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.
Join in The Bistro discussion below.
Lace on Race › Forums › Pride Month and the Erasure, Co-Optation, and Appropriation of the Black Liberation Struggle
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The continual erasure of Black women from the history of the LGBT movement is part and parcel with the erasure of Black and brown leaders from so many different marginalized groups. (This includes the labor movement, the feminist movement and many others.) White people take that progress, claim it for ourselves, and then declare that it was our doing all along. As you point out, that erasure also directly leads to the corporatization and watering-down of the radical nature of those movements. White people are seen as more marketing-friendly and are more willing to participate in that watering down, leading to a lack of focus and movement forward on real liberation.
As for my participation in that, I definitely questioned a Black queer person when they pushed back against participating in the non-profit industrial complex. They helped me much better understand the way that striving for funding rather than building grassroots partnerships really doesn’t lead to change and just more lip service.
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(cross posted to FB) I was glad to see this topic come up at a recent LGBTQ+ training I attended. It was easy to see the organizers made a point to make sure people of color were equally represented delivering the training instead of the usual tokenized one or two I’ve seen in other spaces. The topic of how white people have co-opted and taken credit for the movement also was addressed with robust in one breakout session I attended, though it would have been even better to bring that acknowledgement to center stage. I will provide them that feedback for next year. I’m going to go do more reading on Lady Johnsons work and contribution to ingrain that knowledge better to share and give the credit where it’s actually due. Another piece I’m tucking in my pocket here is that reminder to not allow celebration of diversity, of anything (Black/Brown lives) to distract from the real issues, the real persons at stake.
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Thanks for the idea to read more about Lady Johnson to better share that history and truth. Also the reminder that Black and brown people are being harmed and killed when I get distracted by celebration.
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I watched two documentaries on Marsha P. Johnson last year. Made me wish I had known that person. Also brought up deep sorrow at how incapable we are as humans of accepting each other and supporting each other and celebrating each other just as we are.
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The momentum of Queer Liberation is a benefit gained by white LGBTQI+ seeking liberation, too. I’ve no doubt that, as with Women’s Liberation, Black and brown queer folk have gained far less than white queer folk, in addition to being erased from the narrative of liberation. It also seems like all movements really struggle with their internal diversity and intersectionality: “We need to