0 Dear Black Gays: Don't Get Comfortable

            To Ms. Sierra Mannie, who’s ***flawless piece implicating gay white men in misogynoir:  I stand with your rhetoric, your diction, and your argument. You have, in the canon of Black women, carved out a space demanding your visibility and affirmation in the face of erasure. In the space you have carved out, some queer Black men have had questions. I have had questions and I hope to offer my interaction to your work. The conversation you created is needed and urgent and my desire is to stand with you in the ways that I can.

            I have previously written on the violences against women that only queer men canproduce. The assumed access to women’s bodies, the slut shaming, and the patriarchal dichotomy of “top” and “bottoms.” Queer, and specifically Gay, men have our own set of privileges that allow us systemic, cultural and interpersonal powers. For the women we interact with, our relationships are different and nuanced but we are still accountable as men to offer solidarity. As I’ve said before, and will reiterate here: homophobia is misogyny in a feathered boa. Women’s resistance and survival are central to ours. With this understanding, we cannot speak about identity in isolations; even intersections can fall short. The erasure of cultural appropriation can manifest itself in racist and sexist tropes, yet as queer Black men we have seen similar violences.

            From Scissor Sisters’ “Let’s Have a Kiki,” to the “original” appropriator Madonna’s “Vogue,” culturally gay experiences that code as Black/Latino have been stripped and reproduced through mainstream queer productions. These safer spaced colloquialisms are losing their resistance and power through Top 40 hits and pretty white girls. We have seen many aspects of Black Queer Male culture stolen from us. The violence is different. Many gay Black men are still trying to reconcile their sexual performances outside of white sexuality standards. And with that we have some of the access that white gay men have, especially if we perform as masculine.

            There is a difference, however, when Black men perform Black femininity. When not using garish mammie drag personas, many gay Black men have found a comfort and strength in modeling the Black femininity of which they have access. To cite Ms. Mannie’s argument, we have tasted the sour of racism and can find strength in the sweetness of Black womanhood. That is not to say we are not implicated in appropriations. When performing Black femininity at the request of white or non-Black spaces, we are continuing the violence. Without reconciling the privilege of masculinity, we are continuing the violence. Letting our white gay counterparts parade Black femininity only reproduces the problems of the original article. Giving them a pass, sets yourself in the line of fire of racist statements and interactions. 

            In the ways queer men of all races should be invested in women’s equity, Black men (queer and otherwise), need to be invested in Black women’s. Not simply because they are our sisters, and friends, and aunties, and mommas but because our survivals are inextricably linked. I personally owe a wealth of my well-being and self-awareness the words, conversation, and gifts from Black women and we as Black men need to be ready to stand with them and complicate our violence against them. While Ms. Mannie may have not been speaking to Black Gays directly, we have our own implications in appropriation and need to do some work.

0 On “Table-seats” and Validations: An Open Letter to Kanye West:

Dear Yeezy,

I have deeply appreciated your additions to the constantly evolving black sonic canon. Creating and re-imagining what rappers/Black Men/Sad Men/Queer Men can sound like. You reminded us of the screams and moans in the echoes of Black music in America. These accolades can be found in other parts of your discography however, believing Yeezus is their culmination . But we have problems: the grief-driven misogyny; the obsession with goods as signifiers of legitimacy, framing particular women as those goods; and for having a devastating fixation on some mythical seat at a glass table surrounded by gate-keepers of cultural social order. Your aspirations are real but what/who are you aspiring to be?

In your time with Kim Kardashian, and joining the larger mom-and-pop operation of the Kardashian family, your cultivated flavor or taste or desire for a particular class validation is unsatisfied their socioeconomic status. As I believe you are noticing, even the Kardashians do not have a seat at the elusive glass table.”, and the validation you seek is impossible. Yet, you press on. You have attempted to foray into cinema, fashion, and design arts. While you have gained notoriety and acclaim in your attempts to seat at these tables, your biggest public frustrations seem to stem from not feeling like you are being taken seriously. You critique popular systems of validation, at award shows, in paparazzi lenses, but for your own personal gain not for large critiques of cultures of policing. To re-visit your recent work, “New Slaves” serves as a critique of the consumption of black bodies and the things they unconsciously consume. "How, then, can you position yourself as someone who is consumed and actively revels in that consumption?"

