As I think about race and racism during the week of President-elect Obama's Inauguration and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I'm stuck that Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has released a report entitled Shared Differences: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Students of Color in Our Nation's Schools. The report looks at student experiences at intersections of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. As many of us already suspected was true, ethnic minorities who also indentify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender experienced increased discrimination and safety issues. Key findings from the report, as reported in the media release for the report:
• Across all groups, sexual orientation and gender expression were the most common reasons LGBT students of color reported feeling unsafe in school. More than four out of five students, within each racial/ethnic group, reported verbal harassment in school because of sexual orientation and about two-thirds because of gender expression. At least a third of each group reported physical violence in school because of sexual orientation.• More than half of African American/Black, Latino/a, Asian/Pacific Islander, and multiracial students also reported verbal harassment in school based on their race or ethnicity. Native American students (43%) were less likely than other students to report experiencing racially motivated verbal harassment.
• About a quarter of African American/Black and Asian/Pacific Islander students had missed class or days of school in the past month because they felt unsafe. Latino/a, Native American, and multiracial students were even more likely to be absent for safety reasons - about a third or more skipped class at least once or missed at least one day of school in the past month for safety reasons.
• Native American students experienced particularly high levels of victimization because of their religion, with more than half reporting the highest levels of verbal harassment (54%), and a quarter experiencing physical violence (26%).
• Less than half of students of color who had been harassed or assaulted in school in the past year said that they ever reported the incident to school staff. Furthermore, for those students who did report incidents to school staff, less than half believed that staff's resulting response was effective.
• Native American (57%) and multiracial (50%) students were more likely than other students of color in our survey to report incidents to a family member.
• Performance at school also suffered when students experienced high levels of victimization. Students' overall GPA dropped when they reported high severities of harassment based on sexual orientation and/or race/ethnicity. Students experiencing high severities of harassment also reported missing school more often.
• The report also looks at differing experiences based on the racial/ethnic make-up of students' schools. For all groups, LGBT students of color who were minorities in their school were much more likely to feel unsafe and experience harassment because of their race or ethnicity than those who were in the racial/ethnic majority.
The media release spoke to why GLSEN released the report now:
GLSEN is releasing the report in conjunction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Organizing Weekend, which takes place January 16-19. Dr. MLK Jr. Organizing Weekend provides an opportunity for students and Gay-Straight Alliances to honor the coalition-building work of Dr. King and other civil rights leaders, such as Bayard Rustin, by reaching out to others committed to working toward safe schools for all students.
For those youth who want to be activists for civil rights in their schools, Bayard Rustin has a poignant quote on the protesting, dignity, and humanity:
When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.
[Below the fold: Looking at the demographics of this report - especially the trans-related demographics.]
Being trans, I wanted to know about the trans related demographics and such for the study. Per the report:
• Across all groups, less than a tenth of students identified as transgender.There were somewhat more transgender identified Asian/Pacific Islander students in the survey than other transgender students of color.
And, regarding individual interviews highlighted in the report:
A total of four groups, ranging from 3 to 6 participants, and one individual interview were conducted, for a total of 13 participants. Data was collected between October 2007 and April 2008. Eight participants were Latino/a, two were African American, and three were biracial or multiracial. With regard to gender identity, seven identified as male, three as female, one as transgender, one as genderqueer, and one as "feminine." Five participants identified their sexual orientation as bisexual, five as gay, two as lesbian, and one as pansexual. Eight participants were in the 12th grade, three participants were in the 10th grade, and one was in the 11th grade at the time of the study. Participants' age ranged from 15 to 19 years.
And, regarding contacting trans youth for this particular study:
Furthermore, the MySpace advertisements for the survey were sent only to 13 to 18 year-olds who identified on their MySpace profile that they were lesbian, gay, or bisexual and thus, LGB students of color who were not comfortable identifying their sexual orientation in this manner would not have received the advertisement about the survey through MySpace, nor would transgender students of color who did not identify as LGB.
And...
[N]ot all youth whose gender identity or gender expression is outside of cultural norms may experience themselves as, or identify as, transgender or even have the resources to understand what being transgender means. Our data may not reflect the experiences of these students, who may also be more isolated and without the same access to resources as the transgender students of color in our survey.
