Andrea Jenkins' and Phillipe Cunningham’s Victories Are a Triumph for Trans Youth of Color

Councilmembers Andrea Jenkins and Phillipe Cunningham

By Sikivu Hutchinson

When Black trans activists Andrea Jenkins and Phillipe Cunningham made history by winning seats on the Minneapolis City Council on November 8^th it was not only a symbol of the power of the anti-Trump backlash but a victory for trans youth of color everywhere.  Jenkins and Cunningham’s wins, (along with those of white trans Virginia state legislator Danica Roem and several other openly transgender candidates nationwide) were a collective bird flip to the Trump regime’s transphobia and misogynoir. Musing on the implications of her success for future generations, Jenkins said, “Wow, if a Black transgender woman can get elected to the Minneapolis City Council, [maybe] I can too.”

How many queer, trans or straight youth have seen positive, reinforcing portrayals of trans people of color in mainstream media?  How many have been programmed to believe in the myth of cis/straight normalcy due to the dominant culture’s voyeuristic representations of trans folk as pathological, tragic, and hypersexual?  Trans of color activists and actors have long fought against the film and TV industry’s fixation on one-dimensional caricatures of “sassy” trans sidekicks or sex workers who provide exotic backdrop to the plot lines of cis/straight protagonists.  A recent video challenging Hollywood’s transphobic casting practices featured Black trans actors Jazzmun and Alexandra Grey.  The actors noted that “For many young and closeted trans people, film and television are the only time they see themselves.” And while mainstream white LGBTQI organizations strongly advocate that queer youth come out for greater visibility, being out has graver consequences for queer, trans and non-binary folks of color.  Writing in the journal “A New Queer Agenda”, homeless youth advocate Anjali Mukarji-Connolly argues that “The national LGBTQI organizations working on youth issues emphasize issues such as education and sexual health, but largely neglect the violence and isolation that young people face in homeless shelters and foster care agencies, or the challenges they face when confronting the police and negotiating with johns on the street.  When substantial resources are directed toward college campuses in support of ‘coming out’ activities…The mainstream movement often fails to analyze the intersections of class and race within the broader LGBTQI community, and tends to ignore the experience of poor queer youth of color in particular.”

For many trans folk, sex work, survival sex, homelessness, and the constant threat of violence are cold realities precisely because of the lack of opportunities in America’s segregated workplaces.  Because trans people of color are less likely to have access to living wage jobs with benefits and health care they have some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ declaration that trans workers are not eligible for federal civil rights protections underscores how trans workers in all professions continue to be vulnerable to employment discrimination tacitly sanctioned by the federal government. 

The victories of Jenkins and Cunningham are also significant with respect to the transphobic and homophobic policies of the U.S. Education Department under conservative Christian zealot Betsey De Vos.  In June, De Vos released new guidelines that ran counter to Obama administration policy requiring that transgender students be allowed to use the restroom of their choice, as well as pronouns and other markers that correspond to their gender identity.  Undermining the Obama administration’s stance on transgender equity, the new guidelines reinforce the Trump administration’s position that Title IX does not require “access to sex-segregated facilities like restrooms and locker rooms based on gender identity.”  According to Catherine Lhamon, who wrote Obama’s transgender rules, the new letter “says [the Department of Education] has jurisdiction over sex discrimination and sex stereotyping, but here’s how you could dismiss it…They can’t have it both ways.”  The murky guidelines are part of a “broader effort to scale back civil rights investigations of all kinds.” 

