CBS Affiliate Criminalizes Black Men

So the Maynard Institute has been following this story and holding Chicago's CBS 2 news station accountable. Given my recent activism about two Black men being hypercriminalized (Below) I thought that it was relevant to post a link to the Maynard Institute and the work they do around coverage of Black people by the media. This is a story about how far the news media will go to make Black men look like criminals.

In Defense of Kevin and all those too Principled and Black to Be Anything But Outraged at The Gay Contribution to State Violence Against Black Men

A few weeks ago I was a witness to an incident that was chronicled in the Bay Citizen and categorized as a "Hate Crime." Many of you know that my first degree is in Criminal Justice and I have strong feelings against Tough on Crimes laws and Hate Crimes laws and believe that they have been targeted against Black men who are already disproportionately represented within Criminal Justice and the Prison Industrial Complex. I further had difficulty thinking of the situation as a gay bashing or hate crime because the Gay man involved in the fight initiated the physical violence and was the first to "throw blows." So I spoke up in the Bay Citizen's comments section. Weeks later Kenyon Farrow, known for his work with Queers for Economic Justice and Critical Resistance, posted an article on his blog attacking me and defending the alleged victim, Brontez Purnell, who is apparently a friend of his. Kenyon's blog post has been linked ironically enough to the blog belonging to INCITE! Women of Color United Against Violence. The hyper linked articles above provide context for my response which appears below.



Brontez as gay hero who refused to be a victim and brought the violence to them before they could bring it to him and Brontez as warrior avenger who smacked them up for his respect after they called him a faggot are images that stand in stark contrast to the depiction of him as a hate crimes victim which if you remember is the depiction that Brontez himself has put forward. The facts offered by Brontez and to the police do not include the facts that I offered; facts that Kenyon Farrow and others have used to spin Brontez as the gay hero. His story in fact left out the part about him spitting on them, left out the part about the so called assailants trying to flee Brontez's attacks for most of the encounter, left out the part about Brontez’s friend begging him to let it go leave and left out the part about the blunt metal object which Brontez wielded against them repeatedly and actually struck them with at least once. So which is it: Bad Ass Gay Hero or Victim of a Hate Crime? In order for the scenario that Kenyon Farrow has chosen to align himself with to be true Brontez has to have told a story that wasn’t true to the bay citizen which would align very closely with the story that I have told. For the scenario that Kenyon Farrow has aligned himself with to be true Brontez most certainly can’t be a “hate crimes” victim.
That being said: I didn't have a problem with the brother not walking away. I didn’t have a huge problem with his “line in the sand,” and I don’t have a problem with refusing to back down from physical violence. My problem is the classification of that evenings events as Hate Crimes and involving the police after Brontez decided to step to those brothers. It was your friend, Mr. Farrow, who decided to initiate physical violence in a "handle it in the streets" model that is popular among many Black men. The problem for me -not clearly expressed in the Bay Citizen because I know white folks and how white gay racism operates- is: How is it fair to call the police and classify yourself as a "victim of a hate crime" after you decided to use the "handle it in the streets model" and demand your respect by initiating a physical altercation? One does not become the victim of a hate crime because one lost a fight that they started regardless of how righteous the rage that drove them. Mr. Purnell started a fight wherein he had weapons and his opponents did not, and he lost. This does not make him a hate crimes victim and I think that the real tragedy here is that a Black man who is gay could use the masters tools (state sponsored violence through tough on crimes and hate crimes laws) to win an ego driven contest and he is not challenged, but defended, by a friend who has worked for Critical Resistance and Queers for Economic Justice. What’s really sad is that the analysis of so many self proclaimed “radical queers” is so utterly blind to the racial nuance presented by hate crimes laws particularly when they are invoked by Black gays against other Blacks. If Kenyon were really Brontez’s friend (and this is for all of commentators on various blogs and threads) he would ask his friend to be accountable to the political analysis about the prison industrial complex and state violence against Black men which I assume Kenyon has from his time at Critical Resistance. Further the insistence by so many that I should have involved myself in the violence is ridiculous. I went toward the words “botti boy, bumba clott,” with the intention of lending my fist to resist a gay bashing (which anyone who knows me will tell you I’ve been known to do) only to find a gay brotha was the one yelling the epitaphs and wielding a blunt object against some other brothers who were trying to get away. Had I intervened on behalf the victims, as I saw it that night, I would not have been on Brontez’s side. I knew he was gay, assumed his rage was righteous, but did not see him as a victim so I stayed out of it.

I Agree With Her,Ask Me Why. Woman Sues Church For Performing Gay Unions

I posted this video under the same heading as this video is posted here. A conversation ensued and here is an excerpt of my comments.

It’s the bottom line of the financial transaction that I agree with. Whether or not its a place to fellowship and worship it is a place in which the good sister Williams has invested considerable time and money only to have her voice muted by the pastors of the church. I am not looking at the particular issue as much as I am looking at the principle. I think she's wrong about gay marriage but I think someone who invests as much time and money as she did deserves to have her voice heard and she deserves to have the pastor consider her voice in the shaping of her/his own theological interpretations (to use Mark's language) its not just about money its also about time and effort but you can't get either of those back. You can get money back.

This is a question for me of entitlement and empowerment in the Black Church. For me it is a question of gender equality and social justice in the Black church. For the most part women and gay men form the financial and logistical back bone of Black churches but the overwhelming majority of pastors, deacons and trustees are heterosexual (at least heterosexually identified) MEN. The voices of women and gay men tend to marginalized in Black churches even though they constitute a majority of the active and contributing members.

Here is the story of a Black woman, who may have been wrong about her reasons, but who stood up for the value of her voice in the decision making process within the church. If you paid attention to the clip you hear the co-pastorial husband and wife team say that THEY (the two of them) wrote the vision statement for the church. Now I have done a number of strategic planning sessions both as a participant and as a leader of the process and I can tell you that it is absolutely inappropriate for two people to write a vision statement for any organization, religious or otherwise, without input from a diverse group of stake-holders. This is why I believe that woman was right. Not because of money, not because of her beliefs about homosexuals but because of the way that they marginalized her voice in the running of the church after what seems to me to be considerable contributions of time and effort from her.


TO VIEW THE ENTIRE DEBATE CLICK HERE

Missionaries of Hate: Vanguard

Watching this video my reaction is in many ways conflicted and the only thing that is perfectly clear to me about my response is that I am disturbed greatly. My conflict comes from many places not the least of which is the fear that Africa's story at the mercy of white story-tellers has always been skewed by the arrogant/white supremacist western lens. My cursory glance at this series does little to discourage these feelings. Being carried through one of Uganda's market places upon the gaze of a white camera crew who at the moment that Black Ugandans speak about there spiritual and political believes decides to take us into a gathering of flies on various cuts of meat for sale reveals to me the sad truth that white people who do these kinds of "documentaries" about Africa always have as one of their key agenda items the advancement of white supremacist ideas/notions about Africa and African people.

Another source of conflict for me is that the Ugandan people who I hear speak about this horrific bill are actually responding less (as I hear it)to homosexuality and all the ick that it apparently carries for them and more to the very phenomenon that I describe above: White supremacy and imperialism. They are responding to white supremacy, imperialism and western influence in the same way that the people of one of Atlanta's poor neighborhoods (Kirkwood and East Atlanta) responded to gentrification in 1998. While the media brilliantly crafted the controversy into a Gay vs Black situation it was clearly poor Black people reacting to a threat to their way of life posed not by homosexuality but by the TAKE OVER of elitist white supremacy that Gays have been conflated with by our friends on the far right and in the conservative media.

