Where Do We Go From Here?
(Building A Strong Black Lesbian and Gay Community)

[Editor's Note: "I wrote this piece in 1998 and it sparked enormous online debate. As a result of that debate, I learned a great deal and changed my mind on a number of issues I raised in the message. I present the email message here in its original form simply as a subject for discussion."]

Dear friends,

Many of you have been talking to me recently about the sorry state of affairs for black lesbians and gays. As an outgrowth of those discussions, I would like to share my thoughts about what's wrong and what we can do to fix it. I hope you find these ideas provocative and challenging, and I welcome your comments and responses in a public dialogue.

INTRODUCTION

This week (September 13 - 19, 1998) marks a rare occasion for black lesbian and gay issues. For the first time ever, representatives from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum, and the Christian Coalition will all converge on Washington in the same week to discuss their issues. As you know, they are very separate issues.

I have been asked to speak on Thursday at a CBC issues forum on black political leadership and on Friday at a HRC forum on organizing in the black community. It is in that context that I share with you some of my thoughts on the current state of black lesbian and gay affairs. I do not plan to discuss all the issues listed below in my remarks this week, but I do want to challenge black organizations and (white) gay organizations to go beyond the politics of tokenism and appeasement. Most of this article below, however, is for black lesbians and gays and what we can and should do for ourselves. I would like to hear your comments about this article and initiate a dialogue about what do we next.

THE INVISIBLE BLACK LESBIAN AND GAY COMMUNITY

Recent developments with several community organizations reflect a troubling state of affairs for black lesbians and gays. Just last month, the National Task Force on AIDS Prevention -- the only national organization focusing on HIV/AIDS issues for black and Latino gay men -- closed its doors in the midst of a financial crisis. And in recent months, the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum has lost and not replaced several key staff members, including its new executive director.

Sadly, these events and others reveal a disturbing reality. Just two years before the new millennium, forty years after the beginning of the civil rights movement, and nearly thirty years after Stonewall, there is still no black lesbian and gay community. To be sure, there are black lesbian and gay people. Some estimate the African American lesbian and gay population at 2 to 3 million. But population and community are two different things. A community is more than just a group of people with a shared interest. Community involves institutions, symbols, culture, and ritual that unite and define that group. Unfortunately, when it comes to black lesbians and gays, we have no community of which to speak.

Unlike the white lesbian and gay community, we have few viable institutions and organizations. Our national organizations are faltering and our local organizations are often underequipped, understaffed, overworked, or unprepared.

Unlike white gays and lesbians, we have no independent identity, no self- identified name, and no flag or symbol that represents us. Although a few Black (Gay) Pride events have sprung up in various cities, we have no equivalent of the white gay community's national "Coming Out Day" or "Gay Pride Month." Many of our own so-called "Pride" events are merely thinly- veiled circuit parties that ultimately help enrich white nightclub owners and fail to inform and empower us as black gays and lesbians.

I know of no black gay neighborhoods, although every major city in America has a gay neighborhood or a black neighborhood. Outside of the Internet, we have few consistent, reliable mechanisms for distributing information and news about us. We own no bookstores, weekly newspapers, radio stations, or other media that affirm us. Our literature can be confined to a single bookshelf in a huge gay bookstore, and much of that literature does not affirm us as black same-gender-loving people.

We have no holidays, months of observance, parades, or other annual ceremonies or rituals. We have little or no sense of our history beyond James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and the often mispronounced Bayard Rustin. Very few of us own community businesses, and even the bars and nightclubs we frequent are usually owned by whites. Unlike the rest of the black community, we don't even have a black gay and lesbian soul food or music.

In short, black lesbians and gays have no independent culture or community. Our identity is almost entirely dependent on other communities -- the black community or the gay community. Our culture is defined by black culture or white gay culture. This makes us a parasitic, residual people, meaning we live off the residue of other communities.

This state of affairs is not acceptable.

THE NEED FOR COMMUNITY

It's time to create a strong community of our own -- a community that informs, supports, and affirms us specifically as black lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people. If we don't create our own community and culture, we'll continue to see the same problems of the past. We will remain America's permanent underclass as weak, powerless, overlooked, and neglected victims.

Black institutions do not fully represent the interests of black lesbians and gays. White gay and lesbian institutions are often worse. But in the absence of strong black lesbian and gay leadership, white gay and lesbian organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign are now stepping in to capitalize on the void. We cannot let this happen without building our own community first.