While the DOJ and the Education Department are hellbent on stripping trans and non-binary students and workers of civil rights, the new crop of trans public figures can bolster efforts to make schools more culturally responsive to LGBTQI youth. The absence of openly trans politicians, teachers, and other public figures has a negative impact on the self esteem and psyches of trans youth.  High rates of suicidal ideation and suicide among trans youth are directly related to toxic levels of violence in trans folks’ lives but are also reinforced by the invisibility of queer role models.  Moreover, harassment of trans and non-binary youth often goes unaddressed at schools that are already inadequate if not openly hostile to providing culturally specific support resources for queer youth. For example, according to the Human Rights Campaign, bisexual, lesbian and trans youth are more likely than cis/straight youth to be raped or sexual assaulted.  According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, in K-12 school communities, “24 percent of transgender American Indians, 18 percent of transgender people who identified as multiracial, 17 percent of transgender Asians, and 15 percent of Black transgender respondents experienced sexual assault– much higher rates than students of other races.” And when trans or non-binary students attempt to defend themselves against bullying and abuse they may wind up being harshly disciplined and pushed out of school.  These conditions, coupled with the lack of support from parents and caregivers, may lead to homelessness and incarceration.  It’s estimated that between 20-40% of homeless youth are LGBTQI, while queer youth of color are overrepresented in juvenile jails.

While it remains to be seen how Jenkins, Cunningham, and other trans politicians will impact policy on LGBTQI communities and youth, Jenkins is clear on her charge: “I want that to be the outcome, I want people to step up and be willing to be a representative for our communities and be a voice standing up for progress, standing up to patriarchy, standing up to sexism, standing up to white supremacy.”

Memory Thieves: Beyond the White Gaze of Jonestown*

By Sikivu Hutchinson

Black lesbian poet and activist Audre Lourde once said, “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.” Lourde was one of the most fiercely eloquent champions of the revolutionary right of black women to witness and speak their truths in resistance to silence.

Her words resonate deeply as the fortieth anniversary of the Jonestown massacre approaches. Black women lived, loved, struggled, and died in disproportionate numbers in Jonestown.  Their belief in the revolutionary promise of the settlement was a testament to their long legacy of activism and organizing in the face of erasure. Renewed public interest in the tragedy will no doubt elicit another round of questions about the Peoples Temple community, its politics, and its status as a historical “curiosity”.  In an effort to counter the marginalization of black women in these spaces, I have tried to bring black voices to the page, stage, and screen, through adaptations of my novel White Nights, Black Paradise.  As a piece of speculative fiction, White Nights, Black Paradise is interested in troubling the boundaries between “fact” and “fiction” in order to expose how myths about Jonestown were constructed over time through multiple interpretations, voices, and memories. Throughout the adaptation process, I have been acutely aware of the ways in which black experiences in Jonestown are often appropriated for mainstream consumption; taken out of context and depoliticized.  In an era in which black folk continue to struggle with the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racialized sexual violence, the prevailing narrative of hoodwinked black women without agency has become an insidious cliché. 

In response to these issues, I organized a black women survivors’ panel discussion at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora this summer in conjunction with the screening of my short film on White Nights, Black Paradise.  The panel featured Leslie Wagner Wilson, Jordan Vilchez, Yulanda Williams, and Rebecca Moore.  The packed audience included other members of the Peoples Temple community from the Bay Area.

Building on the film’s themes, the panel was designed to elevate black women’s experiences and stories.  Leslie’s powerful book Slavery of Faith chronicles her life in Peoples Temple and her dramatic escape from Jonestown hours before the 1978 massacre.  Jordan and Yulanda were both involved with the Temple at a young age and left Jonestown prior to the massacre.  Rebecca, the only white woman on the panel, lost several family members at Jonestown and has published three books on the settlement.

The discussion ranged from the women’s personal accounts of being in Jonestown to the internal divisions that belied the movement’s veneer of multiracial harmony.  Leslie and I have critiqued the racial and gender hierarchy that existed in the movement’s leadership, and the degree to which Jones’ white women lieutenants were complicit in its escalating climate of intimidation, abuse, and harassment.  During one exchange, Leslie and Yulanda took issue with Rebecca’s characterization of power and authority in Jonestown.  While Leslie and Yulanda recalled that African American members had little official authority in Jonestown, Rebecca made reference to the diverse work assignments that black folks fulfilled.  Leslie and Yulanda vividly recalled the harsh living conditions in Jonestown and compared it to being in a slave camp.  What came through most powerfully in these exchanges was the differing “class” positions Jonestown members had within the compound’s power structure; with younger white women being the most privileged and favored.  Leslie and Yulanda also emphasized the pivotal role Jones’ whiteness played in eliciting support and adulation in the black community. 