Minister Simba declares that Homosexuality has been to Africa but Human Rights for Homosexuals have not... He goes on to talk about how the west is not going to "push it down our throat." The brilliance of the conservative propaganda machine is revealed here creating the same association with authenticity and anti-gay conservative Christianity for the Ugandans (showed in this film) that they have created for many "red blooded" Americans. So part of being a Red Blooded American and Part of Being an authentic African is the rejection of a value system take over that has also been invented by the conservative-Christian-propaganda machine.

While I am absolutely disturbed by Black people and the homophobia that we often perpetuate in our own communities I have to point out that I do not believe that African people are so committed to oppressing gay people as they are committed to an authenticity/pride that imperialism has left many grasping for desperately and that the conservative-Christian propaganda machine has successfully juxtapositioned against gayness. Homophobia in Africa and among Africans in the Diaspora is a by product of western imperialism and a critique of African homophobia in either location that fails to recognize this fact is, to me, white supremacist. Further the rejection of western values, whiteness, and elitism among the marginalized folk of the world is often articulated as a rejection of homosexuality. The sooner we recognize these truths the sooner our liberation and coalition building strategies will be crafted to respond appropriately.

An Avatar is a form used by a deity to reveal itself to the people. The White people in the movie were called "Sky People" and the bodies that they used to reveal themselves to the indigenous folks of "Pandora" were called "Avatars."

AVATAR the movie is little more than the "White man as Chosen One" motif. This model is ever as popular as it's always been but has taken to involving the white man "Chosen One" taking the form of the oppressed in order to play savior. District 9had a similar twist. The "Chosen One" is a white man who is inflicted with a disease, he is becoming the "alien!" Even the Blockbuster Surrogates plays with the idea of the white-man becoming the other with male users of female surrogates and white uses of Black surrogates abound.

Waking up OTHER has long been an obsession of whites and in both movies the fulfillment of this obsession is realized. But fantasy and nightmare are combined because while I fantasize that the physical prowess, the colorful culture, the secrets, the innovation, the magic/technology of the oppressed can be mine my nightmare is the price of living the rest of my life in the OTHER-LAND/Hell that me and mine have created for them. Doesn't this smack of the schizophrenia of white racism?

Riots In Oakland

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

-Claude McKay-

It occurs to me that the young black people rioting in the streets of Oakland today just weeks after they danced in these same streets to celebrate the election of this countries first Black president are fighting for their lives like they have been doing since they were brought to this country in the rancid bowels of slave ships. As this occurs to me I wonder if Claude McKay knew in 1919 when he wrote the timeless words at the top of this page that almost 100 years later these words would be as relevant as they were then.

Almost as if to put us in our place weeks before the inauguration of America's first Black President a police officer killed a young Black man execution style with a single shot as he lay on his stomach waiting to be hand cuffed and carted off to jail for some petty crime. Nearly fifty years after a battery of supreme court cases and legislative acts came together to create the illusion of freedom for black people in this country and since the Warren court reeked havoc on the lawlessness of America's police racial profiling, police brutality, and unjustified murders continue to plague poor and young black folks.

Tonight in Oakland young Black and Latino women and men took to the streets to protest the killing of 22 year old Oscar Grant by the police on New Years day. The officer, whose name has yet to be released, shot the young man in the back of the head while he lay on the ground waiting to be hand cuffed. This evening while I sat in the offices of my part time job on 7th and Broadway in Downtown Oakland my co-workers and I spotted out the windows several groups of young brothers running. What was most striking about this site was that these young warriors were running toward the center of the conflict at 14th and broadway with the words of Claude McKay lighting their steps "If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain..."

This shit is pissing me off!

How is it that this stupid white man (Imus) says fucked up shit about Black women and it some how gets turned around on Black people (Hip Hop)? How is this white man's stupidity Black hip hop's fault?

Racism is a bitch!!!

Coming Out Story

Gimme five! Two times! On the black hand side. I remember shaking hands, giving dap or some love: Slap twice rapidly but don’t take the other’s hand, take his hand, thumbs back, drop your thumbs forward close you fist around the forward fingers of his closed fist so that your fist interlock, pull back slowly bringing your middle finger and thumb together snap as you come out of the embrace. I remember shaking hands, being allowed this briefest of a caress between “Brothers.”

I remember being a brother! I was, “blood,” “Folks” “dog” “youngsta” “shawty” “mah nigga.”

I remember being a nigga too. Hunted as niggas are, I remember what it was like to be endangered! Not like I’m endangered now, but I remember what it was like to be in danger and be protected from danger. Protected by black folks, because I was “youngsta” “shorty” “Brotha” they built hide-outs along the way home from school! Underground railroad conductors waiting at Upward-bound and the Boys and Girls Club to show me the way to freedom screamed “live free or die” at little black boys like me with few other options.

Racism is harsh! But the resolve of my tribesman was stronger. We built fortresses to protect our children. We fortified there walls with our prayers and with the power within our collective voices, raised in song, that we so trustingly call “God.”

I remember being a tribesman too. I remember being jealously watched over by black women who in their gaze and as payment for their protection claimed me for their daughters, granddaughters, nieces, cousins, sisters, and themselves.

I remember being a tribesman and I remember my own gaze. Careful and suspiciously I watched and scrutinized white people, sisters and brothers who married white people, Asians, police, teachers, homosexuals and anyone else who represented the system or the “others.”

I remember leaving the tribe.

Now, blank stares on the faces of women who once claimed me as their own and now hardly recognize me and certainly do not want me for themselves, their daughters, nieces, cousins or even their sisters.

Exiled by “God” and his urban pontiff to this new Diaspora, I stand cold outside of fortresses that once kept me safe with prayers and songs and the promise of “God” and love, facing racism by myself.

Having chosen freedom over death my freedom is used against me by those who so implored me to it! The codes have been changed in the night and the path to the hide-outs buried away from my sight our children protected from me by conductors who will one day tell them to live free or die.

I am no longer “brother” “shawty” “youngsta” “dawg” “folks” “blood” “people.” The fist that once served to embrace me, in likeness and familiarity, has turned against me in a new kind of less familial caress for the briefest caress between “brothers.”

I am the “other” that I used to diligently guard against with my careful and suspicious gaze. “I” now “them,” find myself ranked beneath women who marry white men, men who marry white women, police, teachers, Asians, and even white men.

I remember leaving the tribe.

Gimme five! Two times! On the black-hand side.

Rights VS Social Justice

Recently I’ve come to the conclusion that the queer left needs to reshape its conversation about marriage, the military, and job security and queer rights overall to be a more justice oriented conversation. The conversation about “rights” is easily twisted by conservatives and the extreme right into a conversation about “special rights” and special protections for queers.

I’ll use marriage as an example. Marriage discussed as a right that LGBT individuals deserve to share with their heterosexual counterparts is a week argument compared to marriage discussed in its current form as a set of policies that serves to create second class citizens by excluding them from enjoying justice, equality, and full status as citizens in society.

LGBT movement has, for the large part, modeled itself after the Black lead civil-rights movement of the 60s. This relatively successful movement which used a very similar “rights” oriented rhetoric was successful largely because it was able to partner with the media and with popular social voices to demonstrate the ways in which contemporary social policies excluded Black people from full participation in society. It was able to illustrate in graphic and explicit ways the injustice of the exclusion of Black people as well as the brutality associated with enforcing unjust policies and the impact of said policies on Black people. Police dogs, fire hoses, church bombs, school assaults, and widespread assassinations were catalyst that served to augment the arguments for “rights.”

Queer movement has tried to use a similar rhetoric but has lacked, except in a few extreme situations, the same graphic and explicit illustration of the ways that queer people have been hurt by not having certain rights. It’s been as difficult for queers to translate the rhetoric of the queer movement into a general societal moral indignation as it was easy for the leaders of the civil rights movement. This is because of the lack of the kinds of graphic examples of the anti-justice that were so common in the civil-rights error.

