No excuses for why these two are being posted together on either side of a weekend. It is what it is.

Childhood

Racism is an Adverse Childhood Experience. They stack up to a variety of long-term consequences, to health and long-term addiction rates. Which sucks. But I think it’s also important that statistics aren’t destiny for an individual, and we can also do better as a society.

One of the reading options included a Resilience Score. Resilience is a complicated word, with a disaster background in part because structural factors – including racism – play such a part.

LGBTQ

The complications and nuances of Black identity interacting with LGBTQ identity are something I’ve read more about than most of the topics we’ve covered, because I read more social commentary on LGBTQ issues in my downtime. The Stonewall movie did everyone a disservice by having a white man as the face of it: it was trans* sex workers of color who started it. Specifically Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. And this is one of the places where an intersection can complicate things in unexpected ways: one of the stories that makes the rounds on tumblr in the lead-up to National Coming Out Day is the essay by a gay Indian man that talked about coming out not being the same for everyone and the fact that he lost his home culture when he came out in a rejection that cut deeply and broadly.

One of the readings for today talked about how LGBT workers of color end up facing multiple marginalizations.