I watched the episodes of you in that competition unfold from week to week.

Sis, you have the look, the intelligence and the talent to go all the way. I have no doubts that you will succeed at whatever you choose to do. You also have something else going for you that many people don't have who are trying to enter the fashion industry- a worldwide community of people who love you and wish you nothing but success.

As time goes on, transition will get easier for you. Your confidence will grow as you learn who Isis is, get comfortable with your body and figure out what type of woman you want to project to the world. As you work through that ongoing process, you will eventually get to the point in which you feel as strong, sexy, beautiful and confident as the Egyptian queen you chose to name yourself after. This America's Next Top Model experience will only help speed that inevitable day along.

Isis, you are a wonderful role model for us, and as Tyra said, you are an inspiration to me and many of us inside and outside the GLBT community. Hold your head up high and never forget that we love you. You are a beautiful butterfly emerging from your cocoon, spreading your wings and evolving into a classy young woman both inside and out.

Never let anybody tell you you're not.

Sincerely yours,
Monica Roberts
The TransGriot

Open Letter To Anita Price Mills

Dear Ms. Mills,
I happened to be watching CNN the night you made these comments. I understand your pain and disappointment that Hillary didn't win the Democratic nomination. But we had the blessings of having two outstanding candidates dueling for our party's nomination and Sen Barack Obama won.

The reality is that Hillary lost. She got beaten in the primary despite the efforts of you and the army of women and others who supported her efforts. It's also sad but true the reason Senator Clinton was speaking on Tuesday night in Denver instead of Thursday is because her campaign team did it to themselves.

Those of us who supported Sen. Obama worked just as hard for our candidate. He put together an organizational team and a campaign staff that outhustled and outflanked Sen. Clinton's at every turn. Don't forget that Sen Obama won 23 contests and garnered the most delegates and votes.

The reason she isn't the VP is because of the negative way her campaign was run over the last three months that pissed off many African-American Obama supporters like myself. Unfortunately, with Senator Obama taking the nomination, it almost dictated that he was going to have to have a white male beside him just to get elected.

You can take comfort in the fact there will be other women that get the opportunity to become president. I can't say with certainty there will be another African-American with his combination of skills and talents who gets this chance. It was the deciding factor along with other reasons why I've been supporting Sen. Obama since January. I also understand that African-American women like yourself were torn between loyalty to our people and seeing another woman advance to the highest office in the land.

And contrary to what you said in this video, Sen. Obama not only is qualified to be president, he has looked presidential since his first speech at the 2004 DNC convention. As he has campaigned you can see the growth in him and the battle with Sen. Clinton served to prepare him for the fall campaign.

The point is that as a loyal Democrat, the onus is on you to work as hard for Senator Obama as you and other Hillary supporters would have expected me and other Obama supporters to work to get Hillary elected had the script been flipped.

As Barack said in his acceptance speech, it isn't about him. Hillary said the same thing in hers. It's about taking this country back from 8 years of Republican misrule of this country. It's about the Supreme Court. It's about realigning government so it works for everybody, not just the rich and powerful. It's about universal health care. It's about having a Democrat standing up on January 20 to take the oath of office. It's about electing progressive people to enact progressive policies, and this is an all hands on deck operation from now until November 4.

But then again, you were sitting in the Pepsi Center as a delegate, so I don't have to tell you that. I hope that after you've had a few days of prayerful consideration to think about it and work through the sense of loss you feel, that you will find the time and energy to help get Sen. Obama elected.


God bless you,
Monica Roberts
The TransGriot

Letter To The Ladies Who Loved My 'Twin'

Dear Ladies,
Today finds me in introspective mode thinking about all of you, wondering how your lives are progressing and if you eventually found someone to share your lives with.

I know that some of you considered me for that role in my pretransition life. You were attracted to some of the qualities, the intelligence and values that make me the person I am and wanted to get to know me on another level.

And yeah, some of you thought I was handsome, too.

As some of you may (or may not) know I transitioned back in 1994. One of the major reasons I finally made that move besides the internal gender conflicts I'd been battling for years became intolerable, was the fact that I was starting to get major hints from several of you, your friends, and even your parents in some cases that considered my 'twin' marriage material.

