Race, Queerness, & Showing Up with Matt Banks

Tuesday, September 22, 2020 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM 

Matt Banks, a justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion educator spoke on what it means to be an ally. When LGBTQ+ people talk about allyship, we often mean how non-LGBTQ+ people can show up for our community.

But, what does it mean to take that further and see how other identities, like race, are present within the larger LGBTQ+ community? What does it mean to understand how racism shows up in LGBTQ+ spaces? What does it mean to create an actively anti-racist LGBTQ+ community?

This session took participants through some basic LGBTQ+ history and anti-racist frameworks to lay the foundation for making our queer and trans spaces truly inclusive.

ABOUT MATT BANKS

Matt Banks (Pronouns: they/them/theirs/Mx.) is a justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion educator with over eight years of experience in training, advising, and supporting the needs of historically underserved populations on college and university campuses. Originally from Texas, Matt has lived across the United States and seen how stories and environment directly influence people's comfort and engagement with identity and anti-oppression work. Matt's philosophy utilizes storytelling as a central theme to helping us understand our own differences in order to interrogate and disrupt oppressive attitudes, beliefs, and systems.

Matt currently serves as the Assistant Director for Diversity & Inclusion at Bentley University. In this role, Matt works directly with faculty and staff to create, promote, and maintain a more inclusive environment at Bentley through training development, strategic planning, and dialogue-focused programming. Prior to coming to Bentley, they served as the Coordinator for Multicultural Programs and LGBT Student Services at Missouri State University, where their work centered the experiences of queer, transgender, students of color, and students with disabilities through programming, training, and advising. Matt holds a Master of Arts in Higher Education and Student Affairs from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts in Visual and Dramatic Arts from Rice University.

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