Brittany Twitty is a natural, which I mean in a general sense. We had never actually spoken before when we met over Zoom, but interviewing her felt more like having lunch with a friend than a work obligation. As a social work intern at the Campaign for Southern Equality, I was interviewing Brittany about her support for and advocacy of LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination protections, but our discussion encapsulated so much more than just the importance of local LGBTQ protections.
Brittany is lively and generous in conversation, connecting complex subjects in an accessible way that invites collaboration. I knew it was going to be a good conversation within the first few minutes of what ended up being an hour and half long hang out, which flew by. Before I even got into the interview questions, Brittany brought up classism, respectability politics, and the educational gatekeeping we see as social workers in training.
While we’re both students working to get our master’s degrees, Brittany arrived at graduate school with a Bachelor’s in Social Work already in hand. That level of education should have earned her a position at any number of advocacy organizations, but not in the Eastern NC university town where she did her undergrad. She told me about her experience after graduation: “I found that the kind of macro jobs I wanted, like in community organizing, would love to have my labor and expertise—so long as I didn’t expect a livable wage.” Even if she could have lived on the low pay, entry-level social work jobs were inaccessible for BSWs due to prohibitive hours or licensing requirements. It was frustrating for Brittany, but not a total surprise. The barriers she ran up against in her activism efforts at University of North Carolina-Wilmington (UNCW) were an early indicator of Wilmington’s conservative influence on social advocacy work.
“Nothing Gets Better If You Won’t Look at It.”
In 2015, galvanized by the nationwide growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, Brittany and her classmates took to UNCW’s digital message boards to process racial injustice with their community. They decided to form a local student BLM chapter, but one by one each department refused to sponsor the club. Professors said they supported the decision in their views but wouldn’t support it in action. Meanwhile, chalked notes on the pavement across the campus in support of BLM were power-washed away overnight, even as less controversial messages were left up.
As a social work student, Brittany turned to her departmental advisor for support. She thought if any department would get behind this effort, it would be the one whose national accreditation board requires a commitment to racial justice. But her advisor told her to drop it, saying “not now, not here” and that the social work department wouldn’t “stick its neck out” to sponsor a student-run Black Lives Matter chapter. Acknowledging the problem of racism, nationally or on campus, was too much risk for the majority-white faculty to take on.
Unfortunately, obstacles like these weren’t new in Brittany’s experiences as a queer woman of color. Being bisexual and biracial means she has felt erasure and stigma her whole life, including having to defend her queer identity with one side of her family while asserting her racial identity with another. Born and raised in Appalachia, her racial identity wasn’t something she had in common with many peers: nearly 93% of Polk County’s 20,000 residents are white.
An important distinction in Brittany’s story is that despite her hometown’s narrow demographics, she experienced so much more vicious, hurtful racism in a larger and more racially diverse part of the state. She explained that people in Polk County are willing to acknowledge difference and talk about it, while Wilmington’s tourist economy relies on covering and ignoring the violent history shared across this region and this country. Hiding problems doesn’t solve anything, and “nothing gets better if you don’t look at it.”
“NDOs tell allies that it’s OK to show up publicly for marginalized communities. … It makes you feel like your community really wants you there, and they’re going out of their way to say that.” – Brittany Twitty
NDOs in Support of Support
Brittany reminded me that it’s understandable when some people are too afraid of the social consequences that might come with supporting marginalized groups. “People have to worry about their jobs and their families,” she said. She has empathy for individuals and groups, but her understanding stops short of local governments and civic leaders. It’s their job to model inclusivity for everyone else.
That’s the crux of why LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances are so important to Brittany: “NDOs tell allies that it’s OK to show up publicly for marginalized communities. And then we get to rest and lean on our larger communities, because it’s culturally acceptable to take on that work.” She went on to explain that these protections benefit everyone in so many ways, not least in how they prompt LGBTQ people to invest in their wider communities. If a shop has a little rainbow sticker near its door, or a “Y’all Means All” sign, Brittany said, she and her partner are more likely to go inside.
NDOs as Protection and Invitation
Brittany knows from experience that while local protections don’t solve all of the problems that marginalized communities face, they do move the conversation forward. They go a step further than acknowledging discrimination and actually put some action into fixing it. On an emotional level, putting concrete protections into law on state and local levels can make LGBTQ people feel seen and cared for, even though it won’t automatically eliminate every injustice we experience. “It makes you feel like your community really wants you there, and they’re going out of their way to say that,” Brittany said.
Throughout our conversation, Brittany hit on so many Big Truths that stuck with me, but that’s the one that I remember most clearly: that these protections do more than keep LGBTQ people safe from harm. They also explicitly invite us to participate in our communities. They make us feel wanted.
Want to urge your local community to pass LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination protections? Take action with the Campaign for Southern Equality and Equality NC by visiting www.NCisReady.org and using the tools to contact your local leaders.