As a large scale validation of class and art (unfortunately), Your Vogue cover is a statement. People have already stated that West along with girlfriend Kim Kardashian, have “finally received Anna Wintour’s seal of approval.” Rhetoric of wearing Wintour down and public tantrum throwing has clouded this potentially high praise. Several culture vultures have already tried to dismiss “haters” or “critics” of the cover. Praising the couple for taking their distinctly different controversial fames and gaining such a variety of cultural capital. Vogue covers the likes of white women, and Presidents’ Wives and “exceptional” women of color. And now your girlfriend has occupied a cultural space no woman like here ever has. In a great tweet from CinnaBae she clearly states a concise and resounding critique: I'm annoyed with the idea of Kim K because I know a black female celebrity can't follow the same trajectory because of misogynoir.” There are particular intersections of Kim, that would on other bodies be condemnable. at the attempts to “other” Mrs. Soon-to-be-West have failed as this moment. We see her as the focal point of the cover in wedding day Desdemona white with her man the 21st Century Othello himself. These classes and gendered signifiers of inequality on her body seem to pass. Brienne of Snarth mentions the fact that Kim K is unwed, twice divorce, with a sex tape and a multiracial child yet can be read as pure and domestic in her cover. Not even Beyoncé can claim this, she has adopted many normative and consumable performances of womanhood and binary partnerships. Bey on the cover of Vogue signals types of acceptable forms of blackness.


What is particularly interesting about this, is that she can owe a majority of her success to you. Not to discredit the work of her mother in running their family like a Fortune 500. But much of Kim Kardashian’s critical acclaim comes from becoming linked to you. While I can easily imagine your relationship being healthier than people give you credit; because if you and and Kim share any understanding, it is being fetishized by celebrity. But you sort of position this terrifying narrative of the power of assimilation. For Kim, she can perform classed versions of whiteness, benefit on body standards / connotations of women of color, and traditional performances of femininity. She can get away with certain things because of her perceived, though notably exotic, whiteness. However, she is far enough from whiteness so her being with you is in many ways acceptable. Your desire to be considered a cultural gate-keeper/ genius/ innovator by learning from the feet of Euro-western theaters reveals aspirations for a seat at the table (that continually eludes you). In the behind the scenes video of the Vogue photo shoot, we see you all in utter domesticity and reproducing (in some ways) queer family dynamic: unmarried, interracial, inter-class backgrounds. Yet we see you in oppositional white and black outfits; and in what appears like wedding drag. I can only imagine what this means to you.


Kanye, if this is what you were waiting for, I hope that getting here gives you time to learn how much larger your imagination could be. You have the potential to completely re-imagine the spaces you want to enter. You already have ruptured so many spaces by sheer loudness and cacophonies of philosophy, humor, and pride. Is this really your end goal? Cinnabae again illustrates the tension in how you position yourself: “I think Kanye's actions in recent years are a manifestation of what happens when black people in higher levels of society are caught in the


/+throes of maintaining a degree of authenticity to your cultural group and wanting to somehow assimilate into the world of the gatekeepers.” Kanye rapping with 2Chainz and signing underground artists and doing remixes of trap songs maintains the cannon you want to be remembered for, but you also have this desire to enter elite (white) artistic spaces not yet validating you.

I hope you seek to create counter-cultures and use your charming ability to rupture and truth tell to show people more than just your person talent. You and your aspirations for particularly white-nesses are the center of your work and you are relying on a canon of resistive sonic Blackness to only project yourself and your exceptionality. While your dreams are real, can you not imagine bigger? Is Vogue your end game? Also interrogate how you are using your girl / how she using you.


What do you plan to be as one half of the #TheWorldsMostTalkedAboutCouple?


Love,

Jay, Fan since “Drive Slow”
PS. “Say You Will,” “No Church in the Wild” and “Spaceship” saved my life.