While I have no doubts about whether I could have made any of you happy had a relationship progressed to that level, I'd reached a point in which I couldn't stomach being a 'guy' one more second. The way I saw it at the time, there was no point in me getting into a relationship in which the final outcome would be you or both of us getting hurt. I definitely didn't want to bring a child into this situation either. I know all too well how cruel other kids can be when it comes to someone that has a situation that isn't perceived as 'normal'.

That's why I pushed many of you away, or seemed noncommittal about taking our friendships to the next level or in some cases even getting intimate with some of you despite raging testosterone.

Yeah, I know that sounds selfish. Maybe I should have explained where my head was at during that time. But how could I explain something that I didn't quite have a grasp on myself, much less was in severe denial about?

But that's neither here or there. The bottom line is that I should have let y'all determine whether my 'twin' was worthy of your time, your body and your love. Because I didn't give you that opportunity, I apologize to all of you.

I do have to thank those of you ladies who cut my 'twin' loose when I was trying to play 'boy'. I didn't want to admit it at the time, but I'm thankful that some of y'all were point blank honest with me.

Some of you told me that being with my 'twin' was like being with one of your girlfriends. Others of you commented about it in less than complimentary ways that deeply hurt my feelings. Some of you just simply sensed the confusion and inner turmoil I was going through and simply let me go.

In the end, those of you who loved me enough to be real with me were right. I had to transition sooner or later to be the best person I could be. What several of you said almost unanimously and in your own ways after you discovered I'd transitioned was right on target. I was never a guy, I only played one for public consumption.

Thanks for loving me enough to help me see that, and Happy Valentine's Day to all of you.


Love always,
Monica

Open Letter To The CBC

Dear Congressional Black Caucus,
When the 110th Congress was gaveled into session back in January it made history on many fronts. The members of the CBC for the first time would not only chair many subcommittees, but important committees such as Ways and Means and Judiciary.

An African-American would serve as the Majority Whip for the first time in a decade. It would even include not only its first representative from Minnesota, but that representative would be a Muslim as well. And the thing I am most proud of is that a CBC member of the Senate is not only running for president, but has a serious shot to win the Democratic party nomination for the job next year as well.

Yes, the CBC has come a long way since its founding in 1971 and it's not called the 'Conscience of the Congress' for nothing.

So as an African-American who happens to be transgender, I would like to appeal to that conscience and humbly ask why some members of the CBC aren't voting to expand civil rights to their fellow African-Americans who happen to be transgender.

I'm not naive to politics. I'm a student of history who is painfully aware of our tortured history in this country and how long it took civil rights for African-Americans to pass.

But I fail to understand why some CBC members are balking at expanding rights to people who desperately need them in the name of 'pragmatic politics'. There are over 300 organizations including the National Black Justice Coalition and the International Federation of Black Prides that support an inclusive ENDA.

I understand that the misguided ministers of the Hi Impact Leadership Coalition and others in Congress are placing tremendous pressure on some of you to vote NO not only on the Baldwin Amendment that would fix the problems in Rep. Barney Frank's HR 3685, but on HR 3685 as well.

But looking at our history, you can well understand why as an African-American transperson I'm imploring you to vote YES on the Baldwin Amendment and include people in this legislation that should have never been cut out of it in the first place.

Over 70% of the people listed on the Remembering our Dead List, which memorializes victims of anti-transgender violence are African-American or other people of color. Many of you were in Washington when Tyra Hunter was denied emergency medical treatment by an African-American EMT and subsequently at DC General that would have saved her life. The hate for transgender people is so palpable that several years ago Willie Houston, an African-American who was helping a man cross a Nashville street was shot and killed because he happened to be holding his wife's purse at the time.

I thank the CBC for standing tall on the hate crimes bill that passed the House May 3 and I and others expressed that sentiment to many of the CBC offices I was able to visit then. But what is more vitally important to transgender people like myself is having job protections.

It does me no good to have hate crimes protection if someone feels that they have a God given 'special right' to mess with my employment, fire me because I transitioned, or deny me or any person gay or straight a job we have the qualifications to do because we don't fit their impressions of how a man or woman is supposed to act, walk, talk or look.

I have already felt the sting of employment discrimination because I'm transgender. I need a roof over my head, food to eat, and clothes on my back. I have to earn money to pay for those necessities of life and that requires a job. Since medical care at the moment is tied up in gainful employment as well, an inclusive ENDA is a life or death issue to us.

The late Barbara Jordan, a fellow Texan, one of my heroes and a distinguished member of the Congressional Black Caucus once stated,

"One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves."

