For African American LGBTQs, Black History Month 2019 begins inauspiciously under the pall of the most recent spate of racist and homophobic incidents. In December, black comedian Kevin Hart offered a non-apology for saying he would beat his son with a chair if he were gay. Recently, an Iowa Republican Congressman declared his white supremacy with barely a shrug from his GOP colleagues. A Democratic governor’s clueless black face confession brought calls for resignation, but, at least for now, he won’t. The smirk seen ’round the world of a Kentucky Catholic boy in a MAGA hat is being defended by high-powered lawyers threatening lawsuits and even the president. To be fair, that debacle was fueled in part by racist and homophobic slurs hurled at the boy’s white school group by radical Black Hebrew Israelites.
Then, in Chicago, gay African American singer-actor Jussie Smollett (a Milwaukee PrideFest 2018 guest celebrity) was attacked by white men invoking “MAGA.” Despite evidence to the contrary, the apparent hate crime has been called a hoax by certain black bloggers who shamed the victim with homophobic epithets. When, among other black entertainers, Kevin Hart offered sympathetic words for Smollett, critics pointed to his earlier violently homophobic jokes as causing the attack he now decried.
Given all that (and more), local LGBTQs of color might wonder what Black History Month means in this, the Stonewall Riots’ 50th anniversary. It may conjure last year’s 50th anniversary of Milwaukee’s racial unrest. There wasn’t much celebration of positive changes that event brought about because there haven’t been many. Milwaukee is still the country’s most segregated city with the same disparities as ever in health, education and employment. As if to underscore that reality, a recent mock Milwaukee map identified our quaint neighborhoods with such names as Artisanal Fetishists (Bay View) or Yuppies in Warehouses (the Third Ward), while the central city got The Shooting Gallery (53206) and The Mob Beating District (Sherman Park).
Similarly, Stonewall’s impact on local communities of color seems negligible. While the same social inequities persist among LGBTQs of color as in the rest of the population, they also endure discrimination from both outside and within based on their sexual orientation.
I recall going to the Factory in the 1970s, where a back bar (open only on weekends) tended to be almost exclusively black, while the front bar was all white. Decades later, in 2011, Diverse and Resilient’s “Acceptance Journeys,” a multi-phase billboard campaign depicting alternative families, intended to bridge the cultural gap. Although studies concluded the project had positive results in other cities, its Milwaukee run was never completed due to funding issues.
It’s hardly reassuring that Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn has been condemned by both the Human Rights Campaign for his attacks on LGBTQ rights and black leaders for his assault on the NAACP, which he called a “disgrace to America.”
Coming to the rescue, perhaps, is U.S. Rep. “Auntie” Maxine Waters, the African American firebrand, who issued a powerful pro-LGBTQ statement calling for confrontation of inequality and the empowerment of those of “different lifestyles” who are the targets of discrimination. We can only hope.