Incidents that have involved extreme violence have been few and far between when compared to the frequency of such incidents leading up to and during the civil-rights movement. The lack of these kinds of examples has made it easy for the conservative right and other anti-gay forces to paint the LGBT movement as a movement of privileged cry babies who, drunk with greed, are crying out for protections that “everyday” citizens do not enjoy. Because it would be ridiculous to hope for or look for these kinds of graphic examples our best hope is for the conversation about social justice for queers to become one that is much more rhetorically explicit. Crying for civil rights while most Americans view queers as a particularly privileged group does not have much of an impact on the moral tenor of the nation. This moral tenor has always been the spirit of change in America and essential for creating change in oppressive policies.

Thus organizations like HRC, NGLTF and the host of statewide LGBT PACs which are perceived by queers and heteros alike as existing for the sole purpose of mainstreaming queers particularly queers of privilege need to reconsider the tone of their rhetoric. Talking about LGBT social justice movement as a civil rights movement does not have much of an impact when the lack of civil rights for queers has not been associated in the American psyche with disenfranchisement or lack of access. A movement language that calls for, instead of rights, an elimination of policies that create injustice and exclude whole groups from participating in society as full status citizens will prove much more effective.

TOO Much Beyonce: What black people will and will not tolerate.

Earlier today I was sitting at my desk at work checking email and came across a message to which a video was linked. The title of the email was “Too Much Beyonce: Parents am I the only one who sees this as inappropriate? I’ve seen so many videos on Youtube of sexualized school girls dancing to pop music that I was expecting to see a 12 year old grinding like a stripper to a Beyonce song. There was no 12 year old in booty shorts, in fact there were no booty shorts at all. Further there was no grinding, rump shaking, crotch grabbing or the like. How refreshing. What I read in the video comments however scared the hell out of me.


“I swear to god if i ever caught my 8 year old brother doing that shit i would kick his ass so hard...anybody that condones this foolishness is a fuckin moron and should have thier reproductive organs rip off and put in a blender”

and

“lol @ his to the left dance...I'd pickup one of those white chairs and knock his gay ass out”

WOW! So based on the fact that this child danced to and sang his adorable little heart out to a Beyonce song people on Youtube are now contemplating not only harming him but harming members of their own families should they ever dance to a Beyonce song while male.

The kinder of responses, while they seemed less violent, unjustifiably pathologized the child, his family, his environment and his life circumstances based on a 5 minute video clip. These responses insisted that the father is not in the home and that the child needs a male role model to teach him to act like a boy. The woman who sent me the video on the yahoogroup even suggested that there were better things that he could be doing with his time as if she has knowledge of his life and his entire life schedule and knows for a fact that all he does is dance all day and practice "Feminine" mannerisms, while other boys his age are spending there time at the much more useful and important endeavors that 5 year olds are obligated to spend their time doing. That is to say that somewhere between knapping, eating, peeing on themselves, throwing temper tantrums, and producing copious amounts of snot, they are solving complex equations, conducting life saving research, and bringing peace to the middle east and the hood. We know this because they act like boys and only acting like a boy can prepare one for these important endeavors.


After musing for a while and wondering how anyone could not see how perfectly natural it is for a small child to enjoy dancing and singing (duh!) and how oblivious said small child is to the fact that he had broken cultural mandates that would inspire such rage that people would demand that he be harmed, I thought about another video that had been circulating on Youtube. Another video on Youtube with a Black boy who is just as cute and also has a particular talent that one would not expect from someone of his age. I did a search for “Gimme My Money” and I found the video not yet flagged by Youtube users and still generating amused comments like:

“hahahahahahhaahah i watch this everyyyy day”

And

“THIS IS SOME FUNNY SHIT! HOW CAN I SAVE IT TO MY PC?”


I’m perplexed. I’m disturbed. I’m disgusted. I’m scared for every little Black boy growing up to be a member of our maligned tribe of outsiders.

On the one hand we have a video of a young boy enjoying himself, demonstrating his prodigious talent and confidence who is obviously happy and well cared for. He appears to be safe, is clean and healthy, and has people in his life that love him enough to celebrate his talent. On the other hand we have an angry young boy, who is alone enough that he not only has to go to the store by himself but when cheated by the stores proprietor is left alone to advocate for himself. Why isn’t his mother or father at the store with him? Further his profanity and threats of violence are socially unacceptable in most communities particularly when the user is a small child and the one being addressed is an adult. But it gets worse: Not only is this little boy a neglected potty mouth who does not know a proper respect for adults but he is a racist who more than once makes bigoted and prejudicial comments about the store proprietor who is Asian.

But black folks are in an uproar about which video? In all the time that the video of the young boy cursing and threatening the Japanese woman has been circulating I have not received a single email that has addressed this video as anything but hilarious. Not one among the dozens of people who have forwarded this video to me have said that this boy needs a spanking, needs more positive role models in his life, or bemoaned his comfort with violence and profanity at such a young age. Further I haven’t been able to read such sentiment on the Youtube comments.

What I have heard is that there is something wrong with a little black boy dancing like Beyonce. I’ve heard that he needs stronger role models, needs to be severely beaten, will deserve it when his peers harass and attack him and that he needs to be removed from his parents care because of the way he dances and the music that he likes.

Why is it so much more egregious to our people for a little boy to "act like a girl" than it is for a little boy to act like a violent idiot?

The Coon Affect, Black Presidential Candidates and Barrack Obama The Best Hope For…

The Coon Affect

“If the minstrel skit had an ante-bellum setting, the coon was portrayed as a free Black; if the skit's setting postdated slavery, he was portrayed as an urban Black. He remained lazy and good-for-little, but the minstrel shows depicted him as a gaudy dressed "Dandy" who "put on airs." Unlike Mammy and Sambo, Coon did not know his place. He thought he was as smart as White people; however, his frequent malapropisms and distorted logic suggested that his attempt to compete intellectually with Whites was pathetic.”

Since antebellum the white supremist, patriarchal, dominator power structure in the United States has invested many resources into disparaging blacks that, due to attained levels of freedom beyond that of most blacks, posed some threat to the status quo. Racist iconography has been a common tool employed since antebellum by the power structure to inform public opinion about Blacks. Resulting negative public perception of Blacks has often translated to public policy. Free blacks during slavery and educated or middle class blacks after emancipation were often the targets of this strategy. In addition to employing these methods to paint middle class and educated blacks as pathetic and laughable the white supremist, patriarchal, dominator power structure has often employed these methods against Black political leaders and activists. Specifically Booker T Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Frederick Douglas and many Blacks who advocated on behalf of Black people were often depicted in popular media as bumbling idiots who stumbled through the English language in an attempt to use “big words” that ultimately resulted in exposing their foolishness and intellectual inferiority.

Coonifying Black Presidential Candidates



Black candidates for president in the US have been a favorite target of the coonifying media and public attitudes machine. To date there have been four black candidates for president and 5 presidential campaigns for Black presidential candidates. Those candidates were Shirley Chisholm, Senator Carol Moseley Braun, Jesse Jackson, and the most recent Al Sharpton.

