Black Gay Pride? by Kweku Nicholas

The latest Black Men’s Xchange-New York dialogue with hetero sisters drew into stark contrast the position of the burgeoning Gay Liberation Movement with the position of Black homosexuals in relationship to our Civil and Human Rights.

When he was asked about the difference between the terms gay and homosexual, facilitator, John-Martin Green explained that, "The term gay was founded on European symbols and iconography to launch a self-determination movement for white male homosexuals. Homosexual, on the other hand, is a clinical term, indicating biological wiring."

"The extraordinary success of the Gay Liberation (self-determination) Movement can be seen in that, a distinction needs to be made in the first place," Green added. "The triumph of the Movement is made clear in the current struggles being waged across the nation for dismantling of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy, for recognition of same sex headed families in the census and, of course, for marriage equality."

"When watching news coverage of the hundreds and in some instances, thousands of protesters demonstrating around these issues," Green said, "with rare exception, we see a sea of White. For our part, homosexual Black men are still playing darting eye games on trains and in other public spaces where we cower in the face of our attraction to each other, for fear that the object of our attraction might reject, or worse yet, revile us publicly."

Green’s point is valid. Most of us don’t feel entitled to our sexuality even at this late date. By and large, Black people still lack a sense of entitlement to the rights and privileges of citizenship, as evidenced by our apathy in the face of countless instances of disrespect dealt to us. Among the few areas where heterosexual brothers may actually feel some entitlement is around their sexuality. To the extent that this is true, it’s ironic, since the sense of sexual agency came from stereotypes of Black men about our so-called sexual prowess.

If we, as Black people need an awareness of our entitlement in order to stand up for our citizenship rights, we Black homosexuals need such a sense of entitlement even more in order to pursue the rights which are still denied us. And these include the right to acknowledge our very existence in our communities.

During the forum, hetero and homosexual participants spoke of our urgent need for authenticity and honesty in all our affairs towards achieving ownership of ourselves, and of forging processes to learn to love ourselves. This last is most important of all. When I love myself, I am most likely to be true to myself, and risk honesty when I express my needs, including my admiration of and attraction to my brothers. The key is in recognizing who that self is. Another index of the success of the gay liberation movement is in the numbers of White gays who feel free to crusade for recognition of their right to love each other.

In fairness, many of us are overwhelmed by financial challenges. Most of us aren’t so well off as to be concerned about the joint property and inheritance rights that come with a marriage contract. We suffer disproportionate morbidities: Black men who have sex with men currently account for half of all HIV/AIDS cases, Black men are disproportionately incarcerated, and we are afraid of being further stigmatized. It’s small wonder that we tend to sit on the sidelines of the struggle for our human rights.

If we are really proud of being gay, that is, if we are empowered by gay as acknowledgement of at least some facet of our personhood, we should be out there like the throngs of protesters at the demonstrations across the country, proudly proclaiming our attraction to and love of each other in our communities. While there are undoubtedly things we share in common with White gays and homosexuals of other backgrounds, in order to achieve our freedom, we have to do what Jews and Japanese and countless other groups have done, and honor our own cultural uniqueness. When an artist, focuses on the specific, he renders the universal. Similarly, an identification of our sexuality that honors our Africanness may provide the pride in our sexuality that will allow us to fight for all the other aspects of our lives.

PREVENTION INTENTIONS by John-Martin Green

Over the past few weeks, I participated as an audience member in two town hall style meetings on HIV in the Black community. The first, at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and the other at the Gay & Lesbian Center billed as, The State of Gay Black Men. The panel discussion at the first event, was moderated by AIDS Budget Action Coalition Director, Manuel Rivera, and included Dr. Monica Sweeney, Assistant Commissioner of the New York City Health Department's Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control. Panelists spoke of how the incidence of new infections is raging among Black and Latino people and how we must secure a greater share of the one-billion-plus dollars which are being allotted to HIV prevention in New York City each year. We must also hold each other to account, they said, for how those dollars are spent.

The most salient perspective issuing forth from that panel came from Dr. Sweeney in response to a woman who proposed that HIV is being put in condoms to destroy Black people. Dr. Sweeney urged the small grassroots audience peopled by HIV fatigued, stigma-phobic, conspiracy theorists, among others, that, “We think of HIV as if it existed in a vacuum. It doesn’t. The discrimination part, including poor education, poor housing, and job discrimination – all those happened before HIV. If we think of HIV in the context of health disparities; obesity, heart disease, stroke, arthritis; we have all of them, and the conspiracy part was not around HIV, it happened way before [HIV] based on the policies in the US around race issues.”

Oddly, when broaching the subject that 50% of the new HIV infections in NY are among men who have sex with men, Dr. Sweeney said, “However we shouldn’t talk about men who have sex with men, because there are a lot of men who have sex with men who are not HIV+. Another panelist, who identified as a heterosexual HIV+ man about to turn fifty, cited stigma as a challenge in fighting the disease but insisted that we oughtn’t waste time talking about whether men are having sex with men because, “If they’re having sex with anyone, they’re at risk,” he insisted.

I proposed to the crowd that that gentleman was right about stigma being a serious challenge in the fight against HIV but that, “we have to talk about the fact that there are many Black men who love men. We are the most stigmatized people on the planet. Those stigmas include the issues of manhood and sexuality. Sexuality exists on a continuum. We have to create spaces in which to talk about those issues. Not talking about it is killing us. There is also a stigma around the identification, ‘gay,’ which is seen by many Blacks as a White thing. Many Black men who love men will not go to venues where gay identification and HIV are the bywords to receive service. In conceiving culturally competent prevention models, this fact must be taken into account.”

At the Gay & Lesbian Center town hall, the audience expressed frustration over People of Color in Crisis’, and NYS Black Gay Network’s being defunded, and Gay Men of African Descent looking as if it is moving in the same direction in the face of administrative and fiscal underperformance.

I suggested that the crisis facing us extends beyond administrative and fiscal mismanagement. “The problem,” I proposed, “is that the prevention and wellness models being employed to assist Black people are invalid. If we are in earnest about more than just keeping our respective organizations afloat, and really seek to help stem the tide of HIV/AIDS among other morbidities plaguing us, we should convene a think tank to explore alternative culturally competent prevention models, and conduct our efforts on behalf Black people in centers in our own community,”

Here’s to hoping we come together along these lines.