I am a student, partner, daughter and a friend. I teach trauma-informed yoga to adults who seek to find peace within themselves. I am a Ghanaian-American and a queer woman of color.
I am also a graduate student studying to become a mental health counselor, and I believe Black Mental Health is a national crisis.
I have regularly attended therapy for years to manage my own mental health and firmly believe that the right therapist has the capacity to change someone’s life for the better. Likewise, an incompetent therapist or medical professional has the capacity to deter someone from seeking professional help completely.
Even with reliable health insurance and proximity to care, I can provide countless examples of instances in which my concerns have been dismissed by medical professionals and mental health providers. The LGBTQ+ community is not impervious to instances of racism.
Historically, those most visible within our community have been cisgender, white and male. Women of color have been systematically overlooked throughout the LGBTQ+ movement, which is just now beginning to shift.
As a queer woman of color, I have faced discrimination from many sides. I have been met with racism within LGBTQ+ communities and deep-seeded homophobia within the Black community. At functions held by my local LGBTQ+ organizations, I am often one of a handful of Black people amid hundreds. I have been mistakenly called the name of a similar-looking person of color, by means of a Freudian slip. I have been mistaken for an event server. I have been grossly objectified or otherwise ignored within spaces deemed “safe” by the LGBTQ+ community.
What happens within the LGBTQ+ community with concern to racism, sexism and socio-economic differences reflects what is happening in the world on a larger scale. Today’s racism is more muted than it once was, but still just as harmful. It appears in the form of micro-aggressions; offhanded comments, looks or poorly timed jokes. It perpetuates as those who see it happening say or do nothing to intervene. While we like to believe we would do the right thing in the moment, the reasons we do not are culturally and deeply ingrained.
We are conditioned to distrust systems of power because our nation’s law enforcement, government and healthcare were not originally designed with us in mind. When I say “we,” I mean both Black and brown communities as well as the LGBTQ+ community. This is certainly an area in which both communities’ needs intersect.
Communities of color have historically experienced considerable barriers in accessing mental health services. In addition to challenges regarding access, deep cultural stigma within communities of color discourage many from seeking the help they may need. Black Americans are at odds with decades of intergenerational trauma caused by racism, police brutality, mass incarceration and the silence of our government at our cries of pain.
In addition to slavery and Jim Crow laws, race-based exclusion from health care, education and social and economic resources have created the socio-economic disparities. Black and brown communities largely approach the promise of mental health care with suspicion – and for good reason. History is littered with examples of medical and mental health establishments taking advantage of our community’s most vulnerable at a time when we were considered less than human.
The Tuskegee Experiments in 1932 are one example, beginning in Alabama when there was no known treatment for syphilis. Under the promise of free health care, 600 Black men were originally enrolled in the project, the majority of which were sharecroppers who had never visited a doctor and looked forward to medical care.
The men were deceived by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), who disguised ineffective measures as treatment. Over the course of 40 years, PHS injected a control group of nearly 400 men with syphilis with the purpose of studying the effects of its untreated progression.
Those who were infected were not informed of their diagnosis, nor were they treated for complications including mental illness, blindness, deafness and heart disease. When the study’s details went public in 1972, it was promptly shut down – but by this time, hundreds of men had died and countless others had unknowingly transmitted the disease. This is just one example amid dozens of similar U.S. experiments.
In order to meet the needs of the Black and brown communities, we need culturally competent medical professionals, mental health counselors and social workers. We need providers who believe us, providers who hear and respond to our needs. We need providers who do not gaslight or accuse us of not doing enough to help ourselves.
Black mental health matters at a time when we are on the cusp of great change as a nation. This is an emotionally taxing time for people of color, who are asked to answer questions and provide book recommendations to those who have had the privilege of remaining largely ignorant of our experiences until now. Please be mindful of our needs in your quest for information.
Being an ally to any marginalized group is not easy. It requires an open heart and an open mind. It asks one to unlearn what they have been taught and be humble in the quest for new information. Being a competent ally is not something one can achieve and there is no gold star certificate for being an excellent one. Being an ally is a lifelong journey of learning. Allyship should come from a place of “we” rather than “I.”
We must continue to educate one another and keep an open dialogue if we are to collectively generate lasting change within systems of government, health care and law enforcement. We must VOTE at a local level and remain abreast of important legislation. We must sustain the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement. While we cannot turn back time, we can learn from past mistakes in an attempt to create a better world for all.
Grace Korley is a lifelong activist and volunteer with Sarasota’s Harvey Milk Festival, where she is collaborating to bring greater visibility to LGBTQ+ people of color. She lives in Winter Park and is working toward a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.
Hear from more Black, LGBTQ voices throughout Central Florida and Tampa Bay in Watermark’s full Black Lives Matter feature.
