more mumblings about the closet.

id like to speak to you how’d i like- when id like and not be afraid of the terrible things that sometimes await that kind of boldness- the lynch mobs, baptized tongues and forked speak. There are fields that i go to sometimes im my mind. i call them forever. id like to go there with you and at least hold your hand.

id like to hold you when i need to. I don’t mean to be too much. After all, this ain’t meant to push a love on you that you don’t want. Its more about us hearing and being heard. And not caught between the “could be’s” and thousands of angry eyes ready to set fire to what we got. I want to be able to want you more openly.

Id like to fuck, once, without the aid of intoxication. sodomy need not be secretive neither be love.

And id like to show you where I groove. And not be up in arguments about the way we look because they only matter in this world and the universe of our making is something beyond this entrapment.

id like us free to feel.

black august.

black -the color of my true love’s hair- is also the name given to my skin. and I take that name back in pride because there is nothing but strength in this flesh. i carry on, for my ancestors, the memories and experiences of lives gone by and struggles for liberation. we sing our freedom songs to one another where ever we meet: on corners- congregation pews- jail cells- bus seats- sin shacks- chat sites- taxis- dark rooms- and living rooms.

black august is the name we have given this month. in honor of all the triumphs, tragedies and challenges that Africans have faced since coming to these shores. it is also in ceremony and remembrance of fighters that we bless this cycle.

The universe has witnessed major points of african struggle, rebirth and genius in this special month: The first official slaves were brought to this country in August 1619. A general strike of slaves was called for in August of 1843. The Underground Railroad’s founding date is in August. The rebellions of Nat Turner (1831) and Gabriel Prosser (1800) were in August. The MOVE house was bombed by the state in August of 1978. Fred Hampton and Mutulu Shakur are August births. DuBois died in Ghana in August of 1963. and Jonathan Jackson, in protest of his brother George’s arrest, attempted to liberate his kin by taking hostages in the Alameda Courthouse and was killed.

we must remember our moments here. one of the greatest tools of the oppressor is to take away our connections with one another. with our history. with our knowledge that pain and suffering are not infinite and do not have to be. we can create and dream of something better. this sky is the same one that revolutions have been dreamt under and that our revolutionary foremothers moved under.

and these are thoughts for inspiration

thoughts for revolution

the people must be free.

Places of Healing.

 

I wish my experiences with health care were not lived through the parameters of race, class and gender, but they are. I cannot conceive of hospitals and medicine without thinking about the thousands of African slaves brought to this country and worked to their bones. I cannot conceive of hospitals and medicine without thinking about the thousands of Black womyn who were involuntarily sterilized in this country. I cannot conceive of hospitals or medicine without seeing my grandfather – in his winter – lying on the couch, exhausted and in pain from chemotherapy. I cannot conceive of medicine or hospitals without noticing that the majority of HIV/Aids deaths (and infections) in this country are usually poor people of color who have little to no access to the medicine and precious knowledge that would save our lives. These experiences stay with me. They are apart of my very being and breathe as real as I do.

A few months ago when I was diagnosed with having the HIV virus (something I will formerly address on this blog later- but it is part of the reason why post have been so scattered), I immediately found that having to come into more direct contact with Western medicine was going to be a rehashing and analysis of trauma. Part of the mission of this blog is to express and explore the human experience from the perspective of a Queer, Black, Male bodied, Communist and that still holds true. I am excited to start a new chapter in the life of this blog- starting with this post. I hope it makes up for my long absence.

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“That’s a lot of trauma.”

The White doctor uttered as I sat in the chair giving him a rundown of my childhood. I suppose that I can be summed up in that manner: trauma. I also suppose that most of the people I grew up with can be assessed the same . . . But our lives are not merely death marches. People of color in this country have had to make beauty from the torn shards or poverty and destruction. And so it naturally follows that we would not solely view our lives as that. I may have grown up materially poor and dealt with the ills of drug abuse and domestic violence but I also knew about “love” and the movings of things not understood by White folks. In this case – as is most times the case when White folks seek to analyze experiences they have never had- cynicism is a White thing. Because that Doctor, in all of his knowledge and wisdom didn’t understand what Nikki Giovanni put so well in a poem: “Black love, is Black wealth.” Because of their privilege and materialistic socialization of Western thought, I would argue that White people have a harder time understanding the meaning of that quote because they see narratives of color as a doomed work of fiction- where there is little hope because of the poverty and inability of the people to move out of their social condition. (Never mind racist capitalism and the absurdity of pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps) I understand the trauma of my youth and the joy. I see them as the ongoing dialectic that has created me. I understand and love those experiences in order to make peace with them, so that when life’s great storms return I can better deal with them. I left the office horribly upset. It wasn’t until later that day, once I could process with a friend, that I realized how important race was in that situation. The doctor’s inability to connect with me on that spiritual point was an issue for me. With the HIV population growing in communities of color, there is also a rising need to have care providers that are of the communities they serve. I do not need to be under that White gaze while I am trying to figure out what is wrong with my body.

