The Erasure Of Black Queer Legacy
I have become one of my mother’s Lil friends and enjoy it. One of my many favorite things about our friendship in my adulthood is that she knows so much about Black New Yorker history. I get caught up in her stories about 5th avenue dividing where the Caribbean Black people lived vs. the Black Americans. That is where my maternal grandparents met, 5th avenue in Harlem. My grandfather's family is from Antigua, and my grandmother’s family is from North Carolina; this intersection in Harlem is where our existence as New Yorkers begins. I love that for us cause I really love this city, and no matter how hard white gentrifiers make it to live here, I never want to leave. It’s my home, and I refuse to migrate anywhere as a refuge from them. Im ancestrally exhausted from picking up my life and starting over, so listening to my mother tell me about Harlem in the ’60s and ’70s is one of my favorite things. As I listen to stories about NYC’s past, what sticks out most is queerness doesn’t exist. How is that possible?
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My mom was definitely outside and living a whole life during the 60s and 70s and didn’t really slow down until the 80’s when she got married and had the bulk of my siblings. She acted like a good, righteous Muslim, went back to school, and left the streets and the club scene alone. That’s the woman I knew until a few years ago, as I began to learn who she was before I existed. She’s shared with me what Harlem felt like when Malcolm X was murdered and how everything erupted when Marting Luther King was murdered, yet when I asked her about the Stonewall Riots, she doesn’t have a “where was I when that happened” memory. That is prime New York history she feels no connection to. It's a simple story in passing that she knows now cause we’ve talked about it, but something separate. Pride month to her, like many other Black people, has been something different than Blackness. As white people erased Black people from many LGBTQ spaces, Black people erased queerness from Black spaces. In adulthood, I learned Pride was birthed from anti-police riots when anti-policing discourses circled Black activism spaces. It was 1969; police brutality conversations were as abundant for Black people as they are now, yet because Queer Black women led the charge, it hasn’t been included in that legacy. This legacy of deliberately erasing Queer Black people from our histories is devastating but has struck me personally cause the affirmations I needed for my queer existence were gone.
I recall a conversation with a friend about the queer erasure in my family. She mentioned, “ you know every Black family has the femme uncle or the Trans Aunty, and we just don’t say anything about it” She and I were having an intense conversation about gender. When she said it, I honestly could not relate cause that didn’t exist in my family. That’s when I hit me; my family wasn’t full of raging homophobic people but was fine erasing folks who didn’t fit the Cis Heternormative standard. I remember no gay, lesbian, trans, or genderqueer adults in my family, which is odd as hell. How does that happen? How does a family as large as mine have no queer people in it? This is weird! My extended family is not religious; even with most of them having a Christian foundation, they hardly were Christians. In my upbringing as a Muslim, we still lived in the world and weren’t separated from it. Restrictions on what my siblings and I watched on TV or the music we listened to didn’t appear to be linked to Islam. It seemed more influenced by what they thought was good parenting, things that affirmed Blackness were allowed, and anything highly influenced by Christianity was not ( my parents disdained the Black church, that’s an essay for another day). So, I know the erasure didn’t exist due to religion, but most likely in alignment with what respectable Blackness was, versus what was not.
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There was no room for queerness in Black excellence, so I saw nothing affirming about queerness in my childhood. Everything was comic relief, men dressing as Black women or it was a sexual scandal. In adulthood, as I intentionally tried to merge these identities in my life, I fully realized the extent of erasure I experienced. Black queerness is dismissed so we can appeal to whiteness. White Cis-heterosexual norms that will never love or accept us back. Why are we STILL dancing for them? I can’t help but feel embarrassed that we made them dismiss these parts of their narratives for Black conformity.
I appreciate where I am now and am grateful for the Black Queer elders who made this world a bit easier for me to navigate. I remember how excited I was when I learned singer and actress Josephine Baker and playwright Loraine Hansberry were bisexual Black women artists like me. I wish queerness could have been a commonly known part of their identity while alive. Not folks out-ed to most of us postmortem through secret letters to their lovers. I have met the work of many queer Black leaders, artists, and thinkers; that had to live their sexuality in private and were not allowed always to be their whole selves. I feel bad that I also had to meet their work in dark hallways and whispered discussions as I stumbled upon footnotes of their identity. How many had lovers they couldn't be with or kept secret and couldn't love loudly? How many suppressed their attractions or didn’t shine as brightly in their light? I think about my natural feelings of sexual and romantic interest and how disconnected I have felt from myself when I would try to leave pieces of myself behind closed doors; that shit is hard. I wish we treated them better, loved them harder, and saw them fully.
A few months ago, while visiting my mom, I asked about queerness in our family, and she spoke about all the youth that are openly queer. I pushed more, even though it was uncomfortable to ask about elders. “How is our family so large and queerness doesn’t exist? Were they exiled? It makes no sense they don’t live in our family” She was at a loss for words for a bit. At that moment, she realized what she had been conditioned to do, dismiss their existence. Not a raging homophobic, but a person that lived thinking not talking about it was better. She begins to share stories about her uncle, Solomon. My Great Uncle Soloman was gay, and I had never heard of him until then. She said he was sweet and that my grandfather (her dad) was very defensive of him. Anyone saying any slur or derogatory thing about him, and it was on and popping! It t was nice to hear about this man I had never known was loved, but I wish he could’ve been loved fully and not someone I learned about in this way. Solomon was my family, and he should have a spot in all the stories about our family and Harlem back in the day, he should part of the stories my mom shares.
I often think about my great uncle Solomon and wonder about his life. Was he happy? Did he find love, and most importantly, was he out here stunting on these hoes! I don’t know if I will ever know more about him. My mother wasn’t around him often, but I am happy to know him, even for a moment in a short discussion with my mom. I am learning not to be upset when I meet a queer Black ancestor because they did live as their true selves; everyone else treated them as a supplement to Black excellence. That is not their flaw, so I shouldn’t bring that to them either. I don’t meet them with my disdain for the whitewashing of their lives. Now I smile and speak to them. I let them know I love them, and they made life better for me. I tell them I see them fully. I tell them they will always be loved and never be forgotten again. I will keep meeting more of you, and I honestly can not wait until we do.
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