Transethnicity Now Officially Reconized By The Tumblr LGBTQ Community
(Home Office) â The popular website Tumblr is the newest flavor picker for todayâs forward thinking and progressive LGBTQ culture. The site and its users have been indispensable for spreading awareness of womenâs rights, slut shaming, transphobia and other topics generally glossed over by our patriarchal society. Now they have helped to propelled yet another discriminated minority into the worldâs spotlight: Transethnicity. National Report was the premier news site to report on these courageous individuals back in December of 2013. It was then that I interviewed one of the first people to be an out-of-the-closet transethnic. Prior to my report, transethnic individuals received little to no support from the LGBTQ community, left to face a lack of understanding and bigotry which dwarfs their transsexual counterparts ten fold. They have faced such slurs as âracistâ, âweeabooâ and even âwiggerâ, in their brave effort to simply be themselves. Their persecutors not realizing that the race these persons most closely identify with is not a choice, but a psychological necessity. Someone who is transethnic or transracial does not identify with the race with which they were born, instead resonating more strongly with a different cultural identity. The individual who I interviewed in my last piece is by all outward appearances a Caucasian male. However, if you were to ask him what race he is most comfortable portraying, he would insist that he is a member of the African American culture. I caught up with âTyrone Jeremiahâ, the central character of my last piece, to inquire his feelings on this new wave of transethnic acceptance. He relayed to me the following: âFirst off, I just want to thank you, Jane, cause you listened to me when no one else would, know what Iâm sayinâ? Thatâs real talk, girl, you are solid. I had started thinkinâ that no one was ever gonna care or understand my troubles. That I was gonna have to travel this lonely road solo, as a one man gang. But the way you believed in me, and pushed to get my story out there, ainât nobody fought for me like that.â In the email he goes on to explain that since the first story was released, he was able to come in contact with a significant amount of others who also felt they had been born as the wrong race. âI started gettinâ all kinds of emails from other people saying they identified with my story, and wanted to talk some more. The messages just kept on cominâ in. Men and women who were tired of hiding who and what they areâ¦ A person of a different race than what they were born. People who just couldnât relate to their parents, and the family members they came up with.â Tyrone tells us that he has created a support group for the people heâs met since achieving notoriety as one of the first white to black transethnics. âI put together a mailing list so all of us people could stay in touch and support each other and promote our hip hop projects. Itâs been an amazing resource since so we have been misunderstood and alienated for the way we were and were not born. Itâs trippy and that makes it all the more important to feel like youâre not alone in this. It makes the negativity we face on a daily basis easier to cope with.â While this journalist is certainly flattered to be considered one of the pioneers in the acknowledgement of transracialism, I realize that racial identity acceptance is so much larger and more important than just one person. There is a long way still towards having transethnicity accepted in the same ways we see with homosexuals and the transgendered. It is my hope that I can merely do my small part in shouldering the cause further down that worthy path.