Charging All Queers
It has often occurred to me, in my own life and that of others, that the movement for equality in our society has been met with great opposition due to the constant reaching for that which is outside of the source of this desire. The LGBTQ(etc) community is part of a whole, the world community. Yet, as in my own life, we have constantly sought to change the minds of others regarding who we are in an effort to gain some sense of acceptance. In this vain effort, we have only gained that which is a result of constant probing and outward pushing, tolerance.
Though this has been my thought for quite some time, I was not in a place in which I could assert in an articulate manner what I felt about the thorn of inequality in society because I had not fully apprehended this in my own life. The logic and reasoning of others is something one can never control. It is rather our own ideas, our own thinking that we have the ability to govern, and with this awareness comes the ability to change. The result is action that speaks only that which we desire, and if it is our desire that we be treated as equals and to enjoy the same rights as heterosexuals, we must allow the same to one another.
The queer community as a whole has not made it clear that we are part of this country, this society; though, not for lack of trying. We are indeed part of this society, enabling it to survive and thrive. However, we have not explicitly presented this because we have not truly believed it. As with any movement, the work has to begin within the community of those that seek to make a change. Mahatma Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Unfortunately, we are not the change we seek.
I was 19 years of age when I first experienced racism within the gay community. In retrospect, this should not have come as a surprise to me. Yet, I was appalled and deeply discouraged that the part of me I had fought so hard to accept could not exist freely in the community that was supposed to support me. This was not new, of course. I had experienced discrimination within my racial community for being gay. Now here I was yet again, shunned by the people I assumed would understand me because we shared the same or a similar identity. At least that is how it should have been. What I did find is that the queer community is capable of being just as intolerant and prejudice as any other community. As in oppressed and marginalized communities of people, the oppressed oppress. And we have learned this from the majority who, in their own communities, lack both the courage to relinquish privilege and the agency to contest the contradictions of their laws.
As a graduate student, I was heavily involved with activist groups on campus; particularly those that concerned LGBTQ rights. I spear-headed the organization of my university’s first gay pride parade—it has since continued every year due to the great efforts and support from both students and faculty alike—and much of the opposition I received came from within the queer community itself. This was for us and for whatever reasons, we were not all on board. A daunting experience to say the least, however, it impressed upon me the dire need for acceptance of queerness by those who identified as queer. While at the same university, I presented a talk entitled “No Tea for the Fever: Queering Blackness”, in which I discussed the intersections of being black and queer. I expressed what I viewed as the root of the burden of inequality in society; the lack of self-acceptance and the perpetuation of internalized homophobia, self-hatred and lack of love within our own community. We have accepted tolerance from the outside in an effort to merely slide through society, “un-clocked” and reducing, as much as possible, external ridicule. We have decided that it is not a crime to expect from one another, even require, the same limited ideas of sexuality and gender imposed on us by mainstream society. We enforce on one another social constructs that berate the very essence of who we are. Ideals that have not served well for mainstream society itself. We have adopted the misogynist, sexist and elitist ideals of our oppressors; and thus, have taken on the role as our own oppressors. We qualify our gayness by boasting that we are “masc” or “lip-stick lesbians”; the accepted ones. We degrade the effeminate male, scorn or ignore trans persons in public and insult the butch lesbian with implications that she has only arrived at her identity due to less than desirable past experiences with men. We clothe prejudice and discrimination in the guise of “preference” so as to avoid confronting the reality that we in many ways are vigorously supporting that which oppresses us. We do this--to ourselves and to one another--because we have not yet fully accepted ourselves. And this is a blight to us, eating through to the very core of who we are.
As an African-American, it disturbs me when the queer community compares its plight to that of African-Americans. When we say that our movement is the same as that of the Civil Rights movement, we are reducing the impact of an energy that changed our nation and only confirming that there is more work to be done; in the African-American community and otherwise. Civil Rights are indeed rights for all civilians. However, the era that we refer to as the Civil Rights movement resulted from over 200 years of the degradation, slaughter, abuse, dehumanization and blatant disregard for an entire group of people. It was a moment in history in which African-Americans had decided that they had taken enough. A taste—abolition of slavery—was not nearly enough to satisfy the fiercely unrelenting hunger for freedom. And yet, the work must continue, for though we have come far, we have not reach the top.
Here I am in 2011, a 28 year old African-American gay male( or gay African-American male) living in a society that still sees me as threatening and inferior because of the color of my skin, and treats me as second-class because of who I desire to love. I go to my people, both queer and African-American, and find no home in either community. Why is this? Why is it that one community constantly impresses upon me the same hatred and ridicule that was once used to treat its members as disposable cattle and only now covertly does the same,—through the pillars of finance and media—and the other seems to only recognize me and my history as only a useful tool to gain acceptance in the eyes of those who, while physical reflections of themselves, discount them because of who they also desire to love? Are we not of the same red, white and blue coth? We turned to one another during tragedies that threaten us all, such as after September 11, 2001 but bandage those wounds only to return to the comfort of our own prejudices.
I am the descendant of a great legacy of those that have been oppressed due to that which they could not cover with clothes and affectations, resigned to celebrating themselves only in secret. I am also the descendant of those who have been forced to suppress desire and love for far too long, understanding that even producing fruit from their loins and locking the door could not change the very essence of who they are. I am the next generation of those who have experienced both these struggles--the black/latino gay community--now building a separate movement in order to stand up for our specific rights while, hopefully, bridging the gap and asserting that which should by now be apparent. Though necessary in many ways, this movement brings about the question: When will there be enough segregation to validate the profound necessity for true social integration?
This is the question that I hope to see answered in my lifetime and I desire that the answer be “now”. The queer community has a responsibility not only to itself but also to the next generation of queer people who are now entering into a society that still does not see them as equals. We will soon have no right to blame society for their plight, if there is one, because we are the society. We also have a responsibility to not look to others to recognize us as worthy of acceptance and love, for that is not their job and certainly not something they can decide for us even if they tried. Assurance of validation and acceptance of our identity can only exist when it is rooted within ourselves. We can look to the Civil Rights movement for inspiration, but we must recognize that ours is not the same. It did not matter if they were masc or fem, butch or lipstick lesbians; and eventually the benefits of being of lighter skin were greatly reduced as well.Contrary to popular ignorance, sexuality is not determined by appearance. African-Americans did not(do not) have the choice in their affliction, and gay people that think they can, should no longer rely on this. If there is anything we must understand it is that our movement must be much more subversive and aggressive. It is our duty to ensure that all people are aware of their rights as citizens of this country, the global community and members of the human race. As I have learned in my own evolution as a person in this world, the change must happen within oneself and in this case, it must happen within our community.
The first step is awareness. Once one is aware, change is possible. Our duty is to find that which is unjust within ourselves and remove it. Self-hatred, internalized homophobia, fear, discrimination, misogyny, prejudice of any kind must all be eradicated. Of course, this takes time but what will expedite this is the acceptance that it exists and a desire to see it rectified. Accept that the very thing we are fighting against, we have been upholding within our own community. Pour the love and desire for acceptance back into the queer community. This is what happened with African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. There was a true sense of pride that existed long before marching and parading. It came from the core. Because we are a beautifully diverse community in so many ways, we must relinquish that which holds us back from seeing the common thread, understanding that it alone is enough to support one another. If we accept ourselves, we have no need for the approval of others. Once mainstream society understands that their validation is irrelevant, they will listen and act accordingly. We must change our consciousness so that our actions will change. You will get in life what you give. What are we giving to one another?
