CLGS

Pride parades and a host of festivities will be taking place all over the country this month. Our packed social calendars reveal something else as well: the deep fault lines marked by race, class, and gender identity. In addition to “Gay Pride” events, there will be a segment of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) population attending Black Gay Pride and Latino/a Gay Pride events.

Pride celebrates the varied life experiences, gifts, and talents of the entire LGBTQ community. But the divisions in our community during Pride also show us something troubling and broken within ourselves. As we hit the streets this month for various celebrations, let’s query who’s missing from these Pride festivities and why.

Black Pride, for example, dances to a different beat. Sunday gospel brunches, Saturday night poetry slams, Friday evening fashion shows, bid whist tournaments, house parties, the smells of soul food, Caribbean cuisines, and the beautiful display of African art and clothing are just a few of the cultural markers that make Black Pride distinctly different.

Cultural visibility and acceptance is just one of the things LGBTQ people of African descent do not experience from larger Pride activities. As a predominately white event, many African American LGBTQ revelers also experience social exclusion and political invisibility. After decades of Pride events where many LGBTQ people of African descent tried to be included and weren’t, Black Gay Pride was born.

Even as the larger LGBTQ community has been the fastest disenfranchised group since Stonewall to touch the fringes of mainstream society, communities of color--straight and gay--have not come close. As just one example among many, HIV/AIDS was once a crisis for the entire LGBTQ community but is now predominately a black and Latino one.

Another example is the development of white LGBTQ ghettos that are thriving safely in neighborhoods throughout the country. By contrast, and given the income and capital disparity between black and white LGBTQ communities, most LGBTQ people of African descent live in their black homophobic neighborhoods. The homophobia found in the black community means that we cannot carve out a black queer ghetto within our existing neighborhoods and realistically expect to be safe.

The themes evident in Black Pride events are different from the larger Pride events. Black Pride focuses on issues that do not pertain solely to the LGBTQ population but rather touch on the full range of social, economic, and health issues that impact the entire black community. In recent years, white Pride Month activities have focused on marriage equality, but LGBTQ people of African descent have had to focus just as much on HIV/AIDS, unemployment, gang violence, and LGBTQ youth homelessness, to name just a few.

Moreover, the gulf between white Pride events and communities of color stretches back to the Stonewall Inn. Who controls that narrative and who writes that history? The Stonewall riots of June 27-29, 1969, in New York’s Greenwich Village erupted from working-class African-American and Latino queers who patronized that bar. Those brown and black LGBTQ people are not only absent from the photos of that night; they are also bleached from its written history.

The bleaching of the Stonewall riots obscures the origins of an LGBTQ movement, which appropriated a black, brown, trans, and queer liberation narrative. It is this deliberate absence of LGBTQ people of color that makes it difficult and nearly impossible to build trusted coalitions with white LGBTQ communities.

Views on Pride are mixed, and not just for reasons of race, class, and gender identity. For many, Pride represents a bone of contention – is it a political event or just a big party? Some now think of Pride weekend at the end of June as a bacchanalia of drugs, alcohol, and unprotected sex, desecrating the memory of the Stonewall riots and the importance of making a political statement. But Pride need not be viewed as either a political event or a senseless non-stop orgy. Such an either/or approach artificially divides the integral connection between political action and celebratory acts in our fight for civil rights.

At its core, Pride Month invites community-building. Pride events should joyfully highlight the multicultural character of our entire movement, symbolizing our uniqueness as individuals and communities, and also celebrating the varied expressions of LGBTQ life in America.

But as long as LGBTQ communities and cultures of color continue to be absent each June, Pride Month is tainted with a lingering sense of shame.