As a transgender American of African descent that's all I and any other transperson is asking for. All we want is an expansion of the 'We, the People' in the Constitution to include us. All we are asking for is an opportunity to be able to use our talents to work and live our lives free of harassment. All we want is an equitable opportunity to do our part to help build our country. Because the Forces of Intolerance are arrayed against us now, we can't wait decades for a separate transgender-only ENDA to pass.

In short, we're asking for nothing more than you would want for yourselves or your children: First-class citizenship.

Whether we get that will be determined in large part by the actions of the Democratic Party and the members of 'the Conscience of the Congress.'

Since the CBC's founding you have never failed to lead on civil rights issues before. Please don't let failing to expand civil rights protection for transgender Americans become the first stain on that impressive and morally principled record.

Sincerely yours,
Monica Roberts
2006 IFGE Trinity Award Winner

Dear Oprah

Dear Oprah,
While many of us in the transgender community are estatic that you have finally turned your formidable media spotlight on the transgender community and given some of our issues some attention, there's one thing that bothers me and many of your African-American transgender fans and our supporters.

Many African-American transpeople over the years have e-mailed and written letters humbly asking for a chance to tell our stories on your stage. We've been told by your staffers in reply that your show wasn't interested in doing transgender topics.

So now that you are doing these shows, the folks that need the airtime most desperately, your African-American transgender brothers and sisters feel hurt and left out.

White transpeople have had the attention of the United States media ever since Christine Jorgenson stepped off the plane from Denmark in 1953. The media face of transgender people over the last fifty years has overwhelmingly been a white one.

Even African-American publications such as Jet, Ebony, or ESSENCE rarely cover our issues. That has led to a knowledge vacuum that combined with negative preaching from the pulpits has opened many of us up to anti-transgender violence, discrimination and hatred in our own community. About 70 percent of the people on the Remembering our Dead list that memorializes victims of anti-transgender violence are disproportionately African-American and other people of color.

There are too many times that African-American transpeople's images have been tied to the adult entertainment industry, female illusionists and shows like Jerry Springer. There are far more African-American transpeople that like myself have college educations, good jobs, are proud of our heritage, have families who love them, and want to do our part to uplift our society.

But you'd never know that based on the media coverage that African-American transpeople get.

I was approached by Jerry Springer's people back in 1998 to appear on their show and turned them down. As someone who is considered an award winning leader in this community, as you can tell I'm greatly concerned about our image. I personally will not be a party to appearing on a show who's only interest in transgender topics is reinforcing stereotypes and exploiting them for sweeps month ratings points.

Your show is one of the three that should I be blessed to get that call, along with Tyra and Montel that I would drop whatever I'm doing to talk to this nation about transgender issues from an African-American perspective.

I know that your show, along with the other two I mentioned are not only high quality productions, but will take what I have to say seriously, it will be received in the spirit of imparting information to a vast audience and I (or any other transperson who appears on the show) will be treated with the utmost respect and dignity by you and your audience.

While any positive coverage of transgender issues is greatly appreciated, it does make your African-American transgender brothers and sisters wonder when we are finally going to get some face time?


Respectfully yours,
Monica Roberts
The TransGriot
2006 IFGE Trinity Award Winner

Letter To My African-American Transgender Elders

Dear African-American Transelders,

I hope and pray your golden years find you in excellent health, a secure life situation, and satisfied with the way your lives turned out.

But there's a question I've been dying to ask those of you who walked before me.

Why didn't y'all work harder to build an African-American transgender community for mine and the generations to come?

Yeah, I realize that y'all had a lot of thangs on your plate back in the day. Fighting Jim Crow segregation, getting our voting rights, the Civil Rights Movement, dealing with HIV/AIDS and trying to make a living making 70 cents for every dollar a white person earns. That does have a much higher priority than what I'm talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I'm eternally grateful for your contributions and sacrifices that helped make my life as a late 20th-early 21st century African-American better. I'm well aware that in addition to the other challenges you African-American transgender elders faced, I am cognizant of the fact that our community is somewhat conservative on gender issues and pursuing that may have opened you up to violent attacks and even death. I'm also aware of the fact that the HBIGDA/WPATH orthodoxy at the time you transitioned was to fade away and never let anyone know you're transgender.

But damn, I feel cheated.

