If you are born into a traditional American family, you are the combination of two distinctly different families coming together because your parents joined and decided to sing in the key of life. You get two sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins to spoil you, teach you things (both good and bad) and give you a sense of belonging. I, as well, have two sides of family: the Davises and the Waltons—two very different distinctive Southern families that have created the quietly loud, outgoing, ambitious, extrovert whose words you are currently reading.
But I also have two other families—two distinctive cultural families, as well. I am a member in good standing of both the African American community and the LGBTQ community (the “G,” to be specific). Sometimes, these two cultural families break bread at the family reunion in the summer, and sometimes they are as close as the Montagues and Capulets. I am equally parts of both families.
I embrace the rich heritage of the African American experience. I even went to school to further study it in its awesome depths. Being a black man in America is like running a continuously recreated obstacle course in which every time it seems you are about to win the ground shifts, and you just do a little bit better than you did last time no matter how hard you try. To be a black man in America, it can sometimes become easy to believe that your life does not matter when the message you hear daily from the media, White House and other places of authority say that it does not.
Fighting for ‘Acceptance and Validation’
I am also an out-and-proud gay man with all the rights of privileges that it has allowed me in some spaces. According to some studies, this makes me “less threatening as a black man.” Let’s get one thing very clear: In the words of Tupac Shakur, “I ain’t a killer, but don’t push me.” It’s been told to me that being black and gay is like having two strikes against you. As I wrote previously in my column, “You have to fight for acceptance and validation. You have to prepare for the inevitable moment where you might get an odd stare from your own tribe sometimes, which cuts a little harder as a group within an already oppressed minority.” This is even more so when you are part of a minority within a minority.
The African American community is often labelled as being hardline against the LGBTQ community, which is untrue; it is no more against the LGBTQ community than any other community and, if you really want to get right down to it, there are many African, Indian, Native American and Asian-Pacific traditions which were openly welcoming of LGBTQ peoples before white Christian colonialism came ashore from beyond the horizon. There are evangelical Christian segments of the community that believe you can “pray away the gay” and think it is acceptable to disown LGBTQ children.
There are segments that believe that being LGBTQ is something that was placed into the black community by white popular culture and the feminization of black men. Which begs the question to those who believe this: Can we say “Black Lives Matter” if only certain black lives matter? When a transwoman is murdered, when a young boy is put into a trash can by his father, do those black lives matter?
The Jussie Smollett situation, as convoluted as it has become, has highlighted a problem and focused attention on the violence that the LGBTQ community still faces even in 2019. Here we are, 50 years after the Stonewall Uprising, and this type of violence is still real. As the 2020 U.S. presidential election looms ever closer, you can rest assured that these kinds of attacks on racial, cultural, religious and ethnic minorities are only going to increase with the Grand Wizard in Chief at the helm fighting to maintain power.
Both sides of the family need to pull together and prepare for this onslaught together. Like fingers on a hand, we are in this together, and if we combine, we make a mighty fist with which to fight back.
