Happy Kwanzaa Black Trans Style-Nia

TransGriot Note:   On each night of the Kwanzaa celebration this year, I'm going to write about each one of those principles and explain how it applies to the chocolate trans community and our cis African descended brothers and sisters.  


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Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Haban gani?    What's the news?    


It's time to light the fifth candle on the Kinara and ponder the fifth principle of the seven celebrated during Kwanzaa.


Nia.   Purpose.   Another of the principles that neatly ties in with what we are seeking to do as African descended transpeople.    'Making our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness'. 

Got that right.    And we needed to get started on that like yesterday.

One of the major problems in the African American trans community has been we are disconnected from our history.   As Dr. Carter G. Woodson stated in 1922,  "The case of the Negro is well taken care of when it is shown how he has far influenced the development of civilization."  

The trans African-American has influenced the development of our community.   The trans African-American has been instrumental in fighting for this community's civil rights with the Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit In, Lady Java's work in Los Angeles to take down the odious Rule Number 9, Stonewall Rebellion veterans such as Miss Major, and Marsha P. Johnson's contributions to shape the nascent trans rights movement being prima facie evidence of that.

We are not only emerging from the shadows, but we recognize in this decade and for decades to come, we must live up to the nia principle.   

We need to get to work as soon as possible building a FUBU trans community that reflects and respects our history, our values and our traditions and allows us to determine our political destiny in order to close ranks and make ourselves stronger.

It's something chocolate transpeople have needed to do for a long time, especially since it has become crystal clear that the white run trans one doesn't want to work and play well with non white trans others. 

So yes, it's time to in conjunction within our African American family to build community together that helps lift us up as full fledged partners, and restores our people and the chocolate trans community to our traditional greatness.