Chisholm and Moseley Braun who both have the distinction of being women have some things which distinguish them from Jackson and Sharpton other than their womanhood. Both had extremely successful careers as elected officials and public servants prior to their bids for president. Chisholm and Moseley-Braun both served in the Legislature of their home states before being elected to the US Congress, Chisholm to the house ( 8 terms), and Moseley Braun to the senate (1 term). Moseley Braun also had a brief career as a prosecutor before beginning her elected career and has the distinction of being the only Black woman ever elected to the US Senate. The final and probably most regrettable commonality between Chisholm and Moseley-Braun is that they were both very well qualified candidates who would probably have been taken much more seriously had they had penises and a bit less melanin and both led such dismally doomed to fail campaigns that they were not subjected to what I’ll call the coon-affect that plagued the Jackson and Sharpton campaigns.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are serious politicians, dedicated and seasoned activist, brilliant and articulate orators, published authors, and biblical scholars. Further they have both demonstrated such a profound commitment to fighting injustice that one is never surprised to see either of them as first on the ground when injustice occurs in America, or abroad. However, in spite of what I consider the undeniable credibility and qualifications of both men they are often positioned in conflict with credibility, as race-batting, pontificating, tongue wagging, coons. Unfortunately the realities created by the internalized racism of many blacks dictates that much of the coonifying of Sharpton and Jackson has been committed by Black comedians, publications and broadcast programs. Jokes by Blacks and Whites about their seriousness as presidential candidates that focus on their oratory cadence, their diction, and other language patterns bear a striking and disturbing resemblance to the coon iconography of America’s racialized cultural history. Ultimately Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and a long list of other brilliant and important change agents have been victims of coonifying.

Enter Barack Obama- Coon Free



When Obama first became the sweet heart of the American media and subsequently the American public I wondered why. A key note address that he delivered at the 2004 democratic primary seemed to catapult him into the hearts of the American people and a successful campaign for election that followed shortly thereafter seemed to cement him there, at least for now. Before these events very few Americans would have been able to tell you who Barack Obama is. It’s extremely curious that Obama is so popular today, being a Senator who won a seat that was so low profile that he ran uncontested until republican Alan Keyes decided to throw his hat into the rink in the final hour. What else is curious is that Obama, unlike other high profile Black politicians, has yet to be coonified. Since his successful election to the US Senate Obama has enjoyed an unusual amount of positive press. Not even his unusually dark lips have been enough to draw the coonifying eye of comedians. Even an admission of using cocaine and marijuana was not enough to draw out the conservative hounds. The only somewhat negative press that Obama has received is so ridiculous that it seems almost orchestrated to be so. Fox news commentators recently compared his name to Osama (Bin Ladin) and suggested that he was trained in a radical “Islamist” primary school.

Over the last year or so speculation has been flying about whether Obama will run for President in 2008. No other perspective 08 Presidential candidate has received the kind of attention that Obama has received other than Hillary Clinton. In fact so many in the Democratic camp are hopeful for an “Obama 4 President” campaign in 2008 that Democratic funding channels have been all but locked down and the only person other than Obama who seems to be able to raise two pennies to rub together, again, Hillary Clinton.

The attention that Obama has received has been intriguing for a number of reasons. Obama a relatively unknown State Senator who delivered the key note at the Democratic convention apparently made such an impression that he was able to win a seat in the Senate with virtually no competition, a task that is next to impossible for Blacks. What’s also striking about the Barack Obama Love affair is that he has yet to be coonified or radicalized. Commentators that have speculated on the love affair have suggested that the reason for America’s comfort with Obama is that he has a white mother and a father from Kenya and therefore is not one of the children of those enslaved by American whites. Others have suggested that the love affair can be credited to his charisma and to the advancements that Americans have made in the area of race relations since the end of state sanctioned segregation. I don’t buy it!

Manchurian Candidate



Barack Obama is the Manchurian candidate! I’m not suggesting that Obama has been implanted with a microchip that when activated will cause him to bomb Canada. What I am suggesting is that some very powerful forces have had there hand in the making of this hugely successful upstart Senator. In less than two years an unknown Junior Senator becoming America’s favorite for the presidential race is cause for inquiry. What I am suggesting is that he and Hillary have been very strategically placed in the lime light and developed as the American favorites for President in 2008 and that nobody in the Democratic camp has the skill to achieve this while conservatives remain silent as they have. I’m also suggesting that Obama, like the character in The Manchurian candidate has little to do with his own success and that strings are being pulled from the dark corner of a marionette box to ensure his run for President. To determine who is pulling the strings, one need only determine whose interest it will serve if Obama does decide to run.
I believe that someone in the Republican party is pulling strings with the media to set both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton up to receive the Democratic nomination for president. This is why Obama’s public image has not been marred by coonification and why his most staunch competition for the Democratic nomination is a woman. While this may seem like a stretch there are some realities that inform my position.

1) Based on history we know that it is very difficult for a Black man to win the nomination for the presidency from either of the two major political parties in the US. In fact to date most nominees have been white, male, and protestant. Deviation from this formula is usually a sure fire way to lock a candidate out. Candidates who are protestant and white but not male; male and protestant but not white; white and male but not protestant are all pretty unlikely to be President in this country. God help those that neither white nor male. In spite of this formula the two individuals who are most likely to win the Democratic primary are a white woman and a black man, both are protestant.
2) America is pissed of with the Republican party and the neo-conservative (neocon) movement of George Bush is all but dead. There is virtually no way that a Republican will succeed George W. Bush as President of These Here United States. Unless…
3) Of the republican candidates that have formally filed with the FEC all are white, male and protestant.

Final Analysis



What we know for sure, if Hillary wins or if Barack wins, the Democratic nominee for President will be a non-white-male-protestant running against a white, male, protestant candidate. While white Americans are very unlikely to elect a white woman who runs against a white, male, protestant, they are much less likely to elect a Black man who runs against a white male protestant. The lack of coonification that has made Obama’s candidacy unique among Black male candidates for the post of US president is precisely because Barack Obama is the best hope for a Republican president in 2008.

What's Your New Year's Resolution?

What will 2007 bring? MLK weekend is coming up and once again thousands of Black gay men will honor Martin Luther King's Dream when they converge on the city of Atlanta bringing with them millions of dollars in disposable incomes ear marked for Lenox Mall, Bull Dogs, and Christian Brothers. Delta Airlines, Hertz Rent-A-Car, the Hiltons and dozens of restaurants, bars and clubs are licking there chomps at the prospect of record breaking sales margins at the expense of Black queers.










While club owner get, and remain rich, from our labors, another “For Us by Us” AIDS service organization, like Renaissance III, will likely close its doors or lay off staff for lack of funding. While we, Black Gay Men, demonstrate our ability to piss out thousands of dollars into the sewer systems of Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, New York, DC and other party centers all over the country the Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County remains committed to serving Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender young people even in the face of tough financial times and staff and programmatic cut backs. While ZAMI and The House of Manolo Blahnik struggle to raise the money to give away thousands of dollars worth of scholarships to young Black Queers, Black gay men will buy plain tickets, hotel rooms, party passes, drugs and alcohol worth many dozens times the amount that it cost for these organizations to send Young Black queers to school.







While we dance, sweating our liquid investment away into the thousands of dollars worth of designer digs bought special for MLK, Fourth of July, MemorialDay etc., the Black Justice Coalition, The Black AIDS Institute, People of Color in Crisis, Us Helping Us, People Into Living and the New York State Black Gay Network will all look for money from the FORD Foundation, the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, State and Local governments and community foundations and other non-black funding sources so that they can keep their doors open and continue doing the work that they do on our behalf.

What is your New Year's resolution?


Will it be once again the weight loss plan that includes costly health club memberships or workout equipment that begin gathering dust on the 14th day of the year? Or will you help to make sure that young Black LGBT kids in Oakland have a place to go to get away from the violence and harassment that their schools, homes and neighborhoods often reserve for them? Is your commitment for 2007 to find a man, to which end you will spend thousands on a new wardrobe that shows off your figure? Or will you make a commitment to ensure that organizations driving our issues forward into policy and legislation have the dollars that they need to effectively lobby on our behalf? Will you resolve to finally take that trip that you’ve been promising yourself? Or will you take responsibility for the thousands of Black Gay men receiving HIV care services from Black AIDS Service Organizations.