0 Terror in America: A Suite in Black and Brown

            On April 15, 2013, just after 3pm, getting home from a lazy day in the dining hall, I was 9 years old again and it was the second day of school. Early September of 2001, I had just moved out of my Los Angeles suburb and was commuting two hours to school every morning. California traffic satiated by colorful conversations over spelling word with my mommy. It was the terror in my mother’s face as her mother calls her before western sunrise. My mother turns on the radio, for the first time. The red Ford Explorer which had carried us from Baldwin Hills to Pasadena to the Valley to Church and beyond had never required the radio. Static turned to reggaeton to voices. Terse and cold and relating the news. Terror attacks in New York City and Washington DC. We knew nothing of safety. My aunt, who worked in the second tower. My uncle who lived less than 2 miles from the Pentagon.  I didn’t know what terror was or who it looked like. News radio, on repeat creating solutions, and images of terror. The radio stayed silent for the next 12 years and the news was an occasional torture. On April 15, 2013, just after 3pm, getting home from a lazy day in the dining hall, I was 8 days from turning 21, and trauma swallowed me back to prepubescent terror. Back to before I knew the terror that I carried on my back.

I learned how dangerous my body was in the formidable years when after terror convinced America to “unify”. My mom didn’t want me to live in fear of flying so I went to my Uncle’s in DC for winter break just months after terror was painted brown in my purview. Just months later, I was boarding an airplane. This biannual feat had become and easy routine but this time I carried more than my Lakers duffle with a week’s worth of winter clothes. I carried terror in child’s small purple and gold hoodie.

For the first time white hands examined my body. I learned the difference between touch and frisk, and that Brown bodies meant Black Bodies. I was 10 then and unaware of the terror I carried. In 2011, 684,000 Black and Brown men were stopped and frisked in New York City (this figure unfortunately erasing the thousands of Black and Brown women and queer person). Thousands of black and brown bodies carrying terror. Black and Brown bodies are the backdrop of media concentrated, politically moderated news. On April 15, 2013, just after 3pm, getting home from a lazy day in the dining hall, I saw white terror fade to black.

We have been living in a year of white terror. From Connecticut suburbia, to Wisconsin faith centers, to Mile-High City massacres. And for a moment white terror swept the nation. For a moment. It began as white faces, in loop, under baseball caps, on newsreels. Unknown were the terrors on their backs, sitting in the wings. White brothers became Russian, became Eastern European, and became Brown Bodies. Their names butchered and charred by local news and colored as terror, as brown. They interview Black and Brown bodies to classify and categorize this new problem with race and terror. When white bodies hold brown terror, what do we do? It fits so nicely on premature Black boys in Los Angeles Airports. On Brown families in Arizona for looking illegal. On countless colored bodies. Your terror fits on them.

I do not discredit the nationalism that swept America in 2001 and Boston in recent weeks. I love Boston; its complicated histories and present day problems. But Boston and this nation in times of terror will return to the bodies on which it fits. We live in a world where a Charles Ramsey, is genuinely dumbfounded when a terrorized white woman ran to him for help. Where Kiera Wilmot’s curiosity is criminalized and silenced. Where potentially exonerating DNA evidence is not used for Willie Jerome Manning on death row.  On April 15, 2013, just after 3pm, getting home from a lazy day in the dining hall, I was reminded how terror fits on my body. On my frame, in my hoodie, in my locs. At all moments, bodies of color, female bodies, queer bodies carry the terror.

How do we carry the terror? We nurture it in ways only we know how. We sip wine and listen to Erykah preach. We download Chance the Rapper and blog about it. We find girlfriends to watch a whole season of Basketball wives. We practice self-care both political and personal. We breathe in our own ways. We heal in our own ways. Consider the terrors you carry, the bodies you place terror on and the healing that your body may need.

0 Rage is Forever in my Memory: Trayvon Martin, One Year Later (2/26/13)

I wrote this speech for Tufts’ Pan African Alliance’s (PAA) “Remembering Trayvon Event” which took place outside on a cold solemn Tuesday night (2/26). It took me so long to find the words to write this speech, to say everything just right but honestly, it’s heavy. His death is heavy but in that weight there is always a need to think critically, remember critically, and love critically.

Please Note: The term “Black bodies” is referring to people that are raced as black, with black skin. However in my reference to black bodies specifically in this speech, “black bodies”  cross an axis for various bodies of color. 

Tuesday's Speech, a year after his murder:

Since we in PAA announced that we were holding this event, many have approached us asking why we were having this event outside. While my immediate urge was to respond sarcastically, I had no other words than that Trayvon was murdered outside. Our physical presence outside, under the lights but in the dark, is the least we can do as a community to honor a memory that has too soon faded. Standing outside in the cold is not a display of solidarity, but hopefully the piercing cold will wake something up in you like never before.

