Expressing advocacy through...
the power of language
The Power of Language is a workshop originally developed by me and Sophia Crisomia for the Winter Diversity Series Workshops hosted by the Blue Hen Leadership Program. The learning outcomes of the workshop is to explain how one's intentionality of language can promote unity in leadership. As a way to contextualize how our words can be a symbol of community, students learned about Ballroom Culture, an underground sub-culture in the 1980s in Harlem. Ballroom was a community of LGBT+ Black and Brown individuals othered by their biological families, but mothers, contextualized with the intention of a chosen mother rather than a biological mother, would take in these children to protect them.
presentation
When Sophia and I developed this presentation, we wanted to be intentional with the group we wanted to give support to and advocate for in addition to incorporating a leadership development. Previously, I took a Languages of Appreciation workshop and I realized the connection of leadership and intentional language and the meaning we give to language. As a queer person, I took special interest to the Harlem 1980's ballroom scene where many disenfranchised black and brown queer people found solace in. 'Mother' is a word people give a filial connotation to, but with intentional language choices, our workshop expanded upon the definition of the word 'Mother' as a catch-all identifier for an individual who provides care regardless of familial connections. Our presentation showed that despite systemic racism and homophobia/transphobia, queer people of color developed their own space to grow a chosen family.
impact
After the presentation, I had attendees come up to me discussing how grateful they were that they came to the presentation. While the 1980's Harlem Ballroom scene was something I studied as a high school student and was memorialized in several documentaries and even a Ryan Murphy FX show, many students stated how they were never aware of such communities. I was grateful to hear that my reverence to important trailblazers in the LGBT+ community was being translated to other students. One student stated that she was developing a research paper regarding the Ballroom scene for one of her classes and several of the attendees began watching Pose on FX and Paris is Burning, the documentary that brought light to the scene for the mainstream masses. Sophia and I started a google form to gather further reflections.