As I have argued in previous articles, Jones’ minstrel-like ability to evoke both white savior-hood and black nationalism—in order to appeal to African Americans—is a familiar theme in American politics and pop culture.  Some on the panel likened Jones’ appeal to that of the charismatic, benevolent white Jesus figure force fed to blacks under slavery.  Panelists also highlighted Jones’ status as a power broker in the Bay Area political establishment, emphasizing how this made public officials more willing to cosign the Temple’s activities despite widespread allegations of abuse and exploitation within the church.  Some of this abuse and exploitation was directed toward LGBTQ members of the church due to Jones’ (who often went on homophobic tirades yet engaged in sex with men) internalized homophobia.   As moderator, I contextualized the way in which the African American community of Fillmore was primed to embrace Jones’ “radical” social gospel ethos in light of poverty, job discrimination, state violence, and the mass displacements that rocked Fillmore as a result of the region’s “urban renewal” regime.

Why did it take nearly forty years for this kind of discussion to take place?  The comments we received after the event indicated that there is high interest in the rich social history of black Jonestown.  One audience member commented that they were moved by “The courage, power and heartfelt words of wisdom, and that (they) did not know the majority of membership were black women.”  Another related that they were interested in “The hierarchy of the Jonestown system (and) was so honored to hear survivors”, while being “unaware of the escapees & survivors (thinking) all had perished.”

These comments underscore the need for more black feminist literary and scholarly appraisals of the black diasporic experience in Jonestown vis-à-vis religion, black women’s self-determination, and the event’s contemporary significance.  In adapting White Nights, Black Paradise as a stage play, I hope to extend the conversation.

  

The play brings the media construction of Jonestown narratives into greater focus—foregrounding the divide between the lived experiences, dreams, ambitions, and politics of its black women protagonists and mainstream fascination with the “perversity” of the massacre.  The play opens with the character of a night watchwoman at the Dover Delaware Air force Base (the military morgue where the bodies of Jonestown victims were shipped after the massacre) banging on an old TV as the sound of a newscast about the event echoes overhead.  The banging is an allusion to the throwback practice of hitting old TVs to get a clearer picture.  The distorted cultural picture that the public has been provided of Jonestown and Peoples Temple is a recurring theme throughout the play, which is “presided over” by a Greek chorus of black women who give commentary on the play’s events.  The chorus is critical to the play’s meta-analysis of the invisibility of black women’s lives, voices, and social histories in the popular imagination of Jonestown.  It is also an artistic device that seeks to problematize reductive notions of black female selfhood, identity, and religious ideology (for example, throughout the play the chorus critiques organized religion and respectability politics). In the play, as in the book, the fictional character of black activist journalist Ida Lassiter pursues an “investigation” into the Temple’s dealings and becomes personally embroiled in relationships with Jones, other members and the black press.  As a once revered independent journalist, Lassiter represents the ambivalent relationship the black and mainstream press had with Peoples Temple and Jim Jones.  Although the real life African American activist/publisher and physician Dr. Carlton Goodlett bankrolled the Peoples Forum, there has been little exploration of the black press’ role in either promoting or critiquing Peoples Temple pre-Jonestown.  Hence, I was interested in exploring the political influence the (critical) black press had on the movement, highlighting tensions between Lassiter and Hampton Goodwin, the Carlton Goodlett character.  The mass removals in the Fillmore community, and the socioeconomic challenges confronting African Americans during the post civil rights and black power eras, also take center stage in the play.

Ultimately, it is my hope that these artistic explorations lead to more platforms for survivors and scholars of color—in resistance to the white gaze “crunch(ing) us into other peoples’ fantasies.”

*This article originally appeared at Alternative Considerations of Jonestown

The first staged reading of the play adaptation White Nights, Black Paradise, will be on December 14^th at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles.