"The Truth When You're Black And Gay..."

WE WILL ALWAYS SEE RACE & SEXUALITY

Beyond Steven


If you are reading this there is a good chance you are a person of color, you are male and you are (or identify) with something other than heterosexuality. Welcome my brothers! If you don’t fit that very narrow demographic, welcome as well – we are all friends here.

The demographic listed above is comprised of a sub-group, of a sub-group: race, sex and sexuality. It is just the way it is.

I recently read a piece in Thought Catalog, called “Why Do People Still Choose to See Race,” and my first reaction was, because! We have to see race – race is a part of our identity. Typically when people say, “I don’t see race,” they are really trying to say I don’t judge based on race, which is damn near equal to saying “my best friend is black.” No one cares! No one.

Side Note: The article mention is not worth reading, it literally says nothing, but I thought we lived in a world where the race of a person didn’t matter. The author needs a wakeup call.

However as black gay men, which side of the fence do we fall on we comes to sexuality. It’s a given that most people feel like who they sleep with is no one‘s business, but as we know that isn’t realistic. People are nosey – have been since cavemen started drawing on rocks. So keeping your sexual desires is hardly a secret worth keeping anymore. Yet the question remains, should we see sexuality?

Queer people are forced, yes forced, to come out. We are forced to reveal to every person we meet that we like the same sex. This annoys people, but as I stated many times before, we are not the norm and sadly we have an obligation to challenge the minds of people by revealing this difference so one day it does become the norm. So with this in mind, does coming out reinforces the thought that people should always see sexuality? Just as people will always see race, gender and sex?

The reason people like to say, “I don’t see race,” is the same bullshit concept we long from our sexual identifier – we don’t want to be judged by it. Yet is it unrealistic to think that would ever happen? Human are judgmental bastards, every last one of us. With the exception of Michelle Obama (she is an angel in my eyes) everyone judges. Whether they are judging your clothes, your walk, your body, your follower count – there is judgment going on. “Only God Can Judge Me” is a cute saying, but it should be “Only God is Allowed to Judge Me,” because at the end of the day the judgment will never end.

We need to approach the “Why Do People See Sexuality” the same way we approach “Why Do People See Race” with a Phaedra Parks side eye. This site is geared toward gay black men, so not seeing neither race nor color would mean MUSED wouldn’t need to exist. Yet, it does. So open your eyes.

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I agree with the author, we need to acknowledge and embrace our uniqueness, and that includes our "racial" characteristics (not the stereotypes) and our sexuality.  Moreover, we also have to come out and let what others already see in us, that we are gay or same gender loving be our truth.  We can then challenge them to see us as we really are, only human...  

The truth is already out there for everyone to see and judge, if we make it our own, the truth really will set us free.

"Fear Eats the Soul"