There are not enough words I can say today that can do his life, and so many other lives, justice. Not enough to mark and battle the white supremacy, anti-blackness, and violence that are continuously inflicted upon and that have historically violated black bodies. From calling a 9 year-old black female actress a “cunt” and murdering a black teenager because he was blasting hip hop music, our bodies are illegal, unwanted, and torn apart. Our flesh wears violence.

When we are outraged, when we are angry, when we flood the streets in solidarity as a community to say enough is enough, things need to change, and “hell no,” we are too often told to turn to the law. It is the law that allows “stop and frisk,” the inhumane deportation of “undocumented” immigrants, a NY assemblyman to wear blackface at a Purim festival -- all in 2013. The law is what allows “stand your ground,” aka meet suspicion with guns, aka suspicion equals blackness, perceived “hoodness,” and the acceptance of “ghettoized” black bodies, aka stand your ground against blackness.  Black bodies too easily become stacked on ships, “strange fruit,” knocked-down and shot down like dominoes. Under the law, black bodies cannot be understood as “bodies” because they are property: they cannot walk, cannot eat and drink, cannot listen to music, cannot dance, cannot read, cannot breathe because in the hand of the law property is denied the right to live. The law acts with white supremacy in codifying that black bodies are illegal, are violent, and should be stood against and taken down. There is no self-defense for black bodies that is actually read as self-defense. Like our bodies, our anger is read as violent and our fight is read as violent. Meanwhile, the self-defense of white supremacy and anti-blackness is the law. The law does not protect our bodies, it participates in our bodies’ violation. We seek justice, when “justice” and the law will never serve our black bodies; no, it will always do a disservice to them. Black bodies, black bodies, oh hear me when I say black bodies.

But we can stand here and nod our heads, feel bad for ourselves, cry, and say mhmhm, because Trayvon’s murder and anti-blackness may seem distant for many. For some, Tufts is safe and we do not have to worry about what happens outside of this bubble. Well allow me to burst the bubble. Being illegal and illegalized is a more traumatic experience than most will ever realize or suffer through. This is not just a “Florida” matter or an “American” matter, but a global matter, which most certainly means it permeates our home, Tufts. Many have failed to see Trayvon’s relevance to our lives, survivorhood, and existence here on this campus. They fail to see how blackness is illegal even here on this very ground on which we stand today. They fail to see how a black man carrying a wrench being perceived as a black man carrying a gun is traumatic. They fail to see how being stopped at 3am coming from Eaton hall and being questioned even though you have said repeatedly that you are a student is traumatic. They fail to see how being told that black anger, your sadness, and that any emotion you emit is “too much” and an overreaction is traumatic. Our rage in the aftermath of these tragedies, these moments that inflict unspeakable trauma, comes to be seen as irrational.  “Aren’t you overreacting?” “Why are you so sensitive?” “It could have happened to anybody.” But it could not have happened to just anybody. I cannot feel anything but rage tonight because I see how our home, Tufts, like the state of Florida, like our own country, is a symptom of anti-blackness and white supremacy.

Being here, existing in and violated by this system, under this aforementioned symptom, is not something I think about only on the year after Trayvon Martin’s murder. It is something I have to think about everyday. As a young black woman from southeast D.C., the fact that I am still breathing is considered lucky. Will my wearing a hooded sweatshirt be scary to someone to the point where they find it appropriate to shoot me, or worse? Will my black skin cause my death? It wasn’t the just the hoodie that made Trayvon marked for death, he could have been wearing a white t-shirt, a basketball hat, but it was what was under the hoodie that solidified the codification of his body as a threat. Blackness is a code in the white supremacist mind as the ultimate evil, to be eliminated. I have not forgotten about Trayvon, about my friend James, about the multiple dead black bodies in Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, nor about Rekia and others, because I simply cannot.

I do not know how to stop speaking of something and some-things that are so heavy in my life, that are so embedded in my blackness, and therefore, I shall not. Though the news reporters have stopped watching, though many have moved on, I will never move on. We must always remember. And while that memory can be the most acute pain ever felt, it is in that pain and in that trauma that we remember that our past struggle is foundational in our current reality. Black bodies are not only acted upon, but we act in a rage that is ferocious. Black bodies love inexplicably. Black bodies rage so there can be love.