By Kay Martinez
I’m Afro-Latinx, gender non-conforming, 33, they/them. I was the first Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion at Mazzoni Center. My hire made me the first trans person and Queer or Trans Person of Color (QTPOC) to report to the CEO. How is it possible that, in 2018, no trans people or QTPOC have ever been in senior management positions for Mazzoni Center, the largest LGBT health services provider in Philadelphia, which is a majority Black and Latinx city?
Philly is also the city with the Black and Brown stripes on the LGBT flag. Just as local activists fought to include Black and Brown to “ruin†that beautiful rainbow in 2017, QTPOC at Mazzoni had to fight to design and create my position. The CEO of Mazzoni is a cisgendered heterosexual White passing Latina. The organization had gone through one scandal after another prior to my arrival.
Still, I was excited to join this organization and lead diversity and inclusion efforts, ensuring that the organization was attracting and retaining exemplary staff while also creating opportunities for growth and professional development. I was also expected to assess and make recommendations concerning internal equity and external competitiveness of the organization’s compensation program, and so I believed this position would enable me to enact transformative change. Most Chief Diversity Officer positions out there do not have such wide reaching purview and authority and result in largely tokenizing work, which is why I applied for this role that seemed so dynamic on paper. I sought to create an equity plan to unapologetically center marginalized communities and identities—particularly Black Queer and Trans people.
I realize now that to have a “diversity†person is a no-win situation for QTPOC. Many QTPOC are permitted in predominantly white institutions via diversity or identity focused positions, but as soon as we are perceived to be incompetent, we affirm the stereotype that the bar has to be lowered for Black and Brown people, and if we are competent and confident we will be seen as a threat and neutralized or in my case, terminated.Â
A few weeks ago, I was fired from Mazzoni Center. While I loved the job I signed up for, I believe I was terminated just for trying to do it. My hardships at this organization started on day one as I was consistently misgendered by the CEO in public and in private. Within my first few weeks, other QTPOC staff raised issues of inequity to me which I then tried to raise with the CEO. Two Gay Latino men told me they believed they were not being compensated for their bilingual abilities on the job as white colleagues were. When I raised this issue to the CEO I was told it was “none of my concern†despite it being explicitly in my job description.
A few weeks later, the CEO gave me a dramatically different job description, essentially a demotion that stripped me of the authority I had signed up for. The climate remained hostile and contentious as I tried to do my job but was constantly barred from doing so. Ideas I raised were disregarded, including the need for a comprehensive safety plan regarding protestors at our events. Later I and two other QTPOC were assaulted by a group of christian extremists at the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference which the organization helped organize.
At a Thursday staff meeting following the assault, a Queer Black Woman wanted to read a 3 minute statement she had prepared addressing staff morale, only to have the Cis Het CEO silence her and command the staff to “disperse†so as not to hear the staff person’s statement. Many of us engaged in disobedience that day, and the next day, I and 30 colleagues gathered at lunch time to hear the 3 minute statement and several of us wore t-shirts that said “disperse.†I and another QTPOC person were fired Monday. The legal circumstances regarding my termination are currently under investigation as I have filed complaints pertaining to discrimination, retaliation, and harassment.
Being targeted for termination in the workplace is nothing new for me or for us as Queer Trans Black and Brown people because we are targeted for termination every day in the U.S. Being the first QTPOC to enter this tier of management at this organization speaks volumes to the systemic exclusion preventing QTPOC from obtaining senior leadership in LGBT organizations, and this organization is not alone.
I know so many QTPOC people who try to dim their light so as to not outshine colleagues or supervisors, especially cis white folks. I will not cater to white fragility and therefore, I will always have a larger target on my back. That target became more obvious when I learned that a previous version of my job description (which was thankfully removed by QTPOC at the organization before it was publicly posted) required a “humble yet confident†attitude.
