I'm a white queer and transgender man. Although I have several disadvantages in this world and in the mainstream culture of the U.S, I still navigate the world with white privilege. Unfortunately, many Black, Latinx, and Asian LGBTQ+ people already know this. They have been telling this to us white queer and trans folks for decades, and we still don't listen. We still don't seem to get it.

I have been in many Safe Zone trainings, LGBTQ+ workshops and seminars that will start off with the well intentioned practice of white LGBTQ+ people stating our privilege up front. However, our anti-racism efforts stop there. We say we have privilege. We post on social media about the many black and Latinx transwomen who are murdered each year, but we stop there. We wipe off our hands and forget about our LGBTQ+ sisters and brothers fighting on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter movement.

We go to Pride on Saturday and ask the very people who systematically imprison, beat, sexually assault, and murder our brothers and sisters to celebrate with us. We invite police before we invite our own community. We claim we aren't taking sides, but we invite police officers and not the Black Lives Matter activists. That sure looks like taking sides to me.

There is a very real and hard conversation LGBTQ+ communities need to have about the presence of police at our community events. More specifically, I have to ask "if we have police at LGBTQ+ events, who does it actually make feel safe?"

In Dean Spade's edited volume, "Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex", the authors follow the lives of LGBTQ+ people in the criminal justice system. The book argues that not only are LGBTQ people of color at risk of being forced into the system, but white LGBTQ people also get forced into the system. Of the white people imprisoned in the US, over 60% are LGBTQ+ people.

Even further, with more and more shootings of black people at the hands of police, one has to ask if a black LGBTQ+ person would feel welcome if a whole bunch of white LGBTQ+ people invite their murderers to dinner, to Pride, to the bar, to "Safe Zone", and the many other spaces upheld by LGBTQ+ people.

Before people bring up the Pulse Shooting, I want to note that I have been to many LGBTQ+ related events that have chosen to not include police. Community organizing without reinforcing the police state in this country IS possible.

What happened at the Pulse Nightclub was a nightmare come true. A nightmare that many LGBTQ+ people, regardless of race, worry about any time they are out in public. Anytime I use a public restroom, I get scared it will be my last breath. I'm scared some cis guy will want to make an example out of me by using his fragile masculinity to attack mine.

But does fear alone justify inviting police to any LGBTQ+ event that I host? What statement do I make when I allow fear to turn my back on my brothers, sisters, and gender neutral siblings?

I don't have all the answers to these issues, but I am frustrated at my fellow white LGBTQ+ people for not thinking about it. I don't know why we are allowing an institution that historically broke up our bathhouses, threw us naked into the snow, raped us, sold us for sex in prison, called us faggots and beat us, and killed us not too long ago in American history.

Just because a few white LGBTQ+ people put on the badge doesn't mean the system is all of a sudden benefitting us.

Furthermore, once the police state in this country imprisons and murders all of the black, Latinx, and other people of color... who do you think they will come for next?

They won't skip over you because you critiqued Black Lives Matter on Facebook. They will still see your deviant LGBTQ+ identity and body.

Why do we invite an institution that once made us unsafe and still makes our sisters and brothers unsafe into our space?

Let's stop being naive and wake the hell up.