Driving inclusivity: Black queer students find community in new branch launch

Joi Kenner speaking to Black Queer Students meeting attendees on February 9. (Theodore Rose/The Black Explosion).

University of Maryland’s Pride Alliance launched the Black Queer Students branch on Friday, holding their first meeting in the LGBTQ Equity Center in Marie Mount Hall to build a community for queer students under the Black diaspora. 

Under the Pride Alliance are various branches that focus on specific identities in the queer community, with Black Queer Students joining the group. 

Three co-facilitators are charged with the duty of overseeing the branch and generating ideas to promote the community. The co-facilitators collaborated after receiving an email from the Rainbow Report, a newsletter for queer students at UMD, which called for facilitators to reinstate the Black Queer Students branch. 

Joi “Kenny” Kenner is a first-year co-facilitator, majoring in community health. To revive BQS under the Pride Alliance means creating a safe, familiar, space for Black and queer students where there is limited to none, Kenner said.

“Every other facet of our identity can be isolating,” Kenner said. Being a double minority, they said, is a unique identity that isn’t recognized in queer spaces that often happen to be predominantly white. “This intersectionality of our identity would make us close.”

The president of the Pride Alliance, Ross Sawilowsky, said that, to his knowledge, there was never an established student group at the university designated for Black queer students up until he reached out for developing the launch.

“I'm really glad that students are interested in leading and participating in this intersectional affinity space,” Sawilowsky said. Through the launch of BQS, “Black queer students can show up as their full selves.” 

BQS works closely with the office of Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy, to hold a safe space and foster community for those who identify with this intersectionality. 

The facilitators hope to set a strong framework for BQS. “We are a new organization and we want to make a name for ourselves,” Kenner said. “We want to establish a community.”

Contact blackqueerumd@gmail.com for more information.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated that Sawilowsky had said there was never an established group for Black Queer Students. This story has been updated.