negrosunshine:

i got into this argument a few years ago with another black queer male that i had a crush on. then i thought we would just be friends. then we argued some more. then he started hating me. then i hated him. then we did not speak anymore. and there is much more to that story, but its besides the point i want to make right now, rather, the argument we had focused on many of the issues that seem to be swarming my tumblr dashboard right now concerning black queer men, straight women (particularly Black), and notions of privilege. 

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the black queer boy said to me: “black people can’t be racist”

i laughed: “and why is that?”

he said: “because, racism equals power plus prejudice, i may be prejudice, but i lack the power to do anything about it.”

i said: “hmm, interesting. true we lack power. but i think racism has been watered down so much, that when people talk about it, it doesn’t mean much. so i think Black people can be racist. i think the ‘power plus prejudice’ argument is lacking something.”

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now, i knew then, as i know now, the ‘power plus prejudice’ argument is widely popular and pretty spot on, but there was something not settling right with me about that argument. back then, i couldn’t articulate what was bothering me, so the conversation with the boy turned sour and changed our relationship forever. and here i am now, watching a lot of Black queer men, defend their positions eloquently in arguments of male privilege and what-not, but something is still not sitting right with me.

some may be reading and wondering: why/how did he make a leap from racism to issues of gender? a) black feminism 101, gender relations are race relations, race is always gendered. b) i am a black queer man, talking about relations between queer men and straight women c) ive been watching a flurry of black queer men speak on the subject.

in our conversations of privilege, we often create webs of identity that compete for attention within ourselves. ill call this the dance of the hyphen. watch closely now: i am a Black-queer-middle class-abled-spiritual-college educated-man. 

now, due to my training, an extensive amount of research, and life-experience: I KNOW that race overdetermines every other category and life chance i have. BLACK BLACK BLACKETY BLACK. so for short i cut my hyphen dance short and call myself a Black-queer. why queer too? well because its fun to say, looks nice on paper, sparks the most amount of dialogue, and allows me to continue exploring my sexuality.

Blackness overdeteremines my experience, it precedes any gesture or rhetorical move i may make, it is my ontological prison, my state of being. however, i exist! and i make gestures within social structures i was born into, raised in, made aware of. its all i know. pretty much the only option i have besides suicide or unleashing this murderous rage (perhaps this too is why i write). civil society is not mine, but i rent space here. some call it a performance, im not a performance studies scholar, so i wont comment. But i will say, the dance of the hyphen gets complicated.

can Black people be racist? according to the power + prejudice argument, certainly not.  but somehow, our conversations about racism quickly devolve into conversations about privilege (i.e: white privilege), and power leaves the discussion quickly. then the racism argument gets necessarily complicated by other identity markers (i.e. gender, class, sexuality, etc.), but because power exits the conversation somewhere, we are left with a lot of unnecessaryarguments on how people feel and what their individual experiences are. so questions like: can queer-Black-men exert male privilege? arise, and we go back and forth, back and forth and the dance of the hyphen becomes the center of attention. 

now, i am POSITIVE there are experience where a Black-queer-man has exerted a certain male privilege over a woman (i.e: better pay at a job, commanding a room’s attention over a female counterpart, ignoring a contribution made a woman) just like i am POSITIVE there is an experience of a straight-Black-woman exerting hetero privilege over a Black-queer-woman (i.e. ignoring her existence, discounting her credibility as a feminist because she organizes with queer men, bringing boyfriends or husbands home during the holidays). i am positive of this, because i have witnessed it first hand, or exerted the male privilege myself. due to my own experience and theexperiences of many others that dance with the hyphens, this should be our acknowledgement that the privileges do exist, and because i exist and rent space in civil society, i often perform or tap into that privilege, because its all i know how to do (though i challenge myself daily). 

Like i said earlier, Blackness overdetermines all my experiences, so while I AM male, queer, middle-class, etc. when I lead my dance with Black, it fucks up all those other categories, BUT that is at the level of ontology, my being, which plays out intimately in my experiences. Still though, as I said, I rent space here in civil society, and i live the way the social structures dictate i do. adjusting of course as much as i can through “checking of my privilege.” 

what i worry, and what i want to keep pushing, is when are we going to stop doing this dance of the hyphen, and begin to use our experiences productively in an analysis of civil society. yes Blackness overdetermines my queerness, maleness, etc. but im still performing queerness, maleness, etc. (my renting space). im waiting for my lease to be up, all our leases, and we realize what we are living in. I dont want these experiences of male privilege, nor do i want to experience  hetero privilege over me. but i also don’t want to BE male, queer, black etc. as its been defined thus far through modernity, cuz the shit is just unethical. 

im going to stop here though, because i fear i may be on the edge of an afro-futurist argument, someone reel me in.