This is true of healthcare in general. People of color often have distrust for medicine in this county because of the historic underpinnings of the interactions had in the hospital. Black folks, in particular, have been the subject of experiments with drug vaccines, disease, eugenics, forced breeding, and other genetic manipulation. When you combine that with the fact that most people in this country cannot afford health care decent enough to see a doctor whenever necessary and the additional fact that the institutions of high education that give out credentials, to become licensed, are mostly White- then you have a pretty strong material reasoning to avoid/ distrust hospitals. Western medicine has given us little hope, despite the immense promise it holds when combined with a more holistic realm of thought.

Part of my communism, is believing in an alternative health system. The advancements of technology under capitalism are wondrous. The beauty of humanity is that we have become able to envision and see a world much larger than the one that currently exist- this applies to medicine and the science that is constantly pushing it forward.  The tragedy of capitalism and the mind/body dichotomy of the West is that we cannot see the full potential of our work because of the nature of the system. Capitalism is a system of waste and profit: it wastes our energy and planet in order the gain profit for the wealthy. Because the goal of these industries is capital then it makes no sense to cure disease or make medicine free because fully healthy workers could not be as easily exploited due to the fact that our minds and bodies would be stronger. We would be more able to struggle against our conditions. Western thought, in medicine, has led us to view our bodies as battlefields. Most medicine is designed to destroy the problem at all cost- meaning you might end with a more severe problem than you started with. One has to look no further that the barbarism of chemotherapy to see my point. I believe that this is because the West has never understood that treating the body requires spiritual health (by this I mean things like: being at ease with a doctor who understands you, having a peaceful home life, having meaningful relations with other humans) and a connection with nature. More and more research is finding that the biggest part of fighting the diseases we face is no more than changing our diet and pursing bliss. [that was overly simple but still truthful.]

And so, in my journey and in the service of communism, I see it as an important part of the project to share my narrative and examine the intersections of these life events as they (and I) evolve.It is important to reclaim the older knowledge from our ancestors as we move forward. Solutions to our problems will come from the combining of old wisdom and new thought. I apologize for my absence from this blog and promise to be more active. Here is to a new and powerful 2012, filled with health, life, and revolution! Luta continua!

An Involuntary Recognition of Life

Some calm . . .

setting like sun done come upon me

as I find pieces of myself that were kept away for birthdays, family gatherings, and first dates.

They lie tucked under the bath house bed.

My palm, pressed to skin, feels like solace and I feel still

Laying transfixed, still. . .

My eyes find some man being fucked, violently

His head bent low.

and I saw you laying parallel.

Playing majorette with a couple of torn heart-strings.

Twirling about with some other man’s ruined symphony.

You blew smoke- thick like illusion – and sang of worlds where we weren’t prey for White men eager to waste salt on our endings.

Some part of me sat with you back when food was homemade and basons were bath tubs and we laughed at uncle Floyd’s missing teeth

and dirt roads that no one can drive on

and night’s out and even crack pipes

and we laughed.

And thought on how ghetto life seemed easy compared to this numb terror.

Still . . .

Barely understood thoughts: gold bands and dark skin

Sarah Bartman

melon patches

mule bone

Hurston and Hughes.

gin joints

spades tables

grandma’s hands

reconstruction

a month of Sundays

Loretta

pale skin and Betty Gene

South Carolina

insertion and pain

bleeding at the start

black balls

white dolls

and minstrel shows

money shots, towels and still . . .

we all lay under some White man’s gaze.

Queers and Capitalism Part One: The Dialectics of Moving Towards A Larger Social Acceptance

“. . . the waters around you have grown “

I remember the first time I saw a B.Scott video. I sat in my freshman dorm and listened to this very flamboyant, very androgynous, bi-racial man rant and rave about Shemar Moore’s penis being exposed online. A moment like this sounds very mundane and trivial, but has profound meaning when placed into context. As a queer person it is very rare that I see myself reflected, even if it is slight, in media and this doubles when we’re talking about queer people of color, who are all but invisible in the culture. So when we see representations of ourselves it becomes something spiritual, something affirming, something that touches us and says: “you are worth attention and love.” The 7-minute rant did that for me. Move ahead 5 years and we get this . . .

The same B.Scott I knew and loved is now a bonified star complete with music videos, red carpet appearances and celebrity interviews. Looking at this very feminine, queer, man of color on the screen brings all kinds of questions to the surface for me:

“Has society come to a place where we can accept queers as people?”

