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Blog author Stan Kimer (at right) with Beth Howard (left) and Rachel Porter (middle) on the grounds of “The Estate.”

For my 2018 LGBT Pride Month blog this year, I want to focus on an enterprise that has a wonderful outreach to the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning) community. Our community is now moving from tolerance and acceptance to now having organizations that understand and focus specifically on our needs.

One such organization located in North Carolina (but serving clients up and down the east coast) is Carolina House. Recently I visited and toured their six-bed facility (called “The Estate” ) with Rachel Porter, Clinical Care Advocate and Lead Therapist at the Estate, and Beth Howard, Director of Clinical Outreach. I also interviewed Rachel over lunch.

Stan: What is Carolina House?

Rachel: Carolina House is an eating disorder program, which provides two residential houses in Durham, NC and partial and intensive outpatient programming in Raleigh. We provide a safe and inclusive space for individuals to engage in the work of healing from an eating disorder and associated struggles. We provide an experiential approach to prepare people to return to their full lives. Our original 16-bed facility is called “The Homestead” and exclusively serves women, and our newer 6-bed you are visiting today is called “The Estate.”

Stan: What makes “The Estate” unique?

Rachel: The Estate is Carolina House’s first all gender inclusive residence that opened in September 2017 in Durham, NC. Our clinical and medical team is dedicated to competently and compassionately serving the LGBTQ population who are facing challenges with eating disorders. The Estate is a six bed colonial home that allows for tranquil healing situated on more than 10 acres.

Stan: So are there particular unique challenges that LGBTQ individuals with eating disorders may face?
Rachel: Because the LGBTQ community are so often dramatically underserved and poorly served, very often by the time they get to Carolina House, they have heightened difficulty and are sometimes in a more severe state. Sometimes incompetent and callus care has caused them to not reach out for help. And the gender dysphoria that the transgender community faces may make it even more difficult for trans folks to find peace for their bodies – something that the vast majority of people with an eating disorder can relate to.

Stan: There certainly has been much more focus and discussion lately about the transgender community and many more transgender individuals feel safer with coming about who they are undergoing gender transition. Can you elaborate more on the impact being transgender may have on eating disorders?

Rachel: For many transgender people, they only way they found for their body to match their gender was to starve, binge on food, and use other disordered eating behaviors. Sometimes it is more deeply engrained, further compounding these issues. Getting to a point of recovery can be difficult as they find acceptance for their bodies. The fear of fatness that so much of our society fears is heighten in those with eating disorders and is sometimes even more heightened in the trans and gender fluid community. The gender fluid individuals I have worked with want their bodies to appear in a more ambiguous way, and they don’t have many role models of larger bodied individuals.

Stan: Is there anything else you would like to share, including your own personal philosophy about your work?

Rachel: My philosophy is to believe people for who they say they are, to accept people as they are, and to believe in their lived experience.

Stan: Rachel, thank you so much for your outstanding work with our often underserved and misunderstood community.

For more information about the Carolina House, check out their website, https://www.carolinaeatingdisorders.com/ or call (919) 864-1004.

In some cases, huge numbers of black and brown prisoners are segregated into special units (from an LA Sentinel Article March 2014)

Guest Blog by Brandon Garrick, Masters of Social Work Candidate at NC State University

In the United States, mass incarceration among African Americans is a social issue that is often disregarded. Like other issues, our population often overlooks this particular issue since it does not directly impact the majority of the population. The negative racial perspectives on criminals associated with African Americans is a contributing factor to society’s collective blindness on this problem. This cycle of placing a disproportionate number of young African Americans behind bars based on Racism and Racial discrimination is definitely problematic.

The enormous imprisonment of African Americans has three key impacts that include:

1) Economic Cost. Mass incarceration as a whole is expensive, and in many cases of innocent individuals and non- violent offenders, is unnecessary. Individuals within prison are given meals, healthcare, and are excluded from earning revenue or paying taxes. The overall price tag on American incarceration is nearly 80 billion dollars. The amount we spend on incarceration has nearly tripled since 1980. Incarcerating millions of African Americans is negatively effecting society from a economic perspective.

2) Increasing our racial divide. The imprisonment of large percentages of African Americans negatively contributes to a racial divide in our country. The mind-boggling statistics of how many African Americans are facing incarceration feeds into the negative stereotype of African Americans being criminals. In addition the media portraying African Americans in hand cuffs or behaving criminally negatively shapes these views.

3) Harming communities and families. The mass incarceration of African Americans hurts communities in various ways. Mass incarceration often breaks family structures which hurts exterior communities. Also prison does a poor job of rehabilitating African Americans and often throws them in them back into same communities with little chance of succeeding.

Mass incarceration of African Americans is truly everybody’s problem, and should not be overlooked. This issue of mass incarceration is problematic from a social and economic perspective. When these individuals are released back into our communities without proper skills to make it, it often results in them continuing the crime cycle, further harming our communities. Bryan Stevenson does a great job explaining the overall issue alongside statistics. This dynamic “Ted Talk” video explains a lot more of the current issue of mass incarceration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tOp7OxyQ8

Look for part 2 of this blog series in 3-4 weeks, where I will propose some solutions to this issue.

And if you want to learn more about the social issue of mass incarceration among African Americans and receive a more in depth paper on this issue, you can reach out to me at [email protected].

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Guest blogger Brandon Garrick is a Masters of Social Work Candidate at NC State University

Brandon Garrick is my second cousin who I enjoy spending a lot if time with. He recently completed his Bachelor of Sociology at North Carolina State University, and has now entered their Master’s Program of Social Work. He worked full time at North Carolina’s Central Prison as a corrections officer while completing his bachelor’s degree, and has a deep concern about the many social issues facing our nation and the world. He will now be a regular guest blogger discussing these various issues.