TEN STEPS TOWARD BUILDING A COMMUNITY

In the past few weeks, I've had serious conversations with more than a dozen black lesbian and gay activists across the country who've expressed their grave concern about the direction of our so-called community. Many of them shared their doubts, fears, and frustrations about our existing institutions and leaders. No one was pleased with the current state of affairs, and no one believes black lesbians and gays are as strong as we should be.

Based on these discussions, I have outlined ten concrete steps that address these concerns and begin building a strong black lesbian and gay community. These ten ideas are not a panacea for all the woes that afflict black lesbians and gays. They are merely, but importantly, a suggested starting point for a much needed and long overdue dialogue about building our community.

To build this community, I believe we must:

1. Believe that we deserve it.

Many of us still don't believe in ourselves. We've been conditioned to think negatively not only about ourselves, but also about our behavior and about others who are like us. We must abandon forever the illogical notion that God created us as sinners because of our innate sexual orientation. We must understand that God's love is unconditional. We must not allow any pope, bishop, cardinal, minister, pastor, evangelist, elder, deacon, usher, monk, nun, priest or rabbi to separate us from the love of God. Religion must be used as a tool for love and not as a weapon of hate. We must not be ashamed to speak up for ourselves, even in the company of white homosexuals, black heterosexuals, or others who may be offended. We must acknowledge our right to power if we hope to claim it.

2. Create an environment conducive to community.

We have been our own worst enemies, and our deepest wounds have often been self-inflicted. Now we must stop the infighting, backstabbing and bickering that plague and define our community. It's time to stop trying to out-diva one another. It's time to put our egos aside. It's time to love and support one another.

3. Learn, understand, and teach our history to ourselves and others.

We have a rich history from Africa to colonial America and from the Civil War to the civil rights movement. We played a major role uptown in the Harlem Renaissance and downtown in Stonewall. We must learn and teach this history. We must know and remember our heroes and sheroes in the same way that we think we know the sex lives of today's celebrity entertainers and athletes. And, yes, we must learn how to pronounce Bayard Rustin's name properly.

We must learn and teach our struggle, but not to embrace the role of "most favored victim." Rather, we must learn from the Jewish community to repeat the vow "never again." Never again will we be excluded, ostracized, ghettoized, marginalized, tokenized, or closeted.

4. Come out and identify ourselves.

We must come out not simply as gays and lesbians, but as black gays and lesbians. And there is a difference. Coming out does not mean carrying a rainbow flag in a gay pride parade or pinning a pink triangle to our lapels. Coming out simply means being open and honest about who we really are.

We must end the conspiracy of silence. We cannot hide our cowardice behind the tired argument that coming out is only for white people. No doubt, many white people have an easier time coming out than black people do. However, we must call upon our culture and our history and remember that black people have a legacy of perseverance in the most difficult circumstances. So long as we continue to be neglected by our black brothers and sisters and disrespected by white gay men and lesbians, coming out is for us. We need not come out for anyone but ourselves, but we must come out for ourselves.

We must be supportive, understanding, and encouraging of those who are struggling to come out. We should encourage them to come out not simply to fulfill someone else's political agenda but to attain their own individual spiritual integrity. We must remember that our relationships will not succeed or endure when we must live in constant fear of their discovery or disclosure. Our relationships will not be affirmed or respected if we do not acknowledge them ourselves. And we will be less likely to find proud, responsible, honest partners and mates if we encourage a culture of shame, irresponsibility, and dishonesty.

Coming out must occur in our own cultural context. We cannot build a strong, autonomous community if our identity is wrapped up entirely with the white gay and lesbian community. In the same way that white gays and lesbians are not content solely identifying as white, we cannot be content solely identifying as gay. We cannot nurture ourselves by living off the crumbs of other communities.

We must come out in our own communities. The goal of community is not advanced if we come out in a white gay ghetto and then we choose not to come out in our own homes, with our own families, in our own neighborhoods, and at our own places of worship.

5. Abandon the victim mentality.

We must stop looking at ourselves as victims and start to reconceptualize our image as spiritually, mentally, physically, economically empowered people. We must stop complaining about what other people in our own communities are not doing, and instead start doing it.

In the words of the singer Dianne Reeves, "I am an endangered species, but I sing no victim song."

