THE CULPABILITY OF THE ELDERS

© Breeze Vincinz

I was having a cup of tea with a friend of mind recently and we began to peruse the current political, social and even spiritual landscapes of the African American LGBT community here in Los Angeles. A fellow comrade once mused that he could feel some sort of malevolent ethereal pulsation within the community very much like fauna can tell when a storm is coming to their flora. In his mind’s eye, he could see a common thread that tied every incongruity, absurdity and broken collaboration that has occurred over the past year or so together, and like a blind man using a fence made of knotted rope to feel his way down a path, he felt that each tether was bringing us closer and closer to some sort of spiritual Armageddon for Black Lesbians and Gays. My friend and I could not claim the same “Cassandra” complex but we were in agreement that when/if the history books ever document this particular moment in time about our contributions to the greater social scheme, this would most definitely be our “Before” picture; this would be the rhetorical dark days before the dawn.

Without adding any more insult to the multi-tiered injuries going on I will say in the broadest of terms that there are substantial factions within the African American LGBT community that have surreptitiously placed themselves in diametric opposition to each other. And while my fellow comrade might blame some sort of cosmic retribution, my friend and I think it’s more of a case of overactive human ego on every one’s part. But who knows, maybe it’s both. Maybe we’re just reaping the piles and piles of self righteousness, self hate, self loathing, inactivity, immobility, macho posing, DL supporting, racist, misogynistic, materialistic, egotistical bullshit that we’ve been sowing for years now.

What I do know is that… when Proposition 8 passed and placed a ban on same sex marriages, one of the main people that I most sorely blamed for specifically not educating the African American community on the importance of the issue… was myself. Now in no way, shape or form do I think that the African American community was solely responsible for the passage of Proposition 8 but I do think that the information that was filtered through our community was highly flawed and toxic and I for one did absolutely nothing to alter that flow of information or even stop it. At the time I was in agreement with the majority of my heterosexual counterparts in believing that there were much more pressing matters to attend to within the community. I was also in agreement with my Caucasian counterparts in assuming that California, arguably the gayest state in the Union (outside of maybe Florida who gets extra points for having the most phallic shaped state in the union), would easily allow same-sex marriages to exist. I was wrong. I was flat out wrong on both counts.

So when I’m talking about the state of disarray that the African American LGBT community might be in, I have to factor in my own culpability in that because… I’m not talking about “them”, I’m talking about “us”… and as a whole, “We”… fucked up. “We” didn’t step up to the plate, “We” are bickering with each other trying to claim the title of omnipotent spokesmodel for all Black “Gaydom”, and most notably as of date… “We” are not listening to our youth and “We” are not learning from our elders.

Talking with my friend I imagined the state of African American LGBT affairs here in Los Angeles to the part in “The Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy and the gang looked behind the curtain and found out that the wizard wasn’t really a wizard but a lonely old dude trying to do the best he can. There is a certain level of transparency that a lot of organizations that serve the Black LGBT community here in Los Angeles do not operate under and much like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” there have been ambitious, young “go getters” who have peeked behind that curtain and have made the absolute horrible realization that… it is not wizards or gods who have sustained our community, but flawed human beings who have had the wherewithal and maybe just a little luck to maintain all these years. And while they most certainly deserve our respect, they just as similarly deserve our scrutiny. And while it is the obnoxiousness of the Dorothys out there that needs to be quelled, it is their ambition that should be nurtured.

And whether this influx of ego driven acrobatics that has played out over the past couple of years is the result of our community’s full concession into the Gordon Gekko Reganomics whose initial bittersweet blooming stages were caught in Jennie Livingston’s “Paris Is Burning” or some unquantifiable cosmic retribution, I think the one thing that we all should be striving for at this point… is reprieve.

