"You cannot underestimate the power of seeing yourself on-screen," Halle Berry said as she presented Lena Waithe with GLAAD’s Outstanding Individual Episode award during the 29th GLAAD Media Awards ceremony this week.
Waithe accepted her award for Master of None's "Thanksgiving" episode — which also earned her an Emmy.
In her acceptance speech, Waithe touched on segregation within the LGBTQIA community, quipping, "You have the wealthy gays over here, gays-on-a-budget over there."
The joke was the beginning of a larger point, however.
“A lot of people ask me why I say I’m queer,” said Waithe. “I say that because I think it’s a big umbrella. I don’t want to separate myself from my trans family, my non-binary, bisexual [family] … We need to be united. Laverne Cox’s struggle may look different than mine, but the pain we feel is the same.”
"We're already othered, so why should we other ourselves more than we already are?" Waithe asked. The writer, producer and star called for every member of the LGBTQIA community's "one big family" to educate and support each other because, as Waithe said at the end of her speech, "at the end of the day, we all we got!"
Watch Waithe's entire speech below!