6. Re-define our identity.

We did not create our identity in the first place, but we have accepted it. Now we must define for ourselves who we are and what we represent. It's time to stop glorifying immature and irresponsible behavior in our community. We must teach our men that being on the "downlow" or the "serious DL" does not make them more masculine or "real." We must praise those who are in recovery for addictions, but we must also encourage others to avoid self-abusive behavior in the first place. We must stop calling ourselves "fags," "sissies," "punks," "niggers," and "bitches" if we expect other people not to see us this way. Once this derogatory language is released into the discourse, we cannot expect to police its abuse by outsiders when we use it ourselves.

We must learn to value positive expressions of our existence without censoring images based on our fear of stereotypes. We should not expect other communities to respect us if we do not respect those in our own community who are bisexual, transgendered, or "too flamboyant" for our tastes. We must re- examine our socially constructed values around gender identity and re-define masculinity and femininity based on character and virtue instead of clothing and voice. We must define our identity not to censure one another or to determine our authenticity, but to express who we are and how we see ourselves.

7. Articulate community standards of behavior in a loving way.

We must define acceptable norms of behavior and establish standards of moral, spiritual, mental, sexual, physical, economic, and social conduct. We must expand our definition of morality beyond our religious backgrounds and come to understand honesty, fairness, duty, responsibility, and courage as virtues of morality. We should set spiritual standards that encourage self-reflection and lead us to be in touch with ourselves.

Our sexual norms should discourage unsafe behavior. We should actively discourage unprotected, unsafe sex. We must support those living with HIV and AIDS at the same time we celebrate those who are not, and we should encourage everyone to avoid becoming HIV positive. We should encourage honesty in all our relationships. We must avoid and discourage sexual relationships between adults and children. We must preserve the sanctity of monogamous relationships in our community and try to avoid violating the boundaries of such relationships. At the same time, we must understand the wide range of relationship options available to us.

We must take care of ourselves physically, control our diets, and seek regular care as needed. Economically, we must seek to develop greater individual and community wealth without excessive materialism. We must not define our success solely by our checkbooks. And we must avoid unlawful so-called "crafty" behavior. Socially, we must strive to support black gay institutions, including our nonprofit organizations, our media, our literature, and our few black gay-owned bars and nightclubs. At the same time, we should expect honesty, integrity, competence, and vision from our leaders and business owners and hold them accountable to high standards. We must act responsibly toward our families, friends, and neighbors. We must also support, mentor, and nurture our young people. We must serve as role models for youth by our behavior, and we must not exploit our positions as mentors simply to recruit young dates. Finally, we must value lifelong learning and start to measure achievement not just by academic degrees! but also by life experience and overcoming obstacles.

8. Create and support institutions and culture that affirm us.

We must create and continue to support black lesbian and gay community organizations. It's unacceptable to complain about the failures of these organizations if he we haven't done anything to support them ourselves.

Many of our organizations are already attempting to help us. We must support their efforts, and where those efforts are misdirected, we must have the courage to stand up and say so and provide leadership and direction. National entities such as the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum, the National Body of the Black Men's and Women's Exchange, Chocolate City website, and the Unity Fellowship Church need and deserve our support.

We must begin to create a unique black lesbian and gay culture, with our own symbols, ceremony, holidays, observances, and ritual. We cannot continue to identify ourselves simply through the white gay community's pink triangle, rainbow flag, and Lambda symbol. We must encourage our artists, leaders, thinkers, and organizations to come together and develop our own symbols that reflect our unique heritage and experience as African American lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people.

We must encourage, nurture, and support the development of black lesbian and gay literature. We should appreciate those stories, poems, novels, and nonfiction works that strive to represent us truthfully. We must learn to value the depiction of our relationships in print and in other media. We must support film, television, and art that honestly represents black lesbians and gays, and we should encourage our writers, producers, directors, and other artists to begin including and featuring us regularly in their works. We must encourage the portrayal of intimate relationships involving black men loving black men and of black women loving black women.

Many of our activists have suggested developing a Black Gay and Lesbian History Month. The time has come to make this happen and to marshal all the resources of our institutions to ensure its success. We must utilize the Internet, our media, our community organizations, our leaders, our religious institutions, our mailing lists, and our phone trees to disseminate information about community ceremonies, symbols, culture, and history.