“Does capitalism need homophobia (patriarchy) to exist?”

and “What does this mean for queer struggle and activism?”

I want to think out loud a bit about these things . . .

“Has society come to a place where we can accept queers as people?”

For someone like this and many other gay figures to come to such prominence in our time means that there is a large shift in society. Homo-life is a commodity now, something being placed onto the pedestal of consumer culture and devoured: your favorite pop singer has probably stolen swag from the ballroom, and there is a gay plotline on just about every show. In addition to that, more and more states are sanctioning some degree of union between gay couples and DADT is becoming smaller and smaller in the rear view. The state and big business are slowly adapting to a shift in public opinion. I believe that much of the work of 60’s queer activists to prove that gay culture was just as legitimate as others paved the way for certain aspects of the culture to take center stage in the way that they have thus influencing public consciousness. I also believe that the majority of this “gay is okay” push comes from capitalism’s understanding that it cannot afford for the queer population to be isolated in total from the whole of society.

I’ve always said that queer people represented a very particular threat to capitalism, especially in the United States, because of their positioning in the society. Queer folk prior to many of the movements of the 60’s and 70’s had little to no material connection to the American melting pot. And it can be argued that in certain communities of color the nature of queer oppression had a different character because of the fact that people found themselves already segregated and marginalized. Thus, many queers of color a.) Identified more with their racial caste and were kept in the embrace of their families because of their shared oppression and/or b.) weren’t given access into larger queer spaces because of the segregation.

However, I believe that the generalization can be made that queer folks challenged the stability of capitalism because of their status as people pushed outside of the nuclear family, which is one of the most basic oppressive structures of society and patriarchy. It becomes too dangerous to have pockets of the society that have no material attachment to it. It is also dangerous for capitalism to have spaces in which the development of such a critique can be developed and shared.

In addition, radical queer politics, much like feminism challenged many of the assumptions of the culture and capitalism. What does it mean for white supremacist hetero capitalism when the nuclear family, male/ female socialization and personal identity are challenged? Many older, less fabulous, leftists would say that it means nothing or very little because the means of production, the material ways in which capitalism operates, are not immediately being challenged. But they would be wrong on multiple fronts.  The challenging of patriarchal social relations not only means liberating womyn from unwaged labor but also brings the political and the personal together. Something desperately missing from a lot of movements of the past has been the revolutionary observation and transformation of gender identities. By this I mean, that feminism and anti-patriarchal ideology have never really been taken seriously by groups involving a straight male majority and that’s because it strikes at the most guarded and unchallenged of our identities; our gender. Feminist and queer movements of the past have sought to turn this on its head by placing an emphasis on personal development along these lines along with organizing in the workplace.

Slowly and subtly, queers have been brought into the fold. One interesting moment in this history was in the wake of the 60’s and 70’s, in the middle of the AIDS crisis-we saw thousands of gays –revolutionary or otherwise- pass away at epidemic levels. This crisis had varying effects on gay communities, some of which are relevant to this post and some aren’t. Something that is important to recognize is that the effect of the AIDS epidemic and the response to it not only left a vacuum of leadership in queer spaces but it also paved the way, in part, for queer struggle to be co-opted through the nonprofit industrial complex. This is important because we see a very distinct change in the character of queer activism around this time.  Friendlier, more passive things like quilt making and appealing to the state for sympathy became more prominent. A little later on, queers became more attached to the causes of DADT repeal and marriage rights, the latter can be understood partially in the context of having to watch loved ones die without any recourse or protection from their biological families. I would argue that this more identity based activism, and less aggressive stance in the mainstream, had a less alienating and more tolerance inducing effect on the some of the population.

So I think the boost in queer visibility can be attributed to a push and pull between forces. I think that movements against patriarchy and capitalism paved the way for aspects of oppressed peoples humanity (specifically queers here) to be accepted in the mainstream and capitalism, by it’s very nature and need to survive, adapted to this shift by exploiting and incorporating what it could.

“Does capitalism need homophobia (patriarchy) to exist?”

For me, a struggle against homophobia must mean one that addresses capitalism. I see my oppression as a Black, gay male as one whose roots are intrinsically linked with the beast of capitalism. In order for the power structure to maintain itself it needs to suppress certain parts of the population. Does this mean that we will never see wealthy gays? No, San Francisco is proof of that. However, it does mean that the majority of queer and trans folk, especially those of color, can bet that they will never be apart of the ruling class. The very nature of the society cannot allow for that. Queer folk, being a one of the more vulnerable parts of the population, find themselves subordinated into lower levels of the working class through homophobia or excluded entirely as seen in the case of trans folk. This strengthens the elite and their machinery because the horizontal violence (homophobia) maintains a division of labor and permanent caste position. We also see the building of a surplus army of labor (the unemployed) to be used against working people who may feel the need to challenge their abuse at the hands of the elite. Workers who seek to withhold their labor (strikes) until better conditions arise are quickly met with the leagues of unemployed folk who will scab (break the picket and replace the strikers) and that makes sense in a society where there is no space for the entirety of the population to work for a decent wage.

