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“What can you do to kind of walk in your power? That’s the verbiage I typically use. “You have to recognize not everyone has had a positive experience, and not everyone feels comfortable,” she says. Or, as she calls it: “walk in her power.” She feels a responsibility to use her voice to help others who aren’t as fortunate. Hinds-Clarke says she recognizes her “out privilege,” and knows the coming out experience is not as seamless for everyone. “After coming out to him initially, he came around, and came and apologized to me at some point for how he reacted. “We kind of subconsciously joke about how he struggled a little bit with it,” she says. While Hinds-Clarke did attend junior and senior prom, she opted to wear suits for the special occasions, flouting gender norms and uncomfortable blouses. The conversation with dad was a little more difficult, but in due time, he became supportive. It’s not something that’s talked about that much.”Īs a teenager growing up in suburban New Jersey, Hinds-Clarke says she was a “social butterfly.” She starting coming out to her parents in her sophomore year of high school: first her mother, and then her father. “I don’t think a lot of people fully understand what it means to have intersectional identities.
“That community wasn’t there,” Hinds-Clarke says. It’s run through the university’s LGBTQ Campus Life center. With the help of one of her good friends, she started Shades of Pride, an affinity group for LGBTQ students of color and their allies.
Hinds-Clarke finds the crossroads to be unavoidable, and even though she’s always considered basketball to be her community, she felt an urge to reach out to other Black and Brown LGBTQ students at the University of Richmond.
She’s written papers about her experiences, and even commissioned an independent study about the experiences of Black LGBTQ people as a whole. Jaide Hinds-Clarke has spent many years of her life thinking about the intersectionality of her two identities as a Black woman and gay person.