Inequality in Equal Spaces

Amed S. Mullins
December 20, 2019

11:11 AM PST

The San Diego LGBT Center is as out of touch with its Black members as someone watching a foreign film without subtitles. First and foremost, when in doubt about which foods to serve at a predominantly Black event, go with neutral pizza. It’s the smorgasbord or ice cream of large volume meals for meetings, there’s a little something (usually) for everyone. Personally, I did not think soul food was an appropriate choice for a place that has apparently lacked soul for quite some time. I have only been in San Diego going on four years, but I heard one gentlemen remark that this crowd, amongst whom I had the honor of participating in, was the most Black people the Center has seen inside its doors in over 47 years. While there were round tables of Blacks enjoying the stereotypical soul food the Center thought appropriate for its Black patrons, a decision like most decisions concerning Black matters, was most likely made without consulting a single Black person. I digress­–While there were tables spread out across the room of novel Black faces,  if we were all to have been seated in rows, we would not have covered even half of the large events space. That is to say that there were very few Black people in attendance, and those few were the most that had been seen in almost over 47 years.

In other words, this town hall should’ve been given the sensitivity and care deserving of such a momentous occasion. An occasion where important personnel were in present, a moderator facilitated meaningful dialogue amongst participants, and the meeting given the same levels of preparation as any other event would’ve received. Instead, groups were forced to come together in order to share questionnaires, and then given a highly unreasonable time to respond to even one of the five or so prompts. I believe we were given two full minutes. Moreover, there wasn’t any kind of question and response format in place whatsoever. The Black Town Hall descended into chaos while the Center representatives sat back and essentially smiled as the house burned. It also didn’t help that an already fragmented and socially neglected Black San Diego was not prepared to talk about its pain and suffering. Most stood up and told stories of blatant, discrimination that had generally been experienced  to some degree by every Black person in the room. Stories that have become the rudimentary norm in the world’s biggest influencer, America. Let the generations of psychological pain sink in for a moment. Others spoke truths about the past and a dire need for a generation willing to fight as hard as our strong Black leaders of the civil rights era, a lot of whom would still be with us if not for perpetual white violence. A small few made attempts to paint the Center as a welcoming place. Whether this is in fact the case, or these individuals suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, one simply cannot say.

The night ended just as it began: A lot of hurt and unresolved issues laid strewn about, intermingled in with the soul food. Whites perplexed and shut down by their dystopian ideas of diversity and inclusion being challenged. The shock of having to be open to the idea of unfairness when it is not a relatable concept to those who always benefitted from things being systematically kept this way. To add injury to insult, the night also brought about the dismal news that the Center would be furloughing a second meeting concerning the town hall until further notice. A terrible decision which has the detrimental impact of causing such a much-needed movement to lose a large amount of much-needed support. As of now, the follow-up to the fall town hall is scheduled for January of 2020.

The LGBT Center of San Diego conspicuously allowed for a Black movement, opportunity for  change, dialogue, opportunity, equality, and true progress to be calendared out for months. In my opinion, this is tangible evidence showing that the Center has does not have any true intentions of helping the Black Community here in San Diego. Or, at minimum, a strong desire to keep the symptoms alive in hopes of distracting people from the realization of a cure. The Black community should be demanding fair access to resources, including jobs, and making the Center a place where it won’t take another 47 years to assemble a small group of Black individuals. I spoke at the town hall advocating for vocational and job placement opportunities for everyone, especially LGBT Black youth who are continually serving as the faces homelessness and a disproportionate number of arrests in the city. I also suggested having more POC inclusive groups and diversity training for the staff. All of these suggestions appear to have fallen on deaf ears because it wasn’t until I personally was a victim of the Center’s neglect that I realized how important it is for things to change. And this is not to say that everything about the Center is inherently good or inherently bad.

To reiterate, the aim and objective of this piece is not to simply bash the Center, but to raise awareness about things going on within the community. It is a cry for help in hopes of getting other people to care about a social issue that doesn’t necessarily impact them directly, but has dire consequences for everyone. The continual neglect, abuse, and exploitation of Black people (We are still being traded into slavery in 2019 on our own continent to place that claim into context) is how we got to the point of having Donald Trump as president. I want to vomit every time I hear people speak about being disgusted over this fact because all he does is serve as a greater manifestation of the hatred and racism existing amongst the American people. Rather than being angry at his appointment to office, where is the outrage over the nation’s retrogression back into slavery, a state that the country never truly left? Police across the nation still declaring open season on little Black boys and girls? Black trans folks dying left and right? Children dying in ICE detention camps? But if only we were truly outraged, then we would’ve demanded something be done a long time ago, and since all of America to busy being asleep at the wheel, our country’s leaders have had to wipe the drool from our faces with this proffered impeachment hearing “hankie”. And please believe that it wasn’t done for the benefit of the American people.

He has always been above the law. His creation of a hostile workplace via misogyny, overt racism (i.e., “shithole” countries remark, Trump’s role in the Central Park Five trial, advocating attacks against four non-white congresswomen at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, his affiliation with domestic white terrorist organizations), etc.), embezzling money away from his own publicly-funded charity intended to support veterans groups, his affinity for dictators, an appalling response to the Hurricane Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico, and the list just goes on...To bring this all home, if this is what is happening at the federal level, then let it come as no surprise that this kind of behavior is going on inside people’s communities. All of this being based on the popular legal fiction that governments and communities are a reflections of its people. It is time that we demand change and better from these institutions and contemplating the creation of our on in times of extreme neglect rather than waiting for change that has a historical record of never being within reach without the implementation of self-help, especially for the Black community.

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