Yes Sister Friend: Why LGBTQ Young Women of Color and Allies Need Support

In middle school, I was suspended for two weeks for pretending to re-enact a shooting scene from a movie we had just finished watching in class. At 12, I was unfamiliar with the terms “zero-tolerance” and “school-to-prison,” but I understood my punishment had to do with something bigger than my action and that it was fundamentally unfair.

For the past few weeks, I’ve had the privilege of engaging and sharing my push-out story in consciousness-raising discussions with a group of LGBTQ young women of color and their female identified allies in Yes Sister Friend (YSF), an organization founded by Miami-based social worker Alina Serrano and supported by Alliance for GLBTQ Youth and Advancement Project partner, Power U Center for Social Change(Power U).

At its core, YSF provides an open, safe and affirming space for young people. While this is not a novel idea, the work being done in Miami is innovative because of its focus on trans and cisgender young women of color who are often overlooked even within the school-to-prison work. This is particularly heartbreaking since we know that girls of color are extremely vulnerable to pushout. Nationally, girls of color are more likely to face education barriers than their white counterparts. For example:

• Black girls are six times more likely to get suspended than their white counterparts;
• Hispanic girls are particularly vulnerable to dropping out, with 16 percent of Hispanic girls not graduating from high school;
• Black girls are the fastest growing segment of America’s juvenile justice system.

Further, while national statistics on the state of LGBTQ and gender non-conforming girls are sparse, a recent report by Gay Straight Alliance show that LGBTQ students of color and gender nonconforming youth are frequently blamed for their own victimization and targeted for harsh and biased school discipline.

This is why YSF is most important.

These discussions solidified for me the need for inclusivity in our school-to-prison pipeline work and a better understanding of how push-out looks when you are Latina, gender non-conforming, LGBTQ, or Black. From School Resource Officers (SRO) harassing and flirting with girls making them feel so uncomfortable that they stay home, to sexist remarks from coaches, to homophobic taunts by classmates, push-out for young women of color is so much more than suspensions and expulsions.

This is why Trans and cisgender young women of color need to know that they too, matter. That they too are loved and that their lives are valued. I look forward to supporting Power U and YSF because I truly believe that what is happening in Miami every Saturday should be replicated communities across America.

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To learn more about YSF and the school-to-prison pipeline campaign in Miami, visitwww.poweru.org. You can also connect with Power U on Twitter and Facebook.