Another year means another opportunity. We have the opportunity to make 2007 a legendary year, a revolutionary year, a year of liberation. Make your New Year's resolution to ensure that non-profit organizations working on our behalf and on behalf of our children don’t have to look outside of our communities for the dollars they need to continue to exist.

I'm Beautiful Damn It

The messages that I’ve received since coming out have consistently suggested that I do not deserve to love myself. At every turn within Black gay community, in clubs, at discussion groups, on the street, on internet dating sites there are messages and messengers waiting for me to inform me that I do not have the right to like my body. “How dare you be a sexual being,” is a constantly reoccurring message drummed at me from every corner of Black gay community. While I have attempted to be strong I have internalized many of these messages.

Just this evening I was on a popular website for Black gay men to “chat” with one another. I’ve been in Oakland for three months and have not found a club or other venue for meeting men that suites me so I decided to give the internet a try one more time, after a long self imposed period of exile. So I got my pictures together, got them posted and wrote a blurb that advertised me in what I thought was the best light. I finished my profile, closed the window (to give it a minute), and waited to get a message or two that I could respond to in the hopes of having a date for this weekend.


While I was going through the dozens of pictures of myself on my hard drive and selecting the ones that I consider the most flattering I was feeling particularly good about myself. I had looked at the pictures, of my face, my body, my sense of style and once again, against all conventional wisdom, decided that I am beautiful. This has become a seemingly annoying habit of mine that I am apparently more susceptible to after long extended periods of absence from Black gay male community.


After an hour or two of “giving it a minute,” and feeling my resolve that I am beautiful begin to weaken, I decided that I would be more proactive. I started reading the profiles of the cute guys in the thumbnails on the left hand side of the page. About half of the profiles saved me the trouble by designating “no fats, no fems” I spent a bit of time pleasuring myself by rating them and selecting zero for every “pic” on their profiles. The other half of the guys that I found attractive got a short message from me expressing that I found them attractive, sexy or cute and that they should “hit me up” as the online jargon goes. Of the four or five guys that I sent messages to three responded negatively. One sent a message that simply said “no thanks,” another sent an email stating in, so many words, that I was fat, undesirable, and that I had nerve sending them a message, yet another sent a message that simply said “you’re fat.” I responded politely to two. The third guy who had said simply “you’re fat” I learned had blocked me when I attempted to respond. Wow!


I didn't know what to do. I thought for a moment, letting the feelings of rejection marinate and wondering why people felt like they could talk to me as if I'm a person without feelings. What is it exactly that would empower someone to feel entitled to saying hurtful and damaging things to another human being?


After a while of this musing I decided a couple of things were going on. The first thing is the devaluing and dehumanizing, by black gay men, of other black gay men who do not offer sexual value. The other thing that I recognized is the cultural norm that allows small people to mock and make fun of fat people without worrying about being held accountable for hurt feelings (we don't have feelings). The third thing that I realized was empowering these men to treat me the way that they were treating me was my silence. My silence allowed them to go on believing that I had committed a crime by being attracted to them, that I did not experience hurt when I was rejected with such vigor. This situation of my silence held in place by the shame attached to these feelings of rejection was the perfect place for the incubation for inhumane behavior toward fat gay men within Black gay male community.

I posted the following statement on my profile:

Damn! What have I done to be treated so badly? You don't know me, I've never done anything to you but I send a message to say hi or compliment you and you block me, don't reply, or reply saying mean things about me and my body? Why? Because you're not attracted to me? Here's a suggestion: If you're not attracted to me don't fuck me. All that other shit ain't necessary. You may not like my body but this is what the creator has given me and its the only body I have regardless of what you think about it. I haven't hurt or wronged anybody on this site. Please don't attempt to hurt or wrong me.

The anger, malice, and hatred that I am met with in Black gay male spaces when I attempt to be a sexually realized being in those spaces has always perplexed me. The communities that I’ve existed in have reacted to me with anger when I have asserted myself as a sexual being and abused me when I’ve owned my sexuality. I have experienced little more than rejection from Black gay male community and have relied largely on Black straight identified men “trade” for sexual affirmation.


While I have been a warrior for the rights of fat-fem me to be sexy, beautiful, attractive, and wanted I have often contributed to my own oppression by accepting the rejection of Black gay men wholesale, and acting complicitly with my silence. Silence and self imposed exile from clubs, internet sites, and other sexualized spaces has been the result of my own painfully internalized oppression.



My Promise to myself

As of today, I will no longer participate in my own oppression with my silence. While being rejected is shaming and while shame is powerful I am committed to making sure that Black gay men that treat me badly know that they are treating me badly and know that their treatment of me has consequences. Its only if I pretend nothing happened that people who treat me badly get to feel like they are the good people that they describe themselves as on their profiles. Maybe if we all (Fat Black Gay Men) react to the vigorous and unnecessarily vehement rejection that we often receive by expressing the feelings that we experience the shame will belong to those who abuse us and not to us.

Gay Racism At It's Best

Chris Crain, the good ole boy former editor of Southern Voice is at it again with his special brand of radical race bating and white man cluelessness. His article "Where's The Truth in Humor?" which appears in the San Franciso Bay Times skirts dangerously close to advocating for the public use of the "N word" among lesbians and gays; at least until Blacks stop being homophobic.

Read the full article

Anti Racist White Allies

Recently a friend of mine who is white, a drag performer and a former anti-racism trainer wrote me, through an email group that we’re both on to say that Shirley Q Liquor was going to be performing at the drag bar where he performs.

The reason, he said, for his writing the note to the web group was to get feedback, input, and advice about how those of us on the email list thought he should proceed. He announced that he was going to tell the owners of the bar that he would not perform with Shirley Q Liquor because of her racist portrayal of an older, southern, black woman.

This was interestingly conflicting to me because the bar that he performs in is owned by one of Atlanta’s legendary white drag performers who is notorious for her racism and misogyny and has been challenged at least a dozen times over the years for such.

I wrote to my anti-racist drag queen friend that I didn’t think there was a difference between performing with the racist-bar-owner-drag-queen and performing with Shirley Q Liquor. My reasoning was that they are both racist assholes and that performing with one while refusing to perform with the other did not make much sense to me.

His response was twofold:

1- Shirley Q liquor has gone too far by performing in Black Face and is more than he can take.

2- The reason that he remained as a performer in the bar of the racist-bar-owner-drag-queen is that he is the loan white voice of reason and that it is important to him to be in spaces where people do not necessarily have access to the rhetoric of movement. It’s worth it to remain in the racist-bar-owner-drag-bar because someone needs to be there to tell the other drag queens when they are being fucked up.

My problems with his argument are many and varied. I’ll try to be brief about articulating some of my problems here.

1- It seems that an anti racist ally would take his cues about what is “too racist” from people of color. I’d like to know what his criteria for “too racist” are. If the bar owner has been challenged many times, multiple people of color have expressed that her racism is intolerable, and very few people of color will visit her show more than once, why is this not too racist for my conscious friend?

2- Assuming that there is merit to this argument, my question is this: what is the difference between being the lone voice in the wilderness of the racist-bar-owner-drag-bar and being the lone voice in the wilderness at the Shirley Q Liquor show? Are there not just as many, if not more, unenlightened white people waiting for our angelic drag queen friend to deliver them from the wilderness into the higher—ground-holy-land of anti-racism?

I have written all that I’ve written thus far to say: It all rings a little false to me.