I appreciate that they made a good efforts to make this a fully inclusive survey, and recognize the difficulty in collecting data about trans youth. However, if in the future GLSEN wants to contact trans youth about their student experiences, they should contact the folk who run the forum True Selves, a forum specifically for younger transsexual and/or transgender people -- people who are or want to be actively transitioning in some way. Finding transyouth isn't as hard as it may first appear, although finding transyouth of color may be a little more difficult.
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Protestors turn their backs on Warren. They were escorted out. Megachurch mega-homophobia purpose-driven Pastor Rick Warren soiled the Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative service outside Ebenezer Baptist Church today, on what would have been the civil rights leaders 80th birthday. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on the peaceful protest by LGBT rights activists outside the house of worship.
Gathering at the corner of Jackson Street and Auburn Avenue, they hoisted signs declaring: "We still have a dream: Equality." And they chanted: "Gay, straight, black or white, we demand our civil rights."What did Warren say to those attending the event? He took to the podium and said "This means more to me" [than the inauguration]. Other comments:..."Rick Warren is not a voice of unity or equality," said Jeff Schade, director of GLBTATL, which stands for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Atlanta.
The gay community, meanwhile, is also angry with President-elect Barack Obama for choosing Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration on Tuesday.
Kristin Cole, a spokeswoman for Warren, said the pastor would not comment before the inauguration. Cole, however, confirmed Warren's church believes "homosexuality is a sin" and that he urged his parishioners to support Proposition 8 in California, which amended the state constitution to ban gay marriage. At the same time, Cole pointed to Warren's work helping HIV patients in the United States and Africa.
Isaac Farris Jr., president of the King Center, introduced Warren at Ebenezer and urged critics to listen to the pastor. The center invited Warren to speak at Ebenezer last May, long before the Obama controversy erupted, Farris said last month. He was chosen, Farris said, partly because of his efforts to help solve social problems, including poverty.
Warren, known for preaching in Hawaiian shirts, wore a yellow tie and blue shirt beneath a dark suit.I guess that doesn't apply to the homos; Rick clearly wasn't thinking about love when he worked his tush off to remove the civil rights of married lesbian and gay couples with Prop 8. Coretta Scott King would be appalled at this affront to her hard work in support of LGBT equality.He leaned on the message that has brought him to the forefront of evangelical Christianity in America, telling the crowd they needed to be open to be used by God, just as King was in his way and in his time.
...God's love, he said, "is unconditional, it is everlasting ... when you know that love, it takes the hurt right out of you. It takes the anger out of you."
"How did Dr. Martin Luther King manage to not shout back at the segregationists that called him every name in the book? It was the love of God," Warren said.
He did not directly address the same-sex marriage issue.
The Georgia Public Broadcasting News blog has photos of protestors who made it inside the church, shouting "Rick Warren is a bigot, Rick Warren is a bigot."
Photos: REUTERS/Tami Chappell
Hat tip, Charles Merrill.
Via Leah McElrath Renna @ HuffPost:
Coming on the heels of the controversy caused by selection of Rick Warren to deliver the Invocation at the Inauguration, the omission of the prayer delivered by openly-gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson from the broadcast of the pre-Inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial is creating a controversy of its own.I just received a statement from the Obama camp/Presidential Inaugural Committee:In a conversation with this writer, Jeff Cusson, Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs for HBO, confirmed that HBO was not involved in the decision to move Bishop Robinson's remarks to a time prior to the beginning of the actual broadcast:
"HBO had no involvement in the scheduling of those who appeared as part of the televised event. You'll have to talk to PIC about all of the scheduling decisions. We had a set broadcast time and went forth accordingly."
"We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson's invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday's program. We regret the error in executing this plan - but are gratified that hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the mall heard his eloquent prayer for our nation that was a fitting start to our event," said PIC communications director Josh Earnest.Take that for what it's worth. At least both parties know this was a f*ck up worthy of the fallout.
Bishop Robinson was on NPR's Talk of the Nation today. The audio, according to the web site, will be up around 6PM ET.
UPDATE from Leah:
There are reports that HBO will include the prayer when they rebroadcast the show and that some clips from the Lincoln Memorial event, including Bishop Robinson's prayer, will be played on the Mall prior to the swearing in ceremony.
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