NELGBTC 2016: Day 1- Race and Racism in the LGBTQ community Part 1
So yesterday was the first day of the 2016 North Eastern LGBT Conference! It’s my first time going to NELGBTC (and it’s my first conference too!), so I will be blogging my experience for the entire weekend.
Things started out pretty slow. Registration was from noon to 9 PM, but the Kick-off actually happened at 6:30 PM (it was supposed to be 6 PM, but dat NY traffic!). There was a Pre-Conference Forum on Race in the LGBTQ community from 2 PM to 4 PM, so I thought, hey, I am a person of color and I’m LGBTQ, so why not go? And so I went and became immensely uncomfortable with the whole experience because hey, why not?
It was a forum on Race in the LGBTQ community, and of course, since most of the people there were university students, we talked about race in our universities. One of the great things about this year’s conference was that it was hosted by my university, so (yay!) I didn’t have to go anywhere! But many people came from different SUNY’s and universities in NY, and it was very compelling to listen to people’s experience with race not only in the LGBTQ community, but also across universities. And it was great, for most of the forum! Some people discussed how their schools advertised themselves as diverse to prospective freshmen, but failed to meet expectations once students became matriculated. Another person talked about how clubs that are meant to promote diversity and the culture of minorities actually receive less funding than clubs that did not.
It was nearing the end of the forum, and someone brought up how it sometimes seems like the “war”, so to speak, was considered over with marriage equality, like we’re expected to take marriage equality as the ultimate win. And they went on to say how we as a community can’t stop with marriage equality, and there are many issues that we still have to address, such as race within the LGBTQ community and identities that experience a lot of erasure within the LGBTQ community, such as asexuality. As an asexual of color, I cannot tell you how unbelievably happy I was to hear asexualty be mentioned (There’s a workshop later on asexuality and aromanticism either today or tomorrow; more on that later!). I guess there’s a bright side to all the erasure; it’s a crowning moment when your identity is recognized as relevant and significant. I didn’t manage to catch the person’s name, but four for you, NELGBTC-goer!
I’m actually really tired, and I’m sensing that this post is getting way too long, so I’ll post more about this later. Forgive me for leaving this on a cliffhanger, but TL;DR: the first day of the NELGBTC is over, and people of color and asexuals exist in the LGBTQ community!