In the prophetic words of Marlon Riggs, "When the existing history and culture do not acknowledge and address you -- do not see or talk to you -- you must write a new history, shape a new culture, that will."

9. Use our talents for our community.

To whom much is given, much is required. We should learn to embody this scriptural lesson in our lives and our community. For too long, many of our most talented black lesbians and gays with resources or access to resources have not used them to develop the community. Those of us who have talents, skills, resources, or dollars should share these with our community. We must build, support, and properly manage our own community businesses, but we must also end the excessive glorification of materialism and possession. Instead, we should praise those who contribute to their community. We should buy and own our own black gay nightclubs and bars, but we should also own restaurants, bookstores, stores, buildings and homes in our community.

Many of us know of prominent black lesbian, gay, and bisexual men and women in the closet. Some of these people are very popular politicians, business leaders, ministers, athletes, musicians, rap artists, singers, dancers, producers, directors, writers, actors and actresses. We should encourage them, nudge them, and push them to come out and support the development of our community. At the very least, we must insist that they avoid gay-baiting and homophobia in their public words and deeds. We should expect that RuPaul, Me'Shell NdegeOcello, Johnny Mathis and other black openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual celebrities be at least as supportive of the black lesbian and gay community as some of them have been toward the white gay community. We should expect the same from black heterosexual leaders such as Maya Angelou, Coretta Scott King, Kweisi Mfume, Dennis Archer, and Jesse Jackson.

Those of us with degrees must not see them as badges of distinction to separate ourselves from others but instead as badges of responsibility to teach, train, and educate others in need. We must mentor, tutor, and educate our young. We should expect that every single person in our community find some way to support at least one black gay or lesbian community organization each year, either by volunteering time, attending events, contributing ideas, or donating money.

10. Assert ourselves politically.

In the past year, gospel singers Angie and Debbie Winans, football player Reggie White, professional relative Alveda King, and even allegedly closeted black gay men like Armstrong Williams have condemned us publicly. The media response by black lesbians and gays has ranged from invisible to inept. Instead, the primary images responding have been white gay men and lesbians. This is unacceptable. We cannot allow other people to fight our battles for us. We must come out, stand up, and be counted.

The recent controversy surrounding the scheduled gay and lesbian "Millennium March" in the year 2000 reveals just how powerless we have become. Several respected black lesbian and gay activists have objected for eight months that we have been excluded from any meaningful role in the process. Nevertheless, the March marches on.

We have been pushed to the outer edge of the political triangle with black political leaders and the (white) gay community. We must end the triangulation practiced by the white lesbian and gay community in complicity with our own black leadership. We must develop relationships with black leaders and organizations and demand that we, as black lesbians and gays, be included and involved as full partners in all of their discussions involving gay and lesbian issues. We must insist that black leaders bring us in on these discussions and expect them to discontinue meetings with gay organizations and leaders without the presence of credible, autonomous black lesbian and gay organizations and leaders. When white gay and lesbian leaders ask to meet with black elected officials or civil rights leaders, the black leaders should require that black lesbian and gay leaders be involved in the discussion. This is the only way we will not be excluded from the equation.

Lastly, we must insist that white lesbians and gays seriously and respectfully involve more black lesbians and gays in high-level, visible, responsible, decisionmaking and policymaking positions in their organizations. We must play a role in the process of assisting these organizations in this effort. We must not be blinded by a few well-placed black lesbian and gay tokens designed to divert our attention from the failure of these organizations to address our concerns or represent our constituency.

CONCLUSION

The challenges before us are daunting, but they are not insurmountable. We must, in the words of the Earth Day motto, "think globally and act locally." We cannot allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the magnitude or the gravity of this situation. Instead, we must focus our energies individually on what we can do each day in our own communities and our own neighborhoods, with our own families, our own relationships, and in our own lives. As the African American proverb tell us, "each one, reach one."

Once we start to spend more time focusing on what we can do individually and less time complaining about what other people are not doing, we will soon be in better shape.

Many of us know this struggle is not new. These challenges have faced us for at least a generation. In October 1979, during the gay community's first national march on Washington, hundreds of participants gathered at Howard University's Harambee House for a Third World conference on gays and lesbians of color. The title of that conference was "When Will the Ignorance End?" Today, nearly twenty years later, we have yet to answer that question.

We've spent two decades complaining about our community. Now it's time to start building it.

© 2001 by Keith Boykin. All Rights Reserved.