Facebook Publication Date: 6/2/2021 16:06
It’s a joyous occasion, this whole month of June: Pride Month in many parts of the world.
I am ready to be giddy; ready to don all the rainbow and now, with fewer restrictions, attend all of the (responsibly socially distanced) festivals, parades, panels, lectures, brunches, picnics–I am here for all of it.
There were no, or very few, in person celebrations last year. And no matter how people tried (and to their credit they really did try) Zoom meetings are not festivals; group chats are not house parties. I think it was very instructive in what turned out to be the early months of Covid (who knew we would still be basically indoors fully a year later) as to what the opportunities and the limitations of locating each other and creating community brought to the fore in the time of the pandemic.
So this month is doubly joyous and poignant, and yes: I want it all: just point me in the direction of multicolored mimosas and a playlist that evokes 1983 Studio 54 vibe, and I will be there, ready to see and to be seen.
To be seen. To be seen.
It’s interesting that Pride Month has taken my mind to the roots and the foundationals of the struggle; just as researching governmental and corporate response to the murder of Mr. George Floyd at the hands of his murderer-whom-I-refuse-to-name has lead me into deep dives into all of the things, from the slight indignities to the boots on neck that coalesced and congealed–and ultimately transcended–from the casual terrorism and brutatility of LGBTQ+, which lead to (sometimes forgotten) Lady Marsha P. Johnson–which ushered in an era of activism and gains of the modern Gay Liberation struggle, which owes its its very existience to Johnson, who was a child of the Black Civil Rghts and Liberation Struggle; the modern day iteration of which begain in 1954 (but which really started in 1619), which did not begin (nor did it end) with the MWNBN’s callous depraved act which killed Mr. Floyd.
It is not lost by any BIPOC, but is easily forgotten by their white peers, that the struggle for gay rights and liberation and self actualization and acknowledgement of the most basic–inherent humanity–happened (and is happening) at what can only be called breakneck speed.
Stonewall happened in 1969, though violence and marginalization of LGBTQ+ was happening in stark degrees long before then; just as the modern Civil Rights movement was a culmination of the resistance, agitation, and resolve of almost 400 years of individual and collective struggle.
As an illustration, allow me to offer this. Lady Johnson (the internet revels in slinging around her deadname; I will not) mother of the modern struggle for gay rights, was a mere 47 years old when she passed in 1992.
The right to marry was affirmed in all 50 states in 2015, and while it has been and, in some states and regions, still is, hard to assert that right, the happy fact remains that it took less time to gain that right–46 years elapsed between Lady Johnson’s defining action and the barriers being broken like so many shards of glass shattered by Lady Johnson’s courage.
This is a serious subject, and a serious remembrance, and it needs to never be far from our minds even as we celebrate real and authentically hard won gains.
As a queer woman, I always reach back to the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Liberation struggle, which the Gay Liberation movement basically ripped every single page off of that play book, and did it faster and with more durability than black people have ever been able to enjoy.
We can also look back and see what corporations have done when it comes to black people all the way back from the late 60s and early 70s to as early as last year with the black spring and corporations finally deciding that maybe we shouldn’t have boots on our necks.
While visibility is important, it is important as well to pull back the curtain and see what’s actually being done beyond marketing and PR.
What are the hiring rates? What a disciplinary rates for black and gay employees? What are the compensation rates? What is the makeup of their corporate boards? How many people of color are in the c-suite? Those are questions they don’t want us asking.
I enjoy rainbows all the time. I’m going to be wearing a rainbow necklace today.
But I have absolutely no illusions-or delusions- that corporations’ support for me as a queer Woman, and more poignantly and specifically as a Black woman, goes beyond tchotchkes.
It’s a deflection and a distraction.
And while we can enjoy the fun we cannot allow our love of shiny things to distract us from the real issues that are still very much extant.
So for me it’s not so much that they’re making money off of a specific demographic group, I mean, that’s what corporations *do* they exist to extract money from us, I get that; it’s the fact that they’re lying.
And now I will quietly but definitely turn the lens to the queer Community ourselves.
The queer community has been sometimes painfully silent on the issue of Liberation for the Black and brown cohorts upon whose shoulders and backs they have stood, not just as fellow queer people, but also just as people in general.
There’s almost no acknowledgement of the origins and the foundations of the Gay Liberation movement.
And believe me, it shows.
So we need to work on two tracks.
Telling the truth and insisting that truth be told about the limitations of Liberation within corporate spaces, academic, and governmental spaces, and also leveraging our own social and economic capital towards the liberation of all, and, crucially, remembering that, as a group, gay people in Western countries still have more economic and social capital than their Black and brown counterparts.
400 years of Black and brown struggle, with rewards, recognition, acknowledgement, and liberation still only partially recognized, set the conditions for the 46 years–and beyond–of the evolving Queer liberation struggles and should be remembered and honored in the last half century of progress the likes my parents and grandparents have never seen, and which, as a Black woman, I will never see in my own lifetime.
This is real. This needs to be addressed.
Black and brown people have shown up and carried water and done brutal heavy lifting so this month of celebration of the LGBTQ+ could happen. Our blood tints the flag. The Queer Community needs to recognize, honor, and step up.
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