That being said, lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the privileged whites who call themselves my allies. I’ve identified a couple of truths and identified some ways to hold those who call themselves our allies accountable.

First the truths:

Very few of the white people who call themselves anti-racist remain anti-racist after college or college age. This is because it is simply easier to be radical when someone else is paying your bills. Tryna get a job as a blue haired, ripped jeaned, queer radical could prove difficult for our fully grown “allies.” So they jump ship.

Further its way too easy for privileged white people who call themselves our allies to gain “street cred” among us, all to willing to accept massa’s love, Black folk.” Refraining from saying racist stuff, calling everyone by the most up to date and current identity marker (African American instead of black), and hanging out with a few people of color (usually snow-queens) is not anti-racist. This behavior is nothing more than politically correct, hollow gesticulation that amounts to absolutely nothing.

My new philosophy is this:

A real anti-racist is a philanthropist.

This is why:

In America the most tangible effect of racism is the huge disparity between the incomes, and lifestyles of Black people and white people in this country. This disparity is actually the reason for and the end result of racism. Racism means that if I am white, I have better access to education, better access to health care, better access to credit, and better access to employment. I am further less likely to be shot down in my neighborhood by the police or a fellow, and less likely to serve time in jail. I will be paid higher than people of color for the same jobs and get better interest rates on loans.

So the only place for racism to lead is to a disparity in wealth. White privilege then is tangible. The culmination of all white privilege is INCOME. There is no “Invisible knap sack.” The knap sack is in fact quite visible. So those white people looking to distance themselves from their privilege need only take out there check books, credit cards, wallets, and start giving. Distancing one’s self from white privilege means, at the end of all the bullshit gesticulation, distancing one’s self from one’s money.

Thus my note to my friend in the racist-bar-owner-drag-bar concluded, I don’t care about Shirley Q Liquor making fun of Black people and I don’t care about the racist-bar-owner-drag-queen making fun of people of color either. I actually think that our so-called anti racist allies often rely on people like Shirley Q Liquor so that they can position themselves against them. They can be seen white as snow against the black background of Shirley’s odious rhetoric thereby removing themselves from scrutiny. We recognize their street-cred without asking why they live in so much privilege, with the big car (maybe a hybrid), the big house in the bleeding heart liberal (the expensive) part of town, the $500 cell-phone, the $400 Ipod, the newest Lap-top, the IRA, the off continent vacations, the study abroad in Spain etc, while they declare that whites must distance themselves from privilege.

In her Black Men and Love series bell hooks suggests that the sex lives of straight men are the last stronghold of male privilege that “feminist” men rarely release. I’ll argue that the pocket books of whites are the last stronghold of white privilege that white people, even the staunchest anti-racist, will not release easily.

I knew my girl was still the deal!

So all of you doubters and haters can back up off my girl Whitney! She has some shit that is going to have you all gagging! I'm the only one that stood by her, declaring that she is no crack-head and that Bobby-Christina is a perfectly well developed young girl.

Speaking on behalf of Whitney in the words or my wise and wisend sister Londyn "Learn me bitches!"

Charles, Heru and Kevin: On Sexual Desire, Sexual Desire Politics, and other things

Below is the result of an online interview conducted by Charles Stephens. Charles compiled the following 8 questions to be answered by him, Heru and myself. My hope is that this can become the begining of a conversation about how our desires so often reflect our oppression and how our liberation depends on the interrogation of everything we believe.


>1. How would you describe the current state of sexual politics in the black gay communities you are a part of?


KEVIN: I want to say first that sexual-desire politics in the black gay communities that I am part of extend far beyond the bedroom. While I believe firmly that our [Black Gay Men] seemingly collective obsession with two or three archetypes of manhood is extremely problematic and counter revolutionary I want to draw a clear distinction, in this conversation, between personal-desire and sexual-desire politics. To the extent that the personal is political, it is important to discuss the ways in which we exercise our desire. When I talk about sexual-desire politics I’m talking about a collection of norms within the Black Gay Communities that create exclusion and marginalization for an entire group of men that have endured, like all Black Gay men have endured, the oppressive forces that act against us as Black men and as gay men . This, to me, is unconscionable and serves as a barrier between US, Black gay men, and true liberation. As Audre Lord suggested, I believe that, “The masters tools, will never dismantle the masters house.”


Sexual-desire politics have too much of a role in within the communities of Black Gay Men. I’ve witnessed too many times, working within Black Gay Male communities for most of my adult life, Black gay men of influence dismiss promising young Queens or promising young fat boys. While I cannot claim to know why these people were dismissed I can say that I’ve seen some chosen and some not chosen to be mentored, to be the youth board member, to be the poster child, because of where they lay on the scale of “aesthetic beauty.”

HERU: I'm not a part of any black gay communities. I don't subscribe to the concept of black gay communities. I think there are black gay spaces in which groups--affinity groups--of black men who practice some version of same-sex desire and black women who practice some version of same-sex desire inhabit, oftentimes simultaneous with groups of other black men and women who practice some version of same-sex desire. So based upon that way of framing black same-sex culture, I would answer your question for a description of the current state of sexual politics with two words: fucked up. Fucked up because too many of us have adopted a reality, an identity, a worldview that is not only not our own but also antagonistic to our cultivation and development on personal and collective levels. When I think of the word politics, the word power comes to mind. Observing the sex in porn featuring sex between black men, listening to the conversations of black men who have sex with men, reading the online profiles of black men who have sex with men, I see and hear an attempt to play with very specific, very narrow notions of power. Power is confined to the expression of hardness, aloofness, emotional unavailability and distance, and numbness. Power is also confined to dick sizes 8 and above and abdominal muscles that form a 6 or 8 pack. Power is confined to lower tones of voice, sneers, snarls, and smirks. The Black brute, originally conceived in racist movie images to justify Jim Crow segregation, has reappeared in our bedrooms, our sex parties, our porn, our parks, and our tearooms. One of the more interesting things is how we have merged the sociology of the Black brute with the epistemology, axiology, and ontology of house/ball culture. One becomes the Black brute by wearing timbs even if one is a 50 year old queen with a corporate job. One becomes the Black brute by spending several hours a day, 3-4 days a week in the gym to sculpt one's body into the laborer's body even if one is an attorney without the knowledge of how to fix a car, repair a household item, or build anything other than biceps. It becomes equally important to downplay, obscure, or completely hide one's intellectual abilities and capacities. So I return to my original two words to describe the current state of sexual politics among black men who experience same-sex desire: fucked up.



CHARLES: I want to be hopeful. I see some courageous brothas in some spaces and places challenging the body politics, resisting these sorts of homonormative sexual scripts, embracing femininity sexually and socially. My experience has been that many of us are kind of conflicted. It’s very difficult to move through the world, even in our queer communities, without defining your value and measuring yourself against the more widely circulated notions of masculine beauty. I see some of us at least struggling to put forth wider and more democratic notions of desirability, even as we do so with ambivalence. I would like to see our communities move more toward challenging these sexual scripts that many of us are handed: muscles and masculinity. It’s not to say that brothas that walk in those bodies are horrible people, or even the people that aspire to or construct their desires around that. However, I wonder if our community circulated wider notions of desirability and beauty, would there be such an urgency to attain such a narrow ideal of beauty? Would the lines be so very rigid and defined? Final thing…. any revolution against heterosexism will have to begin in our own bedrooms. The promise of queer sexuality is to question the ways our oppression and our desires collide.


>2. Why do you think it's important for us to challenge the sexual apartheid, to use your phrase Kevin, in our communities?