Looking back, I fell for the most dangerous lie perpetuated to Queer Trans Brown and Black people by predominantly Cis White institutions seeking to employ us and tokenize us—the encouragement to “bring your whole self to work.†Maybe you knew this was a lie but I did not. The truth is that we, Queer Trans Brown Black celestial beings in predominantly cis work environments, are not safe.
If your work environment is also predominantly white, you are more unsafe. Even if you are in an “LGBTQ centered†workplace, that acronym doesn’t refer to you or us. It means white cis LGB people, and specifically Gay White Men at that. I wish an Afro-Latinx GNC elder or career mentor could have taught me this, but throughout my career I have been the highest ranking QTPOC in every workplace I have been in, so I have had no one who looked like me to tell me about the road ahead. Â
We are hired by White cis people because they want our Black and Brown gender bending image to throw on their advertisements to give the impression that they are diverse and value inclusion—avant guard even. We are a commodity to them. In addition to exploiting our bodies for their commercial use, they believe our minds can be controlled because we prioritize a steady paycheck over sovereignty and sanity, something even I did before this experience.
They don’t want us to bring our whole selves to work. They want us to be a token and to act accordingly. This is our other duty as assigned. This is why everything we do and say is under vigilant surveillance, in person and on social media, and it has been since the first moment of employment. They watch us to see if at any moment we make cis people, especially white cis people, uncomfortable. It is inevitable that we will make them uncomfortable with our brilliant existence because they have intentionally excluded us from their spaces and now they are forced to be near us.
They want us to be happy and friendly all the time. They want us to explain racism and trans things in the nicest possible way all of the time. Smile back at them when they aggress and oppress us and be the bridge for their education at every moment. We will be on the fast track to diversity and inclusion executive positions at these organizations and institutions if we can tell cis white people that they are all good people who need to work on their unconscious biases to make things better rather than forcing them to acknowledge their active participation and complicity in upholding white supremacy, imperialism and cisheteropatriarchy every day. They love that, but that is a lie I can not perform any longer. Â
Cis people of color are not exempt, and they have also come after me on many occasions to tone police me and target me for termination. Skinfolk who aren’t kinfolk will target you throughout your career if you will not be complacent like them and maintain status quo. Some of them like to claim they were activists back in the day but now they “know how to play the game,†meaning they are trying their best to appease cisgenderism and white supremacy but get in a good quip here and there or bring in that edgy speaker to lead an uncomfortable training every so often.
The crosshairs zero in on us the second we share the slightest bit of frustration with the daily oppression we endure, or if you tell your workplace actual steps they need to take to make the workplace equitable. They don’t want to hear it and even if they do want to implement these steps they will resent you because they didn’t think of it themselves.
The people I have worked with at these organizations never wanted me authentically, and as soon as I started to be my real self and showed signs of autonomy, they came after me as they will come after you—especially if you dare to exist in your truth and act anything other than grateful. I hope by reading my story you do not believe this lie and you can enter these workplaces with a clearer understanding about what it is and what they want from if you enter them at all.
By recognizing the unwritten rules and expectations for what they are, we can better navigate these spaces or leave them altogether to build our own.
We deserve to be safe and to be able to express ourselves freely. We can no longer accept that this is the way our workplaces must be. I used to believe I could just infiltrate these spaces and endure harm while changing them from the inside and finding all of the low hanging fruit. Now I see that denying my existence for the comfort of others changes me more than it changes them. With this new realization, I feel scared for my future sometimes, but I have also never felt better. Perhaps this is freedom.
Suggested Readings:
Eliana Buenrostro, “Post-Non-Profit Survival: How Unemployment Benefits Improved My Mental Health“, Rest for Resistance, 2018.
Samantha Allen, “Workplaces need to prepare for the Non-Binary Future“, The Daily Beast, 2018
Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence in to Langauge and Action“, 1977
Kay Martinez loves being in community with Queer and Trans Black and Brown folks and speaking their truth. Kay has an M.A. in higher education and was previously the Director, Women’s Center at Tufts University and Associate Director, Diversity & First Generation Office, Stanford University.
