THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Taking on the topic were Kim Hunt, executive director of the Pride Action Tank, and Zach Stafford, contributing writer for The Guardian.

Director of Community and Cultural Programs for the Center Andrew Fortman served as moderator for an evening that proved as lively as it was insightful in reaching what Fortman described as the overarching goal of both the Center's new chat series and its new performance-based Limelight series—to help audiences "get closer to movers, shakers, leaders, visionaries and artists in this amazing city that are impacting LGBTQ communities."

Opening with the statement that an individual's racial identity impacts their LGBTQ identity, Fortman asked Hunt and Stafford for their reflections upon being Black, queer and invisible.

"I didn't see myself in the media. I didn't see myself in LGBT media. I didn't see myself in Black media," Stafford replied. "I saw myself rendered invisible to the world and I wasn't willing to let that happen anymore. As queer, Black people, [we] have to fight to be seen whether it's in a bar, whether it's in a gay-rights movement such as marriage."

Hunt noted that the Chicago-based nonprofit Affinity Community Services—where she served as executive director before moving on to helm the Pride Action Tank—was created to address the problem of Black people feeling invisible within the broader LGBTQ and Black communities.

"The same is true with the work I am doing now through the Pride Action Tank," she stated. "A lot of that work is focused on the most marginalized within the LGBTQ community—those voices that have been ignored or trampled over in the rush for acceptance on many levels."

When Fortman wondered whether there had been a recent cultural shift in Black representation, Hunt noted that many Chicago and national youth-driven movements, collectives and groups like Black Lives Matter are led by Black, queer women.

"They have a very queer and feminist lens that they do their work through," she said.

"Currently we are seeing a lot of efforts to make ourselves seen," Stafford agreed. However he also expressed concern that the Black, queer leadership of such burgeoning movements is viewed as a distraction and not openly discussed.

"I think that's a moment of celebration," he countered. "It says so much about what it means to be Black and queer that we are engaging the police."

"We have to take our work out of the LGBTQ silos we have been in as a movement," Hunt cautioned. "What a lot of folks don't realize is that it is actually people of color who are much more likely to identify as LGBTQ. We have data which shows this. We all bring all of our identities to this work."

"We live in a culture that is built on Black people's lives," Stafford said. "There is really not an excuse to [not] think about Blackness when you think about queerness."

Of particular import was Fortman's question concerning racism within the LGBTQ community.

"Clearly there is racism within the LGBTQ community," Hunt replied after noting the resilience of Black, queer individuals. "It's a microcosm of a larger, societal issue that America has never addressed fully when it comes to race and when it comes to Black people in particular—the history of slavery and how that has manifested itself, in many ways, in terms of all the outcomes you can think of; health, economic and all of that for Black people in general. The wealth of this country was built on the backs of slaves."

"There is the immediate assumption, from many people, that Black folks are way more homophobic than anybody else," Hunt added. "That's just not true. There's homophobia in any community. I think there's a silence about queerness in the Black community that is, in many ways, more profound."

Hunt stressed the importance of education. She recalled many instances when it was needed during the push for marriage equality.

"On the one hand, we had to educate the folks who were initially working on marriage around how 'you really have to think about the messaging if you want Black people to get involved with this'," she said. "We've got a lot of issues to deal with and marriage was not high on the list. It wasn't [high on the list] until we started talking about marriage as an economic justice issue given that our society is very biased towards [it]."

"Marriage united all of us queers," Stafford said. "Then you started seeing funding dropping for nonprofits to do more work. You see conversations stopping. You see all these religious freedom acts passing. You see the momentum's dying. The people most affected by heinous crimes happening are people of color or trans people. It's ironic and sad that, right as marriage was passing, you see transgender violence and reported homicides skyrocket."

Fortman closed the evening with personal questions delving into Hunt and Stafford's lives from a "first and last" perspective with the idea of improving a feeling of accessibility between two dynamic leaders and the community they serve.