By going stealth, I feel that my history as an African-American transperson has been hidden from me. I know HIV/AIDS took some of you away from us, but why didn't y'all do a better job of passing that history down to my generation? Where were y'all when I needed multiple transgender role models that share my cultural background to look up to back in the 70's? Why weren't more of you visionary enough like Justina Williams for example to build organizations on a local and eventually national scale that passed that knowledge down and build a networked national community at the same time? I know y'all had the skills to do so. You proved it time and time again during the Civil Rights era.

Why did some of y'all hate us younger transpeeps so much that when we humbly asked you for the information as to the how to's of Transition 101 and longed to be mentored by you the response was stony silence, derisive laughter or derogatory self-esteem deflating comments?

My generation and others are paying for that lack of vision right now. Because you didn't think long term and pursue this in a more politically favorable environment we are now faced with the task of trying to build community and unite separate factions of dispirited peeps in a hostile conservative political environment. Our churches have been infected by a doctrine of hatred for GLBT peeps. It comes from the same white fundamentalist preachers that opposed y'all in your youth and distracts our churches from fulfilling their historic mission of seeking justice for ALL African-Americans.

But you know what? I and my generation can't wallow in what SHOULD have been done decades ago. We are faced with the daunting task of doing it now.

The transkids who are being born right now or who are are transitioning in elementary and middle school will need those resources to lean on. Shouldn't our kids have access to the same or equal resources similar to what our transbrothers and transsisters of European heritage have today that were painstakingly built up over the last twenty years? Shouldn't those resources also be geared toward their culture?

I'm not writing this letter to cast blame or start an inter generational war. That's not my intent. I'm approaching you in the spirit of Kingian love and respect for you as my elders. I wanted to convey to you the sense of loss and pain I and many African-American transpeople of my generation feel because we grew up feeling isolated and alone.

I am in the position now of being looked at as a leader and mentor to twenty something transkids. I don't want another African-American transkid on my watch to ever feel that kind of pain again and want to leave behind a world better than what I encountered. I and the current African-American transgender leadership need your help to achieve that modest goal. I would like to gain insight on what happened from your vantage point. We want and need to get your side of the story. We want to embrace the history you have to share with us so that we can pass it on. We've lost too much of our precious history already and our young people need to know about what you accomplished so that they can aspire to do something extraordinary with their lives.

Finally, we wish to lean on your hard won knowledge, be mentored by you in the time that God has granted you to remain with us on Planet Earth, learn from the mistakes as you see them through your generational prism and diligently work to ensure that we don't repeat them.

Respectfully yours,
Monica Roberts
The TransGriot

Letter To My Fellow African-Americans

Dear Fellow African-Americans,

As one of your transgender cousins who shares your ethnic heritage I am moved to ask this question.

What the hell is wrong with y'all?

What has caused some of y'all to take leave of your senses and work with white fundamentalists who only 40 years ago were not only opposed to us gaining our civil rights but didn't want you, your kids or your grandkids to marry their sons and daughters?

It's pathetically sad when you have a group of African-American ministers go up to Capitol Hill to lobby against the passage of the Hate Crimes Bill at the behest of the same group of white fundamentalist preachers who fought our inclusion during the Civil Rights Movement.

It's also mind numbing and sad to ponder that the baby daughter of the greatest American our country has ever produced, the man who eloquently stated that 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere' is associate pastor of a megachurch in which the senior pastor is one of our oppressors and has made anti-gay statements herself.

Why do some of you hate us so much that you will kill us, brutalize us and vote against your own political and economic interests to put people in power to curtail GLBT civil rights? Why are you tossing us out of our homes and churches, ostracizing us within our families, demonizing us inside and outside the African-American community and selectively twisting Biblical scripture to justify it?

Please spare me the 'love the sinner but hate the sin' bogus scripture BS spin line that some of you will use as an excuse to justify your ignorance and hatred. The real deal is that y'all have allowed a bunch of white fundamentalists to jack with our historic community unity by injecting a false issue into our community debate. We have far more pressing issues to deal with than whether Adam and Steve or Tanisha and Markisha get married. We have allowed The Forces of Intolerance to not only gain a foothold in our churches and our communities, but allowed them to distract our churches from their ongoing historic mission of seeking justice for our people and speaking truth to power.

And for what? So a few selfish ministers who aren't fit to shine Dr. King's shoes can chase faith-based bucks and lust for power.

