esta pratt-kielley

By Esta Pratt-Kielley, originally published by NBC News' ParentToolkit.com

LGBTQ youth gathered in Washington DC at the first White House Summit for African American LGBTQ Youth on Friday, June 10. Tragically less than 48 hours later, an assailant killed 49 people at a gay club in Orlando, injuring at least 53 more.

“It shouldn’t be at the point of tragedy that we acknowledge that people are people,” said David Johns, Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans (WHIEEAA). “We do [the work we do] because it’s really important to provide individuals a space to talk and be at the center of the solutions but also because sometimes it’s not until something tragic happens that we have these conversations.” 

WHIEEAA, the National Education Association (NEA), and the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) brought together students, educators, parents, and thought leaders at the June 10^th summit to talk about the unique challenges African American LGBTQ youth face.

“The summit was a really nice opportunity to create a safe space where 100 black, brilliant LGBTQ youth leaders could be brave, build communities, and share best practices for ways that all caring and concerned adults can best support all students, but in particular the students who are most likely to be neglected, ignored and at the same time vilified, demonized and targeted,” Johns said.

Grace Dolan-Sandrino, a 15-year-old transgender activist, said the summit was a phenomenal experience.

“It was really empowering because they gave us examples of queer people of color who are doing work that I want to be doing as an adult,” Dolan-Sandrino said. “I saw that I can do them too.”

Dolan-Sandrino said she has experienced a lot of conflicting feelings in the week since the summit.

“I was completely heartbroken [by the events in Orlando],” Dolan-Sandrino said. “On Friday I was so empowered. Then Saturday I marched at Capital pride and felt so supported and on top of the world. And then the next day, I went from being on top of the world to dropping all the way to the other poll when I woke up to find people in my community had been massacred.”

LGBTQ people of color face discrimination differently than white LGBTQ people, as there are multiple forms of discrimination at play. While this summit focused on African American youth, the same is true for Latino and other youth of color.

In fact, in the Orlando massacre, most of the victims were Latino and people of color.

A Human Rights Campaign report, Supporting and Caring for Our Latino LGBT Youth, found LGBT Latino youth are more likely to face harassment and violence than their non-LGBT Latino peers. A third of LGBT Latino youth said they do not have an adult they can talk to about personal problems, while just 13 percent of non-LGBT Latino youth say the same.

In a Gay-Straight Alliance Network (GSA) and Crossroads Collaborative report, researchers found that schools nationwide are hostile environments for LGBTQ and gender nonconforming students of color. The report said that while harassment and bullying of any kind negatively affects students’ ability to thrive in school, “student’s who experience multiple forms of bullying and harassment face even greater challenges.”

“Far too often, that which we don’t understand, whether it’s race, ethnicity, sex, gender, expression, identity, religion—any of the categories that we use to separate socially—it’s not until we have moments of tragedy that we say we need to do the work to move past them,” Johns said. “We need to do that work in more routine and sustained ways. We should do it every day.”

The GSA report found that LGBTQ students of color report higher incidents of harsh school discipline and biased application of policies, in addition to being blamed for their own victimization.

“While I feel incredibly supported [now in school], this was not the case throughout my life,” Dolan-Sandrino said. “In middle school, I was never really understood. I was the first person to come out as a gay boy before I transitioned. When my mom offered to bring in LGBTQ support and resources for my school, the school didn’t even know what that was. I was subject to discrimination and targeted for suspensions. I was suspended once because people called me ‘faggot, pussy, too gay’ and someone recorded me yelling at them, and I got suspended for my behavior and my language. And they didn’t suspend any of the boys who threw shoes at my head, even though that was recorded too.”

Johns said adults, especially educators, must embrace responsibility for creating safe spaces where all students can feel comfortable taking risks and being brave.

“Thinking about the summit and Orlando, there are opportunities for all of us, no matter how one identifies, to ensure that all the spaces that we move through are safe,” Johns said. “Educators who sign up to do the work for all students—including LGBTQ students and students of color—have an obligation to create spaces where they are also safe and they can develop as whole people, including relationships where they can thrive. It’s our responsible to do the work required to understand and support LGBTQ youth.”

Dolan-Sandrino said they discussed solutions to hate and discrimination at the summit and focused on what LGBTQ youth need from adults in their lives.

“We need adults to stop hiding behind the excuse of not understanding us,” Dolan-Sandrino said.  “We need educators and adults to do exactly what this summit did and ask us what we need. To listen to our needs and try their hardest and best to be able to give us what we ask for, because without that, like we discussed at the summit, we simply can’t thrive.”

Some of the solutions included normalizing asking for what pronouns students use (him/he, her/she, they/them), avoiding making heterosexuality the ‘norm’ in school, and to stop forcing all young people to live in the gender binary, Dolan-Sandrino said.

“Some lessons learned for me were that the binaries that show up most often on a daily basis where people identify intentionally or otherwise, and are identified by surface level description—black/white, male/female, faith or not—all those things are exceptionally limiting in how young people actually show up in the world,” Johns said. “It makes me ask, why? In what ways does someone expressing their identity or proclaiming how they show up in the world or honoring the way that god made them impact your ability to do the same thing?”

“It’s important to acknowledge and respect intersections in other people’s lives,” Dolan-Sandrino said.

Both Dolan-Sandrino and Johns agreed; the conversations they had at the summit are now more important than ever.

“So much of the events in Orlando were a reminder that whether it’s a nightclub or a church or a school, people gather in spaces where they build community being themselves and showing up in ways that make them happy,” Johns said. “It’s something all students should be able to do. We can create those environments.”