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Written by Marcelle Richards, Contributing writer
Mar 11, 2010
With the help of a $2,500 grant from New Harvest Foundation, awarded in early 2010, Outreach in Madison is increasing its support and services for queer people of color.
Program director Harry Straitz is working with community centers and media outlets and launching its own initiatives to increase the visibility and awareness about people of color in the LGBTQ community.
Outreach board vice president and volunteer Nilhan Gunasekera, who has Sri Lankan roots, said queer people of color face a double minority status. “One of the goals is to help us explore what are some of the barriers of our places being welcome to (queer) people of color,” Gunasekera said.
Straitz said the barriers include the geographic location of the center on the near East Side of Madison as well as perceptions about the center itself.
“I think a lot of people, if they know anything about Outreach, it’s a distant white place (to them),” he said.
Straitz described Outreach’s diversification game plan as a “two-prong approach,” incorporating executive and grassroots outreach to increase services and programming geared toward an audience of queer people of color.
A Black History Month reading night is one example of the types of programming that Outreach has hosted to promote diversification. Posters celebrating the history and contributions of many different ethnic groups are also being posted for educational purposes, and Web materials will soon be translated into Hmong and Spanish.
Those seeking face-time with others who experience a double minority status can now meet as a group called “Queer Shades of Color” at Outreach on the first and third Mondays of every month. Gunasekera is facilitating, and he encourages interested people to join and share in discussions about how their race and sexuality interplay.
Caissa Casarez, a UW-Madison communication arts student, is excited about the prospect of having a space to connect with others who feel both apart from and a part of the queer community and ethnic communities. Casarez, whose ethnic background is African American, Mexican and white, said that queer people of color – herself included – feel double-stereotyped.
Casarez said she is interested in “meeting different kinds of people, sharing their stories, sharing my story and see(ing) how we can outreach to other people to show there are queer people of color.”
On a large scale, Outreach will work with media to increase visibility about its services. Since queer resources and materials are rare at most community centers, Straitz said Outreach also will work on partnerships with other centers to make materials on queer resources more widely available.
Outreach will continue hosting tables at ethnic festivals, such as the Triangle ethnic fest, Fiesta Hispana, and Juneteenth celebrations, to further strengthen ties to the ethnic communities many queer people embrace as a part of their identities.
“We’ll know we’ve arrived when the people in front of the table look like the people behind the table,” Straitz said.
Both Gunasekera and Straitz see the grant as a way to kick start these efforts, and will continue to apply for more funding.
“We are under no illusion that it is an easy task. It’s going to take many years. We see this as just the initial start up,” Gunasekera said, adding, “the idea of diversification has to be a paradigm shift.”