Where were you Hi Impact Leadership Coalition members and sympathizers when our right to vote was being jacked with in 2000 and 2004? Oh yeah, y'all were cheesin' for the cameras at the GOP conventions and the White House. Where were you in August 2005 when our people were dying in New Orleans? Y'all constantly flap your gums to rail against GLBT peeps from the pulpit but your silence was deafening then.

As for speaking truth to power, you megachurch posers and wannabes are more concerned with photo ops, building arena-sized churches and acquiring expensive clothes and cars than fighting for the civil rights of ALL African-Americans and speaking out against injustice. Instead of leadership we get posturing, posing, doublespeak and hate-filled soundbites from anti-gay sermons instead of ones like Dr. King's 'Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution'.

Hate sermons mind you that result in the creation of a climate of intolerance, ignorance and fear that resulted in the killings of African-American GLBT people such as Sakia Gunn, Rashawn Brazell, Amanda Milan, Stephanie Thomas and Ukea Davis. I wonder what DC church the African-American EMT attended who allowed a fellow African-American named Tyra Hunter to bleed to death after a 1995 traffic accident because he discovered that she was a pre-op transwoman? He stopped treating Tyra, but had the time to insult and crack jokes about her.

If you insist that every African-American life is precious and we don't have a person to waste, then that by extension includes same gender loving folks and transpeople as well.

We are your sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors and co-workers. We are also proud African-Americans who work, vote, go to church, serve in our nation's military and pay our taxes. All we're asking for is the same thing that any African-American wants, which is respect and dignity to live our lives without unnecessary bullcrap and be contributing members of society.

How many deaths, how much spilled blood, how much pain and suffering and how long will it take before you get that message, my fellow African-Americans?


Respectfully yours,
Monica Roberts
The TransGriot

Open Letter to Kenneth Eng

Dear Kenneth,
For somebody that graduated from NYU, you are breathtakingly ignorant to paint an entire race of people with a stereotypical brush based on two movies and a rap radio station as you did in your recent February 23 column. (Personally I prefer classic R&B and jazz myself.)

I guess you forgot about the story of Joseph Cinque and the Amistad revolt? That wasn't an isolated incident. Many slave ship voyages didn't get too far away from the African coastline before the rebellions started. There were far more successful slave rebellions and revolts than the 'happy darkie' pro-slavery revisionist forces care to elaborate on and the first one happened in 1733. They feared slave rebellions from 1792 onward. Haiti's slaves liberating themselves from French rule in 1803 made them even more 'scurred' of us replicating the feat on US shores.

I see you're also clueless about Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad and the various ingenious ways that African-Americans escaped from plantations. They fought for their freedom in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

While were on the war tip, ever heard of the Buffalo Soldiers? The 761st Tank Battalion AKA the Black Panthers? The Tuskegee Airmen? The 54th Massachusetts Regiment? You desperately need to hop on the subway and spend some time at the Schomburg Institute.

And in which one of your science-fiction universes did you come up with that asinine statement? I'm tired of peeps like you dismissing our very real historical experiences in this country as 'whining'. The Christianity that the slavemasters forced on us was infused with our own religious experiences and traditions we brought with us from Africa. From that Christianity came some of our greatest leaders in the late 19th and 20th century.

Kenneth, what I don't get is your disjointed rambling about some obscure high school debate and what connection it has with African-Americans in general. But then again racists were never known to have logical linear thinking processes.

If you didn't see any African-Americans in your honors or AP classes, then you must have attended school in the 'burbs or went to a private one. I was in gifted and talented classes in junior and senior high along with many of my friends. Education was stressed in mine and many other households in my neighborhood.

George Santayana was right. If you don't study the past you are condemned to repeat it. That's why we just spent 28 days commemorating our history. African-Americans are painfully familiar with that statement more than anyone else in this country because we've seen the effects of neglected or ignored history disproportionately impact our community. For example, our experiences during Reconstruction in the late 19th century have eerily replicated themselves in the late 20th-early 21st century.

And it is rather troubling that this kind of virulent racism is alive and well in the early 21st century, especially in someone who is a 21 year old college graduate. I'm even more angered over the fact that you chose Black History Month to write such disgusting tripe.

We are heroes, Kenneth. I'm descended from peeps that survived the Middle Passage. Despite violent opposition, nattering naysayers and countless obstacles placed in our paths over the last 400 years that would have broken less sturdy peoples, to quote Maya Angelou, 'and still we rise.'


Sincerely,
Monica Roberts
The TransGriot