Justice Roe Williams on the Black Trans Experience

I was a teenager in the ‘80s and I remember feeling a deep hatred of myself for being Black and poor living in the Projects on Virginia Avenue in Atlantic City New Jersey. They used to call it Mini Las Vegas. I thought that I was condemned to living a life always struggling to have “Good Times” or  just trying to figure out  “What’s Happening” and why I felt invisible and dehumanized. In school I was pushed aside and told that I was not smart, I couldn’t write and that I would not amount to much—I never saw myself outside of these ideas and I believed them as my truth along with what I learned about being Black. These ideas about Blackness made me hate myself and throughout this time I worked hard to erase myself. 

I grew up during a transitional period of the Black community—a shifting from the activism of the ‘60s and ‘70s through the Civil Rights movement of the South with many nonviolent actions led by youth activists who organized sit ins at the Woolworth in Greensboro: marching towards a dream of freedom with Martin Luther King; eradicating white aggression and violence “By any means necessary” with Malcolm X; Power to the people with the Black Panther Party who created breakfast programs for inner city youth and built stronger Black communities across the nation and abroad using the 10 point platform. Although I didn’t learn much of this history until I went to college, I felt the tension in the air slowly dissipate and change to grief, despair, and fear of ending up dead or locked up for speaking openly and authentically. I felt this constricting energy but knew that I was more and I deserved better. College opened me up to a radical way of living and thinking about Blackness and my body that helped me to find my voice.  

During the ‘80s I remember hearing about Mayor Goode, a Black mayor that authorized  the bombing of the MOVE family, Black activists who followed the teachings of John Africa and organized in communities across Philadelphia. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I witnessed attacks against Black, Brown and Indigenous freedom fighters who ended up being killed by the police like Huey Newton, or locked up for life like Mumia Abu Jamal—both Black Panthers. I watched the state sanctioned killings and the imprisonment of more and more of our Black leaders and freedom fighters, the dumping of drugs into Black neighborhoods in major cities across that U.S., while CowBoy Reagan told us to do our pull ups and “Just Say No” to DRUGS. The ‘80s told and taught me that Black doesn’t matter. I felt this and I conformed to this, thinking in my head about the history I was taught. Remembering that I was born a slave in a society that still doesn’t view me as a whole person. Not just in the separating of my identity but viewed as savage, criminal, not worthy of the promise of freedom owed to all citizens. I was not a citizen.

I erased the pieces of me that felt delusional with ideas about my body that didn’t make sense. I felt dysphoria and depression that I learned how to cope with throughout time. When I was in middle school I learned from the community I was in that this otherness defined for us by whiteness was a white problem. I learned that being gay was only for white people and that transness was pathological and also a white problem. At that time, Black folks were not “Queer” or “Trans”—we kept these pieces of ourselves in the closet far out of anyone’s reach. I learned through distancing ideas about my identity that was not attached to Blackness to hate my experience of otherness that I had no language to help me to either understand or explain. I began recognizing more and more trans women of color fighting for Queer rights, fighting for Trans rights very close to home in both NY and Philly as well as watching year by year more Trans women and Black Trans women dying. I began to ask myself what love is when I am hiding in fear while our sisters are always on the front lines fighting for all of our Trans bodies and lives.

I needed to define my love through action!!!! I worked to love myself through the fear of coming out. Fear of losing family, friends, the activists that I have been fighting hand in hand with for years. I was afraid of losing the only community that I had around me at that time. A community that did not see my Transness, that silenced and actively neglected the issues that attacked my Black Trans Body. I needed to find a community or a collective with a shared experience of Transness so that I could understand my own experience. What about Love? Love is being my whole self no matter where I am and standing by my sisters as we fight this fight for freedom and Black Trans Pride. During my years in college I began to learn more about the LGBT community. This was before we recognized all the identities under the Queer Umbrella. Even then it was the ‘90s and being Trans wasn’t viewed as it is today—even those who identified as lesbian and gay didn’t really accept the bisexual and trans identity even though we were all grouped together as a community who are connected. I didn’t meet any Black-identified Trans folks until the early 2000s and in many ways I continued to distance myself while fighting for Black Liberation while watching the deaths of Black Trans women increase year after year.

In my many years of activism, I turned that fear that felt more like anger and resentment in my belly into action. I lived so many years of my life wearing the mask of coping, conditioning myself to be OK because being Black should always take priority over all my identity. They would say I was Black first. I believed that these movements were steering me towards freedom and so I was always down to ride until I just couldn’t take the ways that I was silenced, and used to fight for someone else’s agenda that never included freedom for my Black Trans body. As a Black Trans Person I have faced erasure, oppression and violence from society and from those that I love and trust.  Living in a society that forces us to distance ourselves from our bodies and each other has created mistrust, anger, and a deep sadness towards our greater community. I see the fire in the eyes of my Black Non-Binary, Trans siblings because of the constant experiences of marginalization, disparity, and injustice. 

This year I want us as a community to find a deeper connection to self and to each other. I want us to learn that we are history and we are here today because of it. I want us to remember to tap into community and that our lives are worth living through all of the intersections that make us whole. We can not be erased and we no longer have to be invisible. Loving ourselves means rooting ourselves in authenticity and having grace when we have to wear the mask. The complexity of fighting for justice is just as complex as the ways that we experience oppression. There is no perfection in it—it’s a space where we bring our bodies as they are and have the courage to share with those who want to amputate us and throw us away. It means looking at ourselves as something that doesn’t need to be fixed or contained. I believe that in all of my life’s challenges and experiences that I find strength in my own vulnerability. My ability to share all of who I am unapologetically, with less care about how the world perceives me is what I want for all Black Trans Lives. We are Black Trans and stronger than this world can even imagine. Remember this every day and take PRIDE!