Lance Hicks Works to Change Perceptions Through Media
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The need for more active roles for LGBT important to me to build relationships with “I came out so young and I had this peer group youth is also behind his newest project, Lance Hicks used to get mad when schoolyard people who care about things that I think are and this kind of support system around me so Detroit Represent!, which he cofounded with bullies would argue with him about his race. important and are working on things that I care I was able to have a pretty positive experience Rhiannon Chester last summer. Though still “I used to carry around family photos to show about and are invested in trying to do the work during my teenage years, which I don’t think is in its infancy and with limited membership, them because I would get really upset when that I think is important. If you don’t understand something a lot of trans people can say.” the project aims to teach LGBT youth of color people would tell me that I wasn’t the race that I my race or you don’t understand my gender, Most of the friends Hicks made at those media skills so they can take active roles in said I was,” he says, sitting on a bench in Clark that’s okay as long as you can be respectful.” LGBT youth centers were involved in queer the media’s retelling of LGBT-related issues. Park. “Its just that idea that a perfect stranger Growing up on Detroit’s Northwest side, youth organizing, which soon became a “We felt like a lot of media representation based on how you look feels entitled to say they Hicks said he always felt like a boy, even though passion of Hicks’ and helped build his own of LGBTQ youth was either not presented by know more about you than you do.” he loved pink and once refused to wear a dress confidence. He was involved in OSASS, Okland members of the community, it was kind of by Hicks has a white parent and a black parent. until his mother glued a flower onto it, but started County Substance Abuse Services and through other people about us, or it didn’t represent He also has fair skin and light eyes. So when identifying as transgender when he found the Affirmations, he helped organize a Midwest trans youth of color,” he said. people look at him, they often only see a white word on the Internet. youth conference that ran from 2007 to 2009. Through the program, LGBT youth teach man. But his race is not the only part of his Though initially his mother, the first person He said the event filled a need for youth-driven each other media skills and create projects that identity people often misread. Hicks, 22, has been to whom he came out, thought he was joking, transgender programs. are authentic representatives of them and help correcting them about his gender since coming she researched the issue and became fiercely “Lots of times big events like that don’t to make changes in the LGBT community, not out as transgender at 15. supportive, driving him to Affirmations youth happen necessarily in the Midwest or aren’t just highlight them. “In a perfect world, everyone could just group every week. There and at the Ruth Ellis necessarily youth-friendly spaces,” he said. “Instead of just saying ‘youth are homeless look at me and know who I was,” Hicks says, Center, he found other trans youths and the “Youth are allowed to go and people will talk because people don’t accept them and this is not his sandy-colored hair twisted neatly into support he needed to you but you don’t see youth organizing a good thing,’ maybe create a documentary piece dreadlocks. “But we don’t live in a perfect “I kind of developed a peer group really early anything or planning workshops or doing to try to raise funds for a group that is supporting on of other trans and other LGBT youth and we facilitation, they are just sort of there.” a transitional living project for LGBTQ youth,” 6 BTL | October 11, 2012 www.PrideSource.com he said, “or maybe create an infographic for he says. “I do carry a lot of privilege based on teachers on what resources are available for the way I look. Things like racial profiling or them to help support youth...something that educational malpractice and teachers assuming actually creates an action toward improving the you’re not going to work as hard or you’re not as situation instead of just pointing out the problem smart or getting a lower pay rate when you start and complaining about it.” a job...things like that aren’t things I have to deal Hicks also recently joined the board of Detroit with as much but I think I have to deal with other Latinos, which has donated their headquarters things that darker-skinned black people don’t.” for Detroit Represent’s meetings. He said as Hicks said he may want to raise or mentor a someone who does not identify as Latino, he had biracial child to give him the understanding of reservations about taking on a decision-making those challenges his own parents could not. role in a Latino organization. “Not that they weren’t supportive, but neither “I actually felt really complicated about one of them could really relate,” he said. “That being on that board because I don’t feel like would have been really special for me to have, the best person to be making decisions for so I’d like to at one point in my life be able to an organization that serves Latino people give that to a younger but ultimately the reason person.” why they were interesting His race and gender, in having me participate is Right now I’d say my he said, also makes some of the work I was doing it harder to find safe around youth organizing and race honestly is a bigger spaces where he feels art stuff, so I think I can just “ part of my identity than my kind of share some of that comfortable and gets skill set with them, and not gender. When I tell people all his emotional needs necessarily take on a huge met. amount of power,” he said. that I’m trans, unless the “As much as I am a The issue of race has been trans person and I claim central to Hicks his entire other person’s trans too, the trans community, I life, but he said dealing with people automatically think often times don’t feel misconceptions about his comfortable in spaces gender brought issues about ‘Oh that must be the biggest that are supposedly his race to the surface.