Among Trump’s first acts in office this year were executive orders aimed at purging initiatives promoting diversity and equity from the federal government and the private sector and removing protections for LGBTQ people. The administration has since worked to roll back gender-affirming care, cut funding for AIDS/HIV programs, make it harder for transgender Americans to obtain IDs matching their gender identity, and erase LGBTQ history from government websites and properties.
The onslaught of funding and policy changes have hit the LGBTQ Center of Durham and, more broadly, Durham’s queer community.
Vanity Deterville, the center’s co-executive director, says navigating difficult challenges isn’t new for the center. After graduating from college in 2020, Deterville moved from South Carolina to Durham during the height of the pandemic and helped the center navigate a time when it was limited in how it could show up for the community it serves.
“When I moved here in 2020, we were at the height of social distancing, so the first year and a half of my work was social distance,” Deterville says. “We were barely inside the center, and because of that, there were several mutual aid efforts that were happening, as folks were really in need of aid.”
But attacks on the LGBTQ community have escalated since Trump took office this year. Cuts to federal funding have again forced the center to adapt, this time focusing its fundraising efforts on local partners who would support programs like the youth center and food pantry, Deterville says.
Ahead of this weekend’s Pride: Durham, NC celebration, as well as the center’s 10th anniversary and LGBTQ History Month in October, the INDY talked to Deterville about resistance in the second Trump term and finding new, creative ways to support the community that has come to rely on the center’s programs and services.
INDY: How did you get started at the LGBTQ Center?
Vanity Deterville: I came to be a part of the organization in the height of the pandemic in 2020. I was actually presenting on a panel, I want to say in 2019, and my copanelists at the time were the founder of the organization, Helena Cragg, and a founder of Southerners on New Ground, Mandy Carter. They courted me during my last years of undergrad in South Carolina and saw potential in me. They wanted to be intentional about the leadership and presence of Black trans women in the organization as we fought to continue solidifying the relationship between Black and brown queer people and the center, because we’ve experienced where Pride and Center movements and LGBTQ visibility has many times been seen and interpreted by community as largely white or white-leaning. And so there was a concerted focus for my installment and several other staff members that walk with experiences of color to be at the center to heighten that relationship and to reestablish that rapport. So since 2020, I have worked in a few different capacities, as a program director, as a coordinator, as a supervisor, as senior leadership, and now as a co-executive director for the center.
What lessons did you learn when you started in 2020 in terms of how to adjust to the impact of lockdown, a shift in where funding came from, and the social unrest at the time, and how are you all applying those lessons to the current state of things?
I am no stranger to opposition. I am a Black trans woman. I am from the South. I have experienced most, if not all, experiences that can be common for clients who come into the center in search of community, in search of service, and I hold that very dearly. I come from a city—Charleston, South Carolina—that romanticizes its beauty in hopes of absolving this racist past, where we exude what I like to call “sweet tea racism.” And because of that, it has afforded me an outlook on the world and how we should approach social inequities, from experiencing housing and food insecurity, to substance abuse, to lack of support and social isolation. I continue to fight to be a change that I wish I saw when I was coming up, when I was finding myself, and so it makes me a little less able to compartmentalize it as work separate from life, considering my identity informs work so deeply, so inextricably.
We’re no stranger to opposition and strife, and as Black people, we are even more intimate with that fight and that struggle. I was in Charleston during Trump’s first presidency, and experienced firsthand the type of emblazoned and emboldened rhetoric, activity, influence that it had in local communities. We’re seeing a ramped-up version of that this time. So yes, there have been funding cuts and threats to funding.
We’ve experienced things like applying for grants as a subgrantee or co-applicant with organizations and communities that have had funding rescinded because we were labeled as a “high risk” partner. We’ve seen grants given back to us after the complete grant project language had been rewritten for anything mentioning equity and inclusion or inequities … to not show support what kind of work it was targeting. And I won’t name any specific entities, but we’ve seen local support cower to federal pressures. Also, you’ve had local governments, some of which have increased their support, and some have told us that they cannot continue dedicating the fiscal amount that they had supported in past years and would only be donating in-kind, simply because their other streams of funding are jeopardized if they go forth with supporting us. And so to hear local entities use the same type of language to cower to the same pressures has been an interesting experience for us to navigate as we get creative with where our support as a center comes from.
The center reaches 10 years old in October, and we challenge the organization to continue matching their mission and cultivating leaders that illustrate and hold the most marginalized identities at the decision-making positions. Being the first Black trans woman that has led this organization is not by mistake, and it is, in fact, in response to federal opposition. And so we’ve been trying to transform this opportunity of threat into a moment where we leverage support as creatively and collaboratively as we can. We can’t say it has been easy, but we definitely have made our mark on the community and are leaning on that history to heighten what our support is in order to make it through this.
Coming from South Carolina, what has impressed you or felt comforting about being in a progressive city like Durham?