KEVIN: It is in our best interest as oppressed people to go to great pains to ensure that our communities, our community institutions and our community co-inhabitants relate to people as people, with the humanity of those with whom we share the world as our first concern. The sexual apartheid of Black gay community is a system that creates exclusion from humanity for individuals who occupy marginalized bodies and present marginalized genders. This conversation goes beyond who one dates and who one fucks. The sexual apartheid of black gay men extends to who we choose to be friends with, who we let into our lives, who we hire for the job, who we chose to mentor, who we chose as our mentor, who we as a community advocate for, who we select as our leaders etc. The sexual apartheid (no fats, no fems culture) alienates and places on the margins of marginalization many HUMANS who are real people with much to offer. Not just sexually, but holistically.


Our survival depends on one another. Our community has been stripped almost bare by AIDS. Many of our most talented have fallen. “When my brother fell I picked up his weapons.” We cannot afford to throw anything away in this struggle for life and liberation in which we find ourselves engaged. When I see talent ignored and men of great experience, skill, education, passion and ability relegated to the role of back ground singer, peanut gallery participant, or fan club president for the “pretty” I am disgusted. We do not have the resources to require our leaders to have the six pack of LL Cool Jay, the masculine appeal of Tupac Shakur, and the face of Nelly. It may very well be the brother with the six-pack of Cedric the entertainer, the masculine appeal of Patty Labelle, and the face of Ru-Paul who lead us forward the choice that we have is very simply to, “Live free, or die.”


HERU: You might want to define the phrase sexual apartheid using Kevin's previous comments as a reference. Having said that I will say that I think it is important for me as a social justice worker to challenge any form of apartheid. Therefore, sexual apartheid is one of the forms of apartheid or (internalized) oppression that I feel called to examine, discuss, critique, and work to dismantle. I work for social justice and against oppression (internalized and imposed) so that I can experience freedom and so that I can have better relationships with the people I love. For me, oppression in any form prevents any of us and all of us from fully being who we are, fully loving, fully engaging with each other. So I believe that there is a way of being, a way of living, a way of loving that I have not yet experienced with anyone because those ways exist on the other side of the wall of oppression. I want to get to that other side. I want to get to that place where I live and love in the absence of oppression (internalized and imposed). I can't even begin to imagine what the sex is like on that other side but I want to feel it.


CHARLES: I think we need to have a serious community-wide “come to Jesus” meeting about the messages we receive from the hetero world, and how they play out in our world. Many of us feel alienated, isolated, alone. Many of us are suffering. I talk to brothas constantly that have these feelings. They are suffering. They think because they don’t fit into this mold, they will be single forever, or unworthy. We can’t blame everything on the big straight boogy man, especially when we perpetuate the messages that wound us. If we are serious about community building the overriding message shouldn’t be no fats and no fems, but to invoke the thrilling words of Joseph Beam “we are worth wanting each other.”



>3. Why do you think the blog revolt ended up being so huge?


KEVIN: Many of us have been touched by this phenomenon. There are those of us who have been marginalized by this situation and there are those who have been privileged by it. Wherever we are in this conversation we all have a huge stake in how it turns out.


What I witnessed during our Blog conversation was a group of men who had much invested in lifting the secrecy away of from this phenomenon and unveiling the human faces of those who are hurt by “no fats, no fems,” and those who had everything invested in maintaining the secrecy. Just like white people often react with rationalization and justification to avoid acknowledging there privilege, I believe that many of the brothers who participated in the conversation that we had were acting to defend there privilege.


I am also very aware of an attempt to intellectualize and academize the conversation, to this end. The rhetoric of those who challenged the idea of sexual-desire privilege and marginalization amounted, in the end, to circumlocution and circumnavigation. To put it plainly they talked in circles around the issue of privilege which made the conversation that much more laborious.


HERU: What blog revolt? LOL. Revolt implies that there was a state within which several of us challenged the status quo, the established order. I don't think that was the case. There is no governing order in the blogsphere. I don't believe in a blogsphere hegemony either. I believe that many more people read my blog and the blogs I enjoy than I realize or know. I also believe that there are some blogs out there that are a waste of the skin cells that get discarded when the authors of those blogs using their fingers to type out the content on them. The fact that many more people read and respond to those blogs than I feel the quality of their content warrants is just one of those things in life that I have had to just accept as a not surprising but a bit disappointing...like the re-election of George W. Bush to the US presidency in 2004. I'm also not sure how "huge" it was. How many languages was it translated into? Does the US Library of Congress have a copy? In how many works has it been cited? Hopefully it was huger (more huge...I don't know which is the appropriate term) than the egos involved. I can speak to why I think it got heated. It got heated because one individual wanted to enter the discussion with very little to say of substance or originality and very much to offer in terms of ego, arrogance, and effect. It, however, would not have been so bad if I had not treated that person with disrespect and dismissal, however well deserved. Prior to the entrance of that individual, I felt the participating group was really getting into something in the face of our differences in the discussion. I think we still salvaged some parts of an important discussion despite the intrusion.


CHARLES: Because it was time. Painful but necessary lines were drawn.



4. Do you have any final thoughts about your experience being a part of it? What did you learn? How do you think the discussion landed with other folk listening in?


KEVIN: What I learned is something I’ve known for a long time: Academics are often separated from there common sense by there obsession with rhetoric and data.


HERU: I was really disgusted by the back alley commentary made by people who knew one or more of the parties yet decided to not comment publicly. I got wind of the existence of some of these DL-commentators and considered their silence to be intellectual and social weakness. To me it's one thing for someone to decided they are not going to participate in the discussion by not commenting OR reading the discussion. It's another thing altogether for someone to read and discuss the content of the discussion and not make their intellectual and social contribution or give-back by posting their own opinions. In my opinion, blogs represent social sometimes intellectual communities and in these communities we should be engaged
in mutuality, sharing ideas not just taking.


CHARLES: Perhaps revolt wasn’t the right word. I will say that I was disappointed that some of the brothas listening in were so utterly antagonistic. Or so willing to trivialize it all. It’s stunning when your alleged comrade’s come at you with scorn. But disagreement can be constructive, I’m not sure if it was this time. Leaving the experience though, I am hopeful. There are brothas that have started to question this whole gay clone machine, praise Jesus.



5. How have you found yourself challenging masculinism and body fascism in your own sexual journey?



KEVIN: This is a big one. While I am fat and fem myself much of my sexual life has been spent replicating my own marginalization, within my own desires and desire politics. It was my acquaintance with Transgender, Genderqueer, and Gender fuck culture that first brought me into contact with “pansexuality.” Pansexuality is the belief that sexual desire need not rely on gender. In other words a penis on a woman does not make her any less of a woman and a vagina on a man does not make him any less a man. Pansexuality is a sexual expression that embraces all genders as desirous. I am not claiming to be pansexual. I’m mentioning this because it is in the pansexual workshops, and at the transgender conferences that I came into contact with thinkers, activist, and sex partners that challenged me to interrogate my desire. To ask myself the critical questions of where my desire comes from. When I began to understand that my desire comes from somewhere that I couldn’t have just arbitrarily decided that “bad boys” are sexy when 90% of women and gay men share my desire I also began to realize that Some one has been telling us all this time how to shape our desires, what desires are acceptable and who we should seek to be desired by.


My liberation walk began with seeing myself as sexy. It went from there to acknowledging the sexiness in everyone that I meet. What I’ve learned is that I can be attracted to many kinds of people and many kinds of bodies. What I’ve learned is that big men can fulfill my fantasies just as much as muscle queens. I learned that some of the best sex I’ve had has been with people that my instinctive desire would never have allowed me to consider. What I’ve learned is that fem boys make some of the best tops. That old men are some of the most energetic lovers, and that two fat people can do something together other than “make grease.”