While we were bickering and bitching and having pissing contests to see whose experience and/or eagerness could go further... we lost the legal right to get married, we lost a quantifiable portion of one of our most treasured pride celebrations, and most importantly we stand to lose actual lives as more and more of us feel as if there is no quantifiable support system for the Black LGBT and are deciding to slide back into the closet without acknowledging our HIV status and/or the homophobic incongruities that we might encounter further encouraging an environment ripe for hate crimes against us. According to Kim Pearson, a professor at The College of New Jersey, there were 659 stories in major newspapers about the 1998 gay-bias murder of Caucasian Matthew Shepard. When African American Sakia Gun was the victim of a gay-bias murder in 2003, there were only 21 articles written in the seven month period after her attack. Numbers like these could not be encouraging for the brother or sister dealing with coming forth with their own sexual identity.

I just feel as that at this point there are several factions wanting to take the lead and be our Gay Black Hope, be the hero who could thwart the evil doers out there and transform us into a healthy community. Well... to quote Tina Turner, I just don’t think we need another hero; I don’t think we need a singular representative voice. I think all of us, young and old, need to be accountable for what we do, why we’re doing it and how we do it. I think we should always be cognizant of the fact that there will always be some young “whip snapper” coming up behind us and pulling back our curtains to see what we’re doing and we shouldn’t take that as an act of disrespect but an opportunity to teach and maybe even learn. I think the visibility that we need to have cannot be facilitated through one voice; it has to be individually in our homes, in our churches, in our playing fields, in our jobs, in our governments, it’s going to take all of us. I don’t think it’s necessarily a hero we need more so than the strength, the courage and the wisdom it takes to save ourselves.

But alas, I do believe in the idea of “community” and the strength behind numbers. The trick to that is, however, you can’t have many unless each one is committed to the task at hand. Or rather, me and my friend can’t, as a community of two, patronize Starbucks if we don’t know what we’re thirsty for individually. Thusly, The Black LGBT Community can’t fully support the efforts against Proposition 8 if we don’t know what we emotionally thirst for individually.

But I have noticed in the past couple of years, that there has been a collective thirst building in those of us “out” LGBT people of color. So the trick to that is to agree on how to get what we need, where to get it, and to allow people who follow us the same access.

GAYS, LESBIANS AND CRENSHAW BOULEVARD

© Breeze Vincinz

While I had my own reservations about picketing a community on an issue in which there was arguably no outreach done to ask for support beforehand, I decided to march in the phenomenally momentous “March for LGBT Equality” down Crenshaw Boulevard last year. The march, organized by Love at Work – The Exchange, was a response to the passing of Proposition 8 which banned marriage between same sex couples in the State of California. After the Proposition passed, there was a flurry of conjecture, accusations and assumptions about how something like this could happen in California of all places, one of the most liberal and quite frankly… “gay” of all the states in the union. One of the first responses was that the African American community was to blame which of course started other flurries of conjecture, accusations and assumptions.

I think one of the most positive things that came from the whole brouhaha was that it gave an opportunity for homosexual and heterosexual Black people to have a good old fashion no holds barred, face to face, technologically-free conversation. Blogs, Twitter and instant messages are fine, but there is a certain intimacy that exists between people sitting face to face with each other and experiencing the beauty (and horror) of live, unedited, unscripted interaction that I find truly amiable. 

I’ve noticed that it’s really easy to talk about “them” when you don’t really know who “them” is or when “them” is sitting right next to you. During the town hall meetings that I attended I was fascinated to hear the true voice of what African American heterosexuals had to say unadorned and unedited. The main thing I got out of the meetings is that both Black homosexuals and heterosexuals are guilty of stereotyping the other faction and we really don’t have a lot of experience in interacting with each other on a sober, respectable, daily level. I could sense that it was fairly difficult for a lot of the homophobes to spurt out the evils of homosexuality or the “ultimate homosexual agenda” to convert children when there were actual homosexuals sitting across from them who did not have the remote appearance or decorum of a bunch of extra rejects from Fame or America’s Next Top Model. It was equally just as difficult for me to spurt out my own ideas about the devil obsessed “breeders” more jealous and curious about anal sex than appalled by it when there where actual heterosexuals sitting across from me who basically just wanted to know why were we so angry and how is this going to effect the homicide and HIV infection rates in our community. It was just very refreshing to have an actual conversation where people spoke for themselves and I did not fill in the blanks with my own biased opinions and experiences.

