FEBRUARY | 2020 | ESSENTIALS

THE MISEDUCATION OF YOU

At some point or another you’ve been exposed to a myth or two regarding the capabilities of the negro. It is lazy and dangerous, an aggressive sexual deviant incapable of liberating itself, and a savage. Those residing outside of the black existance are often found tiptoeing mere inches from the border of blackness. They hold poorly constructed ideations about who, or what blackness is. Their best attempts at understanding it results in them mischaracterizing it as a monolith, as something impersonal and uniform to a fault. They stole it from its motherland, bound it to their chains, entombed it in their ships and robbed it of its name. They valued its labor, and set its price, and according to them, all of this was “right”. 

At some point or another you’ve been exposed to a myth or two regarding the capabilities of the gay. It is promiscuous and perverse, a non believing godless heathen who’s sexual thirst for children can never be quenched or cured. Those residing outside of the gay existence often position themselves at its borders with faulty ideations about who, or what gayness is. 

Their best attempts at understanding it results in them mischaracterizing it as a monolith, as something impersonal and uniform to a fault. They sought to exorcise its spirit from the host, demeaned and disowned it upon discovery, and bastardized the legitimacy of its existence with their rhetoric and laws. It was identified and defined as a disorder by scientists who threw the complexity of its being upon a societal curb. Once upon a time it remained there, fallen where it had lain--exiled into the void.

The chances of you being able to relate to both the myth of the negro and the gay are favorable. You are, after all, reading this on a platform that specifically caters to gay negroes. We’ve spent the past two years crafting our Essentials to read as a love letter of sorts, and we do our best to ensure that it contains a gem or two, and we’ve gotten some pretty dope feedback, too (‘preciate it). Our All Black issue is one of our favorites to produce, because it gives us a chance to hit the nail of the complexities of our blackness and sexuality on the head with the biggest, blackest, and gayest nonexistent hammer known to man. 

A couple of years ago (can’t believe we can actually say that now) we did a piece on whether or not our blackness outranks our sexuality. It got some decent reviews, but one of the things we remember most about it was the discussion it brought about. Years later we know that there is a clear distinction between the two, and that some identify more with one than the other for various reasons. Regardless of how you choose to rate or relate to either your blackness or sexuality, the one thing that both have in common is the power they hold. 

The power of your blackness, in your “of colorness” lies in its resilience. Those who have sought to tell its story and to control its narrative find themselves enraged, because despite their best attempts to dismantle it, your blackness remains bent, but unbroken. Your blackness forces them to talk about race. Although the concept of race was created by them, the privilege they hide behind poorly covers their attempts to run from the difficulty of having to actually talk about it. It intimidates them to no end, and that intimidation is the reason they’ve worked so hard to subjugate it. 

Your sexuality, much like your Blackness, is not without its own power. Both its persistence and increased visibility have given those who would banish it without the notion of a second thought another reason to dislike it more. The comfort you’ve found in your sexuality, in being who you were born to be, has given birth to a class of people who, with pride and intention, bear an almost maddening attitudinal disposition that rarely leads them to any desirable destination. 

Your blackness and sexuality are but two parts of the complexity of your being, but they inspire a seemingly endless amount of ignorance and hate. Your oppressors busily occupy their time with them, allow them to consume their existence, and they even keep some of them awake in the night. They’ve built their laws around keeping them their respective places, and have used their religions as an excuse for intolerance. 

You’d be a fool to not recognize the amount of power to be found in something capable of igniting so much passion within so many people! Many of your detractors have never knowingly engaged in any type of plutonic relationship with one of you, have knocked your sexuality without trying it (just saying), and refuse to exist outside of the racist and/or homophobic norms that prevailed during the development of their feeble minds.

Their attempts to suppress the black and gay parts of your whole initially lead many to hide within the shadows casted by their disapproving light, but it lead others challenge and to dare those in power to show the world just how far they were willing to take their racist and homophobic ideals. 

We called their bluff, and they have, for the most part, folded in shame. And now look at you- voting, making the same amount of money, and even being able to marry the Beaux of your dreams! You know what that’s called? Growth. The power of your blackness and your gayness comes as the result of you recognizing the respect you’re entitled to, and demanding it. It grows as the result of us holding each other up in our blackness, in our gayness, and in creating allies who do the same. Your power strengthens each and every time you grab hold of their pens and use them to write your own narrative. It increases whenever you do something they say you can’t, when you comfortably rest within your capabilities as you identify them, and not as defined by others.  

Once upon a time you took their myths as truth, as fact more than fiction. They became the air you breathed, you washed yourself in their waters, and rested their beds. However those days are gone, and both your blackness and your sexuality are no longer humbly existing on the sidelines. 

They are running countries, writing, producing, and starring in movies, and creating a culture that those who once sought to oppress you, are flocking to appropriate. This the power that lies within your blackness, within your sexuality, and the book that you should take care to always read from as you undo the miseducation of you. 

Remember this, always.