In-Queer-Y

If my sexuality and race were their own person, my sexuality would walk straight out of the room at the sight of my race and wait patiently outside. My sexuality would spectate through the window and wait for my race to leave. He would be present, but at a distance. Silenced, yet still breathing. It was not until I saw queer people of color at the forefront of the Ferguson Movement, a civil rights movement, that I felt more at peace with myself.

Shirts that read “Gay is the new Black” never made sense to me. It was as if the Gay Rights Movement prided itself in being the “new” oppressed. It made the Civil Rights Movement a thing of the past. It also helped people unite under the hopes that people would join the right side of history and rid themselves of the guilt of denying minorities their rights. “Gay is the new Black” didn’t allow for me to see my identities as a constant struggle. But for me, being a person of color and gay is a constant state of me, no matter how conflicting.

The Civil Rights Movement also deserves some heat for separating those identities since, quite ironically, many of the leaders looked down on and even prohibited gay leadership, thinking that it would distract from the messages of tolerance. For example, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr’s right hand man and an influential advisor to many civil rights leaders, was banned from the Civil Rights Movement after his arrest for committing a “homosexual” act in 1953. Some black leaders thought that his sexuality was a distraction from the movement. For a long time, the tension between my sexuality and race resembled that of Bayard Rustin.

So where is the Gay Rights Movement when the Civil Rights Movement that presumably ended comes back? I found it in the echoes of brown-faced queer protestors that bounced off the back of cardboard posters that read, “#BLACKLIVESMATTER #GAYBLACKLIVESMATTER #TRANSBLACKLIVESMATTER.” For once, the Ferguson protests urged my sexuality and race to figure out their insignificant differences and be present for each other. They learned not to see each other as opposing forces and instead found a way to manifest their love in embraces that at first seemed unmanageable and awkward.

The urgency of this movement leaves no room for discrimination. The black community has never been so united since the Civil Rights Movement and I am astounded by the progress within the movement. Growing up, I always felt like an outsider within my community because of my mannerisms and the way I spoke, but now I find my identity being affirmed within the movement.

The presence of strong women in the protests also makes the Ferguson movement unique. The stories of grieving mothers have lit up flames under the feet of young women around the world that worry for the lives of their future children. Everyone is afraid. The front pages of newspapers show women of color parading the streets refusing to give away their children to the horrors of police brutality. Little children parade the streets with tears running down their face as mothers hold on tightly to their hands in one hand and a poster board on the other. These images go against the stereotypical archetypes of the angry black woman that haunt the black community. We are no longer experiencing the “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” but the collective stories of an unheard people.

The Ferguson case made me realize that oppression and tolerance isn’t a fad. Oppression is something that affects people of all sorts: women, queers, blacks. And while the struggle is different for every group, we’ve all struggled. Seeing gay people protest the Ferguson case isn’t to direct the attention from racism to homophobia, but an example of how queer people understand oppression. I now understand that the various aspects of my identity don’t have to fight, but coexist in their empathy for one another as Americans learn how to become more and more tolerant with the other.