What I’ve begun to consider, at your urging Charles, is whether I can experience pleasure in the absence of any desire. Ultimately the answer is yes. I am continuing to grow more mature as a sexual being.


Why is any of this important? Because I believe that our desires are connected to our oppression. The someone that has been telling us how to be sexually attracted is the same someone who has been telling us how to regard women, black people, queers. I’ve learned that the collective desire that we experience is the result of a media that has endeavored for a long time to tell stories about black people, women, other people of color, and poor people that are simply not true. The way that this collective desire manifests itself correlates with the stories that we have been told by the media and larger society. The men we are attracted to look a certain way talk a certain way dress a certain way etc. What’s more important though is that the men who we are sexually repulsed by look a certain way, act a certain way, dress a certain way etc. And all of us are repulsed by the same people. The Black men that are valuable are those who can lift 100 pounds, how far does this divert from the philosophies of our masters? The gay men who are valuable are those who act straight. When I look up and find myself in agreement with my master, as an oppressed person, this is my cue to change.


HERU: Masculinism? Is that a word? I just live. I am conscious in my practice of various Africanisms so I do certain things that my challenge masculinism without being deliberate in that challenge. For example, I wear sarongs and lapas at home and in Afrocentric community. I feel more comfortable wearing them than wearing pants. Some might see this as a challenge to masculinism because men in this society are not conditioned to wear sarongs or lapas. In terms of body fascism, I don't think I do much to challenge it. Though I have a belly/gut I have dated men and women who liked my belly/gut. I don't hang out in spaces in which my belly/gut would be problematic for others or challenging to their aesthetic. Nor do I wear by Black Panther regalia in redneck communities or tongue kiss men at Fruit of Islam meetings.


CHARLES: Hmmmmm…..I have found not hating myself or my body and eroticizing a range of other bodies as being the best I can do….for now. And finally, questioning everything.



6. I know you both, Kevin and Heru, have challenged mainstream HIV prevention and been critical of groups and forces that have been critical of barebacking. Could you clarify your thoughts about barebacking and gay men....why we do it, why it's such a hot button issue now, and what does sexual health work look like for these communities?


KEVIN: Sex without condoms is hotter. For decades we have been telling this lie, that we can have sex with condoms that is just as hot as sex without condoms. We have been telling this lie, as HIV prevention people, that sex without fluids, sterile sex can be just as fulfilling as sweaty, greasy, slimy, cum bucket sex. It’s a lie!


What we know for sure however is that sex with condoms significantly reduces one’s risk for acquiring or transmitting the HIV virus. We all know this. Black gay men have heard, more than anybody, the messages that have been yelled at us for the last two decades. But what is also true is that many Black gay men do not want to use condoms. Even in light of these scientific truths there are brothers, and others, out there that would take the risk for a chance to fuck. What we are missing is that this is not new. What is new is that Black gay men are revolting against the stigma that The HIV Prevention Industrial Complex has erected around condomless sex. A peek at the prevalence of HIV and AIDS among Black gay men should tell us that the desire to bareback is not new in our communities. As an HIV Prevention community we have failed. We’ve failed because we failed to seek input from the communities that we served. When we heard that brothers were having sex without condoms we shamed them. We created a climate in which those most at risk for HIV infection would never talk openly too those who are best placed to help them remain negative. We have created a climate in which black gay men lie about there sexual behavior to those who could help them plan there sex lives in a way that created the highest level of safety that the actions they are wiling to take can create. So what “barebackers” know from HIV prevention pros is that “they’re crazy,” or “have a death wish,” and not that using lots of lube can reduce your risk, that pulling out does reduce your risk, that just sucking it with no condom is safer than getting fucked with no condom, that most HIV positive men, when asked, will answer honestly about there HIV status, that 70% of new infections are attributed to HIV positive individuals that don’t know they are HIV positive, that getting tested and treated for other STDs significantly reduces your risk of becoming infected when exposed to HIV. So many of them are dead because we told them what we thought of them and not what we know of their risk factors. So many of them are dead because so few HIV prevention workers have educated themselves about the biological realities surrounding HIV transmission.


There are men out there with perfectly alright self esteems, who know how HIV is transmitted and who have made a quite conscious decision to have sex without condoms. As someone who has been involved in HIV prevention for as long as I have been I know that it is not my job to judge but to help these brothers reduce there risk, within there own parameters.


I was disappointed by the actions of those who marched with picket signs outside of the sex party for no other reason than that I thought it was short sighted, thoughtless, reactionary and silly. A much better strategy would have been to embrace the brother who throws the parties and create opportunities to educate the brothers who attend the parties. But what those organizations that picketed that party let the brothers on the inside know is that those organizations are not places where there CHOICE will be honored or where they will find support for preventing the acquisition of HIV.


HERU: Whoa. I devoted two years of intense study and research to answer these questions. The knowledge I have gained will the subject of several journal articles and a book or two that should be coming out in the next couple of years so stay tuned and I'll give you the bibliographic information on them.


CHARLES: My own thoughts about barebacking have been informed by the community organizer/scholar Eric Rofes and echoed by the blogger geekslut and the novelist/essayist Edmond White. For me the question we should ask ourselves is how can we promote and support sexual pluralism in our communities, but at the same time encourage support and care for each other. That is to say maybe there are models of barebacking we can create that are rooted in trust, in communication, and in mutual respect and care for each other. I completely get how anonymous “don’t ask, don’t tell” barebacking can be appealing, though maybe we can find ways to expand the possibilities where we can be our brothas lovers/tricks/fuck buddies and keepers. Also, I think we are a diverse community that attaches diverse meanings to our sexual practices. We have to find ways to meet those communities where they are, encourage self-care and not shaming their particular brand of pleasur.



>7. Why do you think it's difficult for man folk in our communities to think critically about how we construct our desires, and the meaning we attach to what we desire. More so I have found that when we challenge each other, there is a lot of
anger and resentment that builds. What has your experience been in such situations?


KEVIN: I agree. Challenges to desire are met with anger. I think this is probably because it takes a lot of work to even interrogate our desires, let alone expand them.


I also think that homophobia has made sure that our desires are challenged from the day that they come into being. Most gay men have worked very hard to get to the point where we can accept our desires, and find affirming for our desires. For most of us that are "Out" there is an activist spirit attached to expressing our desires. So, it’s not always easy to distinguish between a condemnation of our desires and a call to explore how our desires are varnished with the residue of the very oppression against which we shape our desires.


HERU: I think that most people are not critical thinkers. In fact, I believe that too many people are fool ass ignorant. So anytime that you apply pressure to their cognitive systems and processes they are gonna get a bit anxious if not downright pissed. The educational system in this country has really fucked up people's heads. It's a damn shame how many dumb ass motherfuckers are running around here thinking that they can think or know what that means.


CHARLES: I think to challenge the more dominant notions of desirability is still extremely radical for gay men. Because so many of us are wounded by masculinity, and try to work through that by identifying with it and desiring it, to challenge that desire is to pour salt in the wound. Rather than question the source of the pain and go internal, they would rather go externally. Further, anytime you challenge a myth that someone holds dearly, it’s like pulling the rug from up under them. Their concept of reality gets shaken, and to stabilize they have to cling to the myth. It’s kind of like when you tell poor people there is no American dream.



>8. Final thoughts.


HERU: No final thoughts because my thoughts are not finalized. I'm still learning, growing, and developing.


CHARLES: As queer men I believe that it’s all right and even expected that we eroticize big dicks, big muscles, and masculinity. At the same time I think it would be very beneficial if we widened our scope of what’s desirable. Finally, I would encourage all of us to rethink what we are told what’s desirable, and how we measure our own value with regard to those messages.