Invisibility may be defined as the ability or will of the power group not to acknowledge the presence or influence of another group. Being invisible as a black person runs the gamut from the daily experience of entering a room full of white people and not being acknowledged to the other extreme of erasure from history. Where would Mick Jagger or David Bowie be without Little Richard? (Or even James Brown or Michael Jackson for that matter?) Silence may be defined as the act of subordinating the expression of one’s needs to the will of the group in power. Sometimes the silence is strategic, as was Walter White’s. Many times, it is a suppression of one’s beliefs to accommodate what one has been told is the “greater good,” the ‘this’-now-and-‘that’-later philosophy. Many gay and lesbian people succumb to the oppression-ranking syndrome in groups whose politics are not anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist, or anti-hierarchical. We spend our lives, as gay and lesbian people, calculating the costs of silence.

Being in the academy has enabled me to do my work for the most part, because I have never taken my place within the academy too seriously….

And believe me, I have had some setbacks there. Between 1998 and 2002 I worked for a very homophobic vice president and worked under the leadership of a very homophobic and conservative university president for 12 years. This was not fun. We had to deal with Republicans in Washington during the 1980s; and, at Rutgers, since everything comes to the academy later, we had to deal with Republicans at Rutgers in the 1990s. This was very impactful. During this whole time I, of course, continued to write, continued to study, and published my critical study of the Black Arts Movement, “After Mecca,” and my collected works The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980-2005. I received my doctorate in 2000, which made me very happy. I worked for it from 1991 to 2000 in the English Department at Rutgers, but actually, I started in 1969 and stopped in 1974. Those nine years of study during the 90s were some of my happiest times. So, really it took me 15 years to finish, but I like to say 30 years.

fuckyeahqueerpeopleofcolor:

CHERYL CLARKE (1947- )

-writer, educator and lesbian Black feminist activist
-wrote After Mecca—-Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement and contributed to This Bridge Called My Back
-Current Director of Diverse Community Affairs and Lesbian/Gay Concerns at Rutgers University
-Member of the Board of Directors of the Newark Pride Alliance

Where have you been? Where are you going? And what the hell are you doing presently?

The more homophobic we are as a people, the further removed we are from any kind of revolution. Not only must black lesbians and gay men be committed to destroying homophobia, but ALL black people must be committed to working out and rooting out homophobia in the black community. We begin to eliminate homophobia by engaging in dialogue with the advocates of gay and lesbian liberation, educating ourselves about gay and lesbian politics, confronting and correcting homophobic attitudes, and understanding how these attitudes prevent the liberation of the total community.

current obsessions (revival) #1.