Posted By: WGBH | March 26, 2021 | By: GBH Staff
On the latest episode of Basic Black, host Phillip Martin is joined by four experts to explore the Black transgender community and how Black transgender men and women go about their day-to-day lives encountering ongoing issues around discrimination, housing, employment, violence and death. The panel also discusses policy issues and the Biden administration’s stand on LGBTQIA rights.
Guests include Chastity Bowick, Executive Director of the Transgender Emergency Fund; Dreya Catozzi, Executive Director of the Urban Trans Women Center; Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, Executive Director of Lawyers for Civil Rights; and Kaden Mohamed, Chair of the steering committee of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Committee.
While it’s important for the transgender community to be familiar with the resources available to them in their city and state, Mohamed expressed the need to think beyond policy. That means educating teachers, doctors, and others who regularly engage with the transgender community, and relying on cisgender allies to step up.
“It’s not legal to discriminate against transgender people in employment in Massachusetts. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen,” says Mohamed. “I think we need to get away from this idea that policies or government officials or people in those roles and settings are going to help us or solve these problems.”
Catozzi spoke to the importance of keeping the narrative simple when educating others about how best to support the transgender community, saying that, “We focus a lot on the violence and a lot on the negative things that are happening to us, but we need to start showing the positive sides.”
Watch the full episode of Basic Black here.