It was definitely the motivating factor for me to participate in the march. While going into it I did feel as if it was a case of “too little too late” in regards to the Proposition 8 issue, but I mainly felt that… time was due. When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1998 I remember having a conversation about having a Black Gay Pride Celebration in Leimert Park with a couple of other brothers in a Discussion group that I used to patronize. The consensus at the time was overwhelmingly pessimistic as the brothers pined on about how it would never happen, how Crenshaw (and Black People as a whole) would never accept open homosexuals, how the gay version of Boyz-N-Da-Hood would never be told…

Fast forward a decade later to me in my Black Gay Pride t-shirt video taping a hundred or so African American homosexuals marching to the Crenshaw Mall chanting, “What do we want! Equality! When do we want it! Now!”

To me it wasn’t necessarily about Proposition 8. It was about visibility, it was about acknowledging our extended presence in a community that is quite frankly… ours. I remember at one point this irate older gentleman screaming at me and friend of mine, “Go home! Take that shit back to Hollywood someplace!” At which point my friend, enraged, screamed from the top of her lungs, “I am home brotha! I grew up across the street over there!”

There were a few little outbursts like that along the march route but all in all it was pretty positive. Afterwards one of my best friends told me that there was a pink “Yes on 8” mini-van that was following us in an effort to counter our efforts. He equated the van to the KKK’s antithetical efforts during the civil rights movement, a sentiment I thought was hilariously misguided. A pink mini-van with a tinny bull horn is pretty insignificant compared to burning crosses, lynches and fire hoses. But days before the march I honestly have to say that I was a little fearful. I was so hopped up on “Righteous Civil Rights” juice that I forgot that not everybody drinks that same drink… and that there was a possibility of some real danger, some real violence. This is South Central Los Angeles after all. It is a beautiful part of town but seriously… N.W.A. wasn’t lying about the gangs, the drugs, the corruption. On the bus ride up to Crenshaw and Vernon I do have to say… I was a little scared. Particularly since I sarcastically figured 15, maybe 16 people would actually show up to proclaim their full on homosexuality in the hood. But the one thing I kept thinking was, and I’m not sure who said it, but courage isn’t the absence of fear… courage is actually being scared completely shitless, and still going through with it. So I just stayed on the bus with images of the numerous drive-by shootings that could occur, some religious nut driving into the crowd or maybe a malitoff cocktail or two thrown at me thinking that what I was doing was righteous enough to accept any reciprocal effort.

Well when I got off the bus I was thrilled to find the park filled to the brim with supporters and as far as the drive-by shootings, deaths by speeding cars and malitoff cocktails… we had some numb nuts in a pink mini van with a tinny bull horn who had seen too many “Men on Film” skits and took them way too seriously. We also got the occasional name calling here and there and once when we passed by this barber shop, everyone in the place sprinted towards the windows to slam the shades shut and lock the front door… which till this day I think is just funny as shit.

What I’m really hoping is that the idea of this march continues. The dialogue, the visibility, the courage… it was for me a very proud moment in the history of the Black LGBT community and despite my reservations about the actual intent of the march, I do have to say that I am extremely proud to have been a part of its outcome. I had a chance to look my people in the eye and tell them that this is who I am. And while not all of them agreed, they let me be; they didn’t pluck my eyes out in retaliation or shoot at me or anything. Maybe shut the shades and lock the door… but that was cool, beats a bullet any day of the week. And I am most certain that the brothers who I had the conversation with back in 1998 about having a Black Gay celebration on Crenshaw who did not make it this far would say the same.