Also, just as in the case of race, socialized gender is a one of the pillars of capitalism. In using patriarchy as one of it’s stepping stones, capitalism has created the conditions under which it’s demise cannot come without attacking the gendered division of labor, homophobia, etc . . . This means that our ascension into the utter fabulousness of liberation means that gender, and capitalism must be destroyed because the destruction of such a poisonous ideology (patriarchy) would mean the crumbling of walls built between working people. The system needs us isolated into paranoid fractions.

“What does this mean for queer struggle and activism?”

It is in the best interest of capitalism to bring queers into the fold (through a very narrow, white supremacist, patriarchal view of course) the potential to expand capital through an exploitation of queer images and culture is vast. At the same time this gay assimilation dulls the blade of radical queer politics. Because capitalism’s veil of justice and equality is kept in place through the façade of acceptance and limitless upward mobility, embodied in the emerging queer ruling class, it becomes harder for queer militants to argue for the necessity of a revolution against capitalism itself. Reform to the system is popular when the connection between class oppression and patriarchy isn’t clear. If I believe that patriarchy is something completely separate from the otherwise redeemable capitalist world order then it makes no sense to seize the means of production as apart of liberation because my conceived liberation is tied to the eradication of an ideology within certain people and not connected to a material struggle against the bourgeoisie (the top 10% of people who own everything) to end the totality of oppression. Radical queers, in this historical moment, find themselves struggling to articulate the need for a queer struggle that includes a radical class analysis and positive program that reflects such. We must also win people away from bourgeois delusions like equality under capitalism.

I think it’s exciting to be alive right now, and to organize right now.  We have an opportunity to present a new proposition and deconstruct past failures with the intent of building a movement that can win.  For me, radical queer organizing looks like many things: the building of safe spaces where we can heal and build self determination, the challenging of straight and male privilege, and the inverting of gender roles with the intention to create the conditions where all beings can fully express themselves are a few of those. The incorporation ideas such as self-care, and consciousness raising around gendered dynamics are some others. The appropriation of queer identities by the mainstream has, in an unintentional way, given us the opportunity to observe and reflect on our organizing and position in struggle. It also has made the ground fertile to plant revolutionary seeds. More queers are out and engaging in some form of political activity than we’ve seen in a while. (Maybe ever, I would wager that the amount of queers campaigning for reform and the amount visibly/verbally opposing the reformist queers out numbers the activists of 40-50 years ago) And that means we have some work to do. We have some questions to pose. We have some ideas to raise. And we have some consciousness to change.

Spears & Flowers: Reflections on Queer Alienation

I have been very introspective recently. The beauty of radical queer politics, and the benefit it holds for all political tendencies and struggles, is it’s unflinching quest to challenge all aspects of the culture, including ourselves. radical queer politics questioned the family, feminism, patriarchy and other aspects of society through a look at their workings within human beings and our interpersonal relationships. In a recent meeting of a radical queer space that I love and am connected to, I was inspired to write this piece.

I often catch glimpses of who I want to be staring at me in the mirror, waving. I see a lot of what I am and more of someone I wish I was from time to time. But the purpose of all of this is to come closer to loving my reflection for what it is, when I see it. It is becoming more evident to me that self-improvement and self-love are not mutually exclusive. As I stand I see thousands of contradictions and things I despise about myself, but I also know that many of these are a result of being out in the world. They are not essential components of my character and I can change them. It also is important to look at that image, in the mirror, and love it fiercely. To embrace it for what it is at that moment: not who it was, could or should be. It is only when we strive towards a place of love for ourselves that we can truly work to combat the negative traits we despise.

P.S. I wrote somewhat dry because I wanted to get the thoughts out as clearly as possible without too much colorful language possibly getting in the way.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

In my younger years I sought to craft a master heterosexual disguise. This desire came from the fact that I knew that the boldness exemplified by some of my “out” peers was something that was not tolerable, something that was often met with violence. The most disgusting incident of this manifested with the murder of someone who lived on the same street as I did. The young man, who often cross dressed and defied the code of conduct by talking back to his hecklers, was found stabbed to death with shards of glass in his anus. Daily, I knew of boys who were raped or beat in school. The general attitude around these attacks was silence from the administration and larger community. Because of this, I learned, very early, that my survival was dependant on my ability to make myself invisible. Part of this pact with oppressive patriarchy, meant also that I had to often partake in the demonizing of my queer brothers and sisters. Eventually this meant that I began to absorb the rhetoric, let it run through my blood, and define myself with those same horizontal lines.

I hated effeminate men. They were something unforgivable to me, something disgusting. I would lash out at my friends, and police them when we hung out. I despised the fact that I possessed those same qualities and wanted to exorcise them, from myself, through verbal assaults on other effeminate men.  Often times, in oppressed communities, the qualities that are picked upon by the dominant culture are those that are most harshly policed. It’s the same as problem I sometimes see occur in Black communities around “loudness”, “Black English”, and “dress”. Because we live in a society that is dominated by the straight white male lens, we must all act accordingly in order to move about with the least amount of trouble. Albeit, oppression and trouble are mainstays regardless of how much people desire to assimilate to the prescribed aesthetic. So we come to a place where we, as the various oppressed peoples, see ourselves through dual lenses and we posses what Dubois coined as “double consciousness”

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

-        W.E.B. Dubois

Recently, I have been challenging the way this internal hatred manifest in a different way: by looking at the men I lust for. I’ve always been attracted to a specific kind of man. My day dreams and night fantasies were dominated by very hard, masculine men. My dealings, in real life, have been the same. Regardless of the tragic amounts of repression within them and the dysfunction that it brings to the relationship, I wanted a “MAN”. I remember having a conversation with an ex, while we were dating, where he forbid me to be around other queer black men. This was also the same man who refused to engage with the option of versatility in the bed, who refused to acknowledge me sexually. And none of this is said with the intention of demonizing him. Quite the contrary, he represents the psychic dissonance formed within us in this society, where oppressed folk cannot fully come to a place of reconciliation with themselves and develop into semi-formed humans. The same thing goes for myself and my attraction to men like him.

In a recent video, the poet Yolo Akili, challenged the culture, specifically of Queer Black men, when he asked the question: “Are You The Kind of Boy You Want?” The video, which features a range of men, focuses on the fact that often times we pursue partners, and friends, out of a longing to negate certain qualities within ourselves. It highlights the lack of self-love we have. Personally, I know that my desire to be with stereotypical images of Black men or damaged men, who would ultimately lead to hurt, came from a disgust I had for myself. I outright rejected the notion that I would be in a relationship with effeminate men, with larger men etc . . . Looking back, I see a lot of my attitudes towards potential partners as reflective of a kind of alliance with White supremacy and patriarchy. I projected this prescribed image of Black manhood onto these men, dehumanizing them. At the same time, this image was something I desperately wanted to be because of my learned hatred of the effeminate parts of myself.

The nature of life in this society teaches us many things; among them is an intense self-loathing. From birth we are told that we are lacking and taught to consume in order to fill in for, or cover up our flaws. Combine this basic rule of Capitalism with White Supremacy and Patriarchy and we have generations of oppressed people consuming an ideology that is slowly killing them. And for that we both desire and loathe societal poison. The society hates womyn and defines “male” by what the former is not. And so it follows that men embodying traits relegated to womyn are seen as pariahs, or backwards. The tragic error in this confusion is that it continues that dissonance we spoke of by ignoring the full range of human expression and the material fact that nothing is essentially “male” or “female”.

In my search to come to a deeper love for myself, and therefore coming closer to a greater capacity to honestly love another person, I have come to some very hard truths. And it is difficult to approach a place of self-love after years of taught hatred but it is a healing we need. Many constructions of relationships between beings fall between the pillars of co-dependence and co modification. Our alienation brings us to seek an unhealthy validation in romantic partners. We disguise this often as “love”, all the while afraid to see our tolerance of abuse and longing for what they really are: reactions to the fact that we have not been told enough that we are loved or deserving of love. We commodify one another: looking at the value we acquire through virtue of being involved with another. I believe that this comes from the lack of self-love that comes with life under White supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. That’s why “love” is something radical, something golden, something revolutionary: because it is something diametrically opposed to the progress of the society which oppresses and exploits us. If we as militants, as revolutionaries, as any people who hope to bring joy to the world and ourselves, cannot deal with the love most essential to the revolutionary project then we have lost.

I look out, as I try to free myself, and see rooms filled with Black men like me. Sitting underneath the horror of that ceiling and knowing, each day, that its existence is becoming more and more real – the air a little more thin.

I also see that, like all things, this doesn’t have to be the permanent definition of our existence. I draw inspiration from healing spaces, from spaces of challenge and love. It is easy to become overwhelmed and see it all as insurmountable. But that is the exact the opposite of reality: our individual projects of self-help and improvement lead us to a greater love for ourselves and for humanity. This has a material effect on our conditions because it brings to the surface a counter ideology that will move with us through physical struggle. The scars of the racist and sexist capitalist system are seen beyond economic oppression, they are apart of our spiritual fabric. Our oppressions intersect and harm on multiple levels. That is why this work and kind of analysis was crucial to the Queer liberation movement and Feminist theory. That is why revolutionary self-reflection is crucial to me.

I want to end with a quote, and some commentary:

“I believe that many of the destructive lessons taught in our childhood homes is the result of the desperation of our parents. They were children once and learned those same lessons. I don’t know how we begin to unlearn that behavior.” –Essex Hemphill

I believe that many of the destructive lessons learned in this society are the result of the desperation of our parents and the ailments of our society. As children we are torn asunder learning these lessons. The beginning of the unlearning, of the reconciliation of our torn selves lies in our ability to grasp warmly, hold up and affirm one another. Our power lies in our ability to recognize and reconcile with our own humanity: to take our scarred inner children and embrace them, allow them to cry and finally, to speak. Much of Western culture is a about running away from ourselves, being terrified of what makes us human and repressing it. It is my sincere intention to do away with this within myself. I want to see every raw bit and say “I appreciate you.”

Free Write: Pretty Dancer

What follows is more of a long rambling of abstract thought that spawned from a free-write about my childhood. It isn’t polished or edited or very cohesive but I would like to post it because I haven’t written in a long time here and because I feel the need to release this:

There’s a storm outside and when it rages like this my mind races back to memories of my childhood. The face of my friend Eugene (we’ll call him this on the blog so as not to out his identity) who was hit by and car, and survived, during a storm comes forth. Our 4-year friendship was filled with many more ups and downs than perhaps nine year olds should endure. However, we know that childhood isn’t ever really childhood for most of the children in this world. And in this country, if you happen to be born into the ghettos of America as an ethnic minority . . . you might as well skip school and head straight for the work force. Childhood is a word rarely heard or understood. For Black children, “childhood” is training. We are prepared for what pain the world seeks to inflict. We learn how to act, think, and speak. We learn what it takes to survive in the great White world from our parents. We learn the horrors of racism from the institutions that occupy our spaces. We learn of the embarrassment that accompanies Black bodies in white spaces when we leave our neighborhoods. And for Black boys, this also includes lessons in manhood.I want to talk about Eugene and I today, not because he was hit by a car, but because of the dynamics present in our relationship and the ways that we were socialized at an early age.

I remember our friendship coming to a thunderous crash when I heard the words “fucking faggot!” directed at me. Eugene and his brothers were spitting venom from across the street as I sat on my stoop. For the entire time I had been friends with him, Eugene and I hadn’t come anywhere close to exploring one another sexually. Although, it was becoming more and more known in our neighborhood that I “experimented” with other boys. I had never held those thoughts in regards to him. I remember being told by Eugene’s brothers that I had better not touch him that I was lucky I wasn’t being beat up and that Eugene could still come to my house. I didn’t pay any of it attention really because by this point, I was aware that most of the neighborhood boys didn’t like me, despite the urgings that would bring them to me then and later on until I moved.

From what I remember of his life, Eugene grew up in a family of boxers. He was being trained as one and that included regular hyper masculine abuse. Occasionally I would get punched in the chest by my male family members and told to “man up” at random, but for him it was commonplace. He was routinely checked on his emotions and at that young age I saw him begin to harden. A lot of our friendship revolved around art because we both drew, but there were times when he wasn’t allowed to because it wasn’t as important as his boxing training. When my mother would argue in favor of us being allowed to create more art she was usually ignored.

Towards the end of our friendship, Eugene became increasingly antagonist towards me. He would ask me if I liked being the “faggie boy” or if I was going to stop hanging out with my more feminine male friends. I would remain silent and just ask if he wanted to draw more or if me playing football with the other boys would help with my isolation from the rest of them. His brothers would become more antagonistic towards me and very soon I found myself talking to a wall. Eugene would ignore me or not even come to my house. When I went to his house I would either get beat up by his brother or ignored while they boxed.

Looking back, it would be very easy to paint the picture of the ostracized faggot and go on a tangent about how lonely and lost I was. And all of that would be accurate. But that’s not the point of this entry. I recognize the turmoil and hell Eugene must have been enduring, especially at such a tender age. For Black men, who find that their patriarchal power, which we are socialized to value, is stripped by the dominant culture, it becomes necessary to define ourselves by dominating those in lower caste within our community.  We learn this very early on. Eugene’s brothers sought to severe his ties to me because I represented the antithesis of Black manhood. I was not buying into the power of the penis, not seeking to take part in the brotherhood and thus not a true brother. Our indoctrination into patriarchy, as young males, often means learning whom the enemies are: the faggots and the womyn. Those two groups must be subordinated and beaten into states of fear.

In developing, we also see how this socialization creates half formed human beings, men who are cut off from themselves intimately. In telling our young Black boys that they cannot befriend who they wish, that they cannot express themselves how they wish, that they cannot grow to be the person they wish to be, we are creating the basis for our continued oppression. I think about my father, who cannot express himself through words very easily and would rather strike out in order to solve his problems. I think about the time I saw Eugene years later and he still looked as though he wanted to spit on me. The hatred we create within ourselves for ourselves and one another causes nothing but damage.

Many of the dangers of patriarchy lie in the fact that we are engaging in a system of violent thought that supports the dissonance between one another. In earlier postings I have spoken of the importance of queer politics and feminism in the struggle for human liberation and I still hold to that. I am saddened to think of the thousands of boys who will grow up in an atmosphere that clips their wings before they know how long they can spread. And it also creates a fire within me because I acknowledge the historical task ahead.

I believe that the damaging lessons we learn as children are done so out of necessity. They are learned for survival. Because if Black boys are not able to separate themselves from the “weaker members” of the pack and help to exile them, we suffer greater trauma and scrutiny from the larger society and our calls for justice become invalid because of the basic patriarchal thought of the dominant culture.  This means that there was a dual character in my oppression at the hands of Eugene and his brothers. Not only was there a need to assert “manhood” but also a need to “protect” the Black community through the removal of problematic elements.  I’ve spoken to many Black queers who don’t advocate for queer politics and identities to be accepted because that would mean the removal of their voices all together. We have often been told that the struggle for race is central and that all other issues are either moot or can wait till we have reached some mythical mountaintop.

Recently I was volunteering for a Black non-profit in downtown San Francisco and I noticed a game of football between some young boys become very rough. One particular boy began crying after being tackled, and like clock work he was attacked verbally. As I braced myself to intervene, I found myself cut off. Another male volunteer, who’d spoken all day about his time in prison, jumped into the fray. After immediately separating the boys, he began to talk about the need for young Black men to express emotion. He told the boys that the biggest problem for him was that no one ever acknowledged his ability to cry as something natural and that he wouldn’t be in his current situation if he had been taught to express himself without violence.

It was encouraging to see this take place. The potential for radical change within our communities around issues for gender is immense and indeed must be dealt with if we are to grow into a people who can bring forth any kind of change.  And this sentiment goes beyond the Black community, of which I primarily spoke about in this piece, because it is a topic relevant to all communities.

I’m going to stop here because this post has taken a remarkable amount of energy from me. And I am not even sure if I have expressed myself as fully, or as detailed or as cohesively as I would like but I am hoping this experiment in therapeutic writing yields some positive results for dealing with childhood trauma.

Some Serious Moonlight

It must be magic. I spent the later part of my Saturday going through various parts of West Oakland with my friend ChakaZ, each one unraveling like a paining. Already in an altered state once I got into the car, I decided that this night would be a “good one”. I didn’t care how many hipsters were on the floor, we would go in and let have. 10 minutes of explaining my non-profit volunteering and the beauty of Black community later and we were outside of a small café that promised to have a banging funk party on the inside. Before we left though we exchanged other tales. She told me of her mystic night, full of beautiful womyn, men who looked like Basquiat, affirmations and some serious moonlight. In exchange I spoke about the novel I plan to write and together we hatched small schemes of art and revolution. Indeed the place was full of hipsters inside and not the best funk music one could find. However, I am learning to let life lead you. In no time one of her co-workers showed up and along with his friend we took the floor. The rest of this tale is far too long for me to type and I’m ok with that because this was just an introduction. I haven’t written on here in a while and I wanted to come back, with a poem. This night was very important to me because I have been very upset lately about my positioning in life and failures to live up to certain things that are expected of me as well as situations that are beyond my control and always have been. I recently broke down and cried about all of this and another friend, Sycorax, began to talk about what we owe ourselves. She spoke about how we have always lived with ourselves and that we owe the child in us a piece of happiness. That resonated very deeply. This poem is dedicated to my Saturday night, and to new beginnings. Lets see where this will lead us:

SOME SERIOUS MOONLIGHT

It feels odd to speak of things in the abstract after they have happened.

Like saying your love is a shawl that I wish to wrap myself in and prance with.

Or how I wish a friend would lower himself deeply into me.

Hold me and heal me.

And it’s especially strange to think that in a world where bombs drop so frequently.

Where starvation is commonplace.

Where millions don’t see light.

Where the rich desire to strangle all our useful labor from us.

Where I can grow 23 years and not recognize the sound of my own voice.

In this world it figures strange that I would have such joy in one night.

That your shoulder would mean peace

Your laughter bring solace

Indeed it is a strange and abstract thought to ponder

That in a world like this I would be blessed with a friend like you.

Carrying some serious moonlight in your eyes.

The Artist and The Revolution II: Nina Simone

To create art in the service of life. My earliest memories of Nina are of my mother wrapping her head with kente cloth in the bathroom. In those days I didn’t like the sound of Nina, her voice put me off, it didn’t sound like EnVogue. Her lack of smooth vocals put her in the back of my mind.

In college, I found her again. She was tucked away in a series of clips from the civil rights movement. “I would have been a murderer” she boldly stated, later saying that she would go to the south and exchange bullet for bullet with the fascist white power structure. “Who is this womyn?” I thought. And then I heard this:

 

Never had I heard such passion. Never have I heard such a distinct sadness. Never had I heard someone reach though speakers and command that I listen. Command that I feel their profound emotion. In the service of the people, Nina travelled and played protest songs during the Civil Rights movement, including the anthem “Young Gifted & Black”. She represents a large portion of the Black population that lived under the threat of death in this country as they fought for freedom. At the same time, Nina is free. She lived as she sang. She lived a life of heartache, pride, disease, misery, joy, laughter, and contradiction and she lived it boldly. I see her as a jubilant womyn, someone who achieved a certain kind of clarity of spirit and freedom within the poisonous world we live in.

When I hear Nina sing I imagine Black children in fields running into and endless light, I see Harlem in the 1920′s, I feel my Grandfather’s breath graze my ear as he tells me stories of growing up in South Carolina in the 20′s, 30′s and 40′s. I feel connected to this vast history of Black life and struggle, to this search for liberation and I am saddened to think on the history of my people and others out at sea searching desperately for port. She means that much to me.

Homecoming

When I speak of affirmation I am talking about a homecoming.

People often ask me about liberation and revolution and that’s because the words in the streets will soon be liberation and revolution. The ruling class have grossly misused the power they accumulated through blood and exploitation and we are now in a situation where we could see huge up springs of revolutionary action from the masses of people within the next ten years, given that we get out, organize and help to create a peoples army with the people. I speak on Black queer struggle because I am most familiar with that as a Black queer. And because of this I am often asked questions about Black queer struggle in relation to the Black community, if that mythical group indeed exists, and the entire working class. Usually, and very proudly, I am the first to say that I am not the correct person to be asked because I don’t know nearly as much as people project onto me but I wish to speak right now, if for even for a very brief moment, about two things; a homecoming, and a fire. I wish to speak, if even for the slightest of moments, about Black queer affirmation.

It is important for Black queers to know that the changing of our conditions will not come with our acceptance into the violence that created the very need for us to run away from home. That violence, which was born out of the evils of a rising bourgeoisie in Europe and strengthened through the rape of Africa, is something all consuming and all damning. It is important to recognize the dangers in basing the queer revolution on assimilation, especially for Black queers. The ability of our more privileged brothers and sisters to get married and so on will not result in decent housing for all, or an end to the system of profit over people. It can only result in the fortifying of the that violent system, the capitalist system, which has needs and desires diametrically opposed to our own as a people seeking liberation from oppression. That is because oppression against people of color, queers, and womyn are the very necessary preconditions for a successful capitalist society; the most oppressed and marginalized will become the most exploited.

Black queer folk occupy a very unique and key position in this country and system because of their caste positioning. We are an intersection of many disparate groups. Many of us have left the “Black community” because of the culture of patriarchal oppression against queers that, while prevalent in the dominant society, has a particularly damaging character in the Black community. It is often shouted that Blacks are the most homophobic of all peoples, which I reject most simply because Blacks cannot in-act state violence against gays in the same manner that the mostly white state can and does.

Essex Hemphill, that bold and often forgotten poet, once said:

“The return I call for is so we can do the work that no one else can do for us. The white lesbian and gay community can’t come in and interrogate our black churches about the homophobia. We have to do that. We’re already singing in the choirs, we’re already on the usher boards, but then to accept homophobic diatribes from the podium … I’m not expecting the white community to interrogate black intellectuals, writers and cultural activists about their homophobia. We have to do that first, and the only way we’re going to do that is to really consider and understand how important that home space is for us.”

I believe that it is absolutely necessary for the Black Queers to struggle within the Black community for the redemption of the race. Problems, such as homophobia, within the Black community are two fold. They are problems that cannot be solved without the larger culture making a shift and they must be addressed in order for the larger culture to make a shift. By this I mean that problems that Black folk face in their interactions with one another are often mirrored by the social ills at large; for example patriarchy is not exclusive to the Black community but sometimes has a particular character when we speak about the oppression of Black womyn under Black male patriarchy. So I contend that Black Queers must struggle within the Black community to attack the twin beast of patriarchy and homophobia.