Yes, wow. Durham is home. Learning of the richness of both Black and queer history in Durham has been a very special treat to experience in real time and to learn as I navigate this experience with the center. Learning about Black Wall Street and how it embodies Black resilience and economic mobility; learning about the influence and impact of the tobacco industry; learning about the history and the influence of Duke University on health access and research, as well as a catalyst for arguments for and against trans people playing sports or trans people included in social groups. I learned about Pauli Murray as a scholar, as a priest, as a queer person, as a trans person, and the intersection that Pauli embodied was the embodiment of what our fight for liberation continues to be. I come from Charleston, which is considered another blue hub of that state. But I’ve also seen the ugly parts of the state this year.
And this summer was the 10-year anniversary of the Emmanuel Nine massacre from Dylann Roof. I find myself reflecting on many anniversaries this year. This is also this organization’s 10th year of existence, and it is my personal 10-year anniversary of several things in my trans journey. And so Durham helped me ground myself in an unfamiliar territory, going from one Carolina to the next. It continues to lead in terms of how we can show up for all of our citizens, working with folks at the [Equal Employment Opportunity] office in the city of Durham and getting to understand what the grievance process is for filing complaints for workplace discrimination, knowing that we’re a county that has an active antidiscrimination ordinance, which includes gender identity and its clauses. These things, these protections, are going to become increasingly important as we navigate the next few years.
You mentioned rewriting grant applications to be more palatable for the current political climate. Given that programs like yours are targets, what has the negotiation been like between standing up for your rights and resisting the attacks from the federal government while also being flexible so that you can raise funds and acquire the resources you need to continue supporting the community members that rely on your services?
It’s been a difficult balance, Justin. We have had to take an honest look at the issues that we are attempting to identify, because some folks are not favorable to us using targeted language for who it is that we’re serving, and so some of our language has had to broaden out a little bit. Folks are really passionate on both sides of the political spectrum about children, and so serving youth has been a central tenet of our organization, expanding our language to talk about youth health outcomes has been something that we have paid particular attention to when it comes to our youth center, which a few months ago, just completed their third summer camp.
We have been broadening our scope to speak in terms of survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, because that looks and materializes in several different body forms or identities. And so when we take a little bit of a larger scope of what it is that we are attempting to assist, we can make language, I think, reworded enough where we can still secure some support. And also, as a community organization, taking a very deep and internal audit of what our values and our mission is, to serve our local community and to instill and normalize joy in their lives, recognizing that we will not be bought by federal dollars. We can pursue support from local and federal; however, we must also divest from some of that in order to heighten our support from local or regional supporters. So there’s been a pull and tug of standing firm on our values and not being bought for the sake of continuing to stand up for the community, but also getting creative in how we talk about our work so that we can ensure it continues to be sustained.
What are some of the programs that the LGBTQ Center is able to offer at this moment for folks that visit?
The youth center is an incredible entity, which is codirected by Freddy [Perkins] and Niccolo [Roditti], and they have been catering to youth from ages 12 to 24. These youth come in every Wednesday for drop-in, and they establish and heighten their sense of community. I’d like to think of it as an incubator for future leaders and folks to continue seeing themselves as possible models for leadership, for mobilization, for economic mobility. We have a Southern queer survivors network dedicated to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. And they have a host of services, like a queer at-home program, as well as support groups for survivors on a virtual basis. We have a food pantry program and a trans closet, which folks come to peruse, borrow, and donate to and from on a very frequent basis. We also have a name and gender change program with funding that we continue to secure to provide scholarships in the process. And we have a POC trans support group, which has been moderated monthly. Oftentimes, people at the center have just filled the void that the community has told us was there in hopes that we can help advance ourselves and their lives to a higher quality, to a better sense of security.
As folks are transitioning, they’re exploring themselves in their identity journey, and clothing is a way that we express our identity. I worked in the clothing business for a few years and got really into this idea of clothing as a way we express ourselves. And so while it may seem minor, I think it is a piece of the puzzle.
You know, we are waking up daily, basically armoring ourselves for the wolves of the world. It takes an incredible amount of fortitude to navigate this world, in the face of a chief executive and a government that continues to sensationalize your community—which, let’s be frank, is 1 percent of our population—as a group of irrational or undeserving people. It takes an incredible amount of strength to remain consistent, not only in your daily responsibilities, but to show up for others that are in your network. And so you’re right, clothing and feeling comfortable is like one of the first steps to be able to walk out that door and feel confident in delivering what it is that is your responsibility: take care of yourself, and advocate on behalf of yourself.
You’ve got Durham Pride weekend coming up, and the LGBTQ Center celebrates 10 years in October. What are you most looking forward to or most excited about?
I am excited because Pride has grown and expanded to an incredible concept beyond what it was when I first visited in 2019. The justice concert and rally is definitely an exciting piece to the celebration, which is actually the first day, on Friday, September 26, at CCB Plaza. What I will personally be at is what I think are the hallmarks that many people associate with Pride, which is the community parade, and the health and wellness kickback that will be on Duke East Campus, as it typically is. It’s always really beautiful to see the community congregate on Duke’s campus, Broad Street, Ninth Street, and Main Street, and really see each other in real time as having made it through another year. We are pleased that we’re able to continue making Pride happen in the face of setbacks. I’m excited to see folks turn out, because people have been sitting with a lot this year, and folks definitely need an expressive outlet. We’re also really excited to have a lineup of 10-year anniversary events, which will span from October through December and hopefully beyond. We ask folks to stay tuned for the rollout of those events for sure.
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