Friday, March 8, 2013

African American Members of the Transgender Community


It is true that we don’t live in a very accepting world. Discrimination happens frequently in jobs, at school, while at the store, etc. However, I never stopped to think about those people who fit more than one of the discriminated categories. It’s hard to deal when being discriminated for one reason such as weight, color, race, etc but being lower than low on the social totem pole is something I never thought of. Even within the discriminated community, some are discriminated more than others.  As Monica Roberts puts it “There is this saying that when white America has a cold, black America has a fever. Well, when black America has a fever, black transgender America has pneumonia”

A transgender African American will be discriminated not only for being African American, but for being transgender as well. These two reasons are what they are. And by discriminating them for being transgender and African American people are telling them they shouldn’t be who they are. But what reason do others have to stop another from being themselves? We wouldn’t tell a figure skater to quit skating if that is what they associate best with; for that same reason we shouldn’t tell transgender people to stop being who they are. I used to think members of the LGBTQ society were just looking for attention and going through a phase, but after having to read so many articles written by members of this community I have come to realize that expressing yourself in such a way is a difficult task. No one would face such hardship if it weren’t so meaningful. Being transgender requires a lot of effort and an admirable amount of resilience. They may be some of the strongest people out there, but they’re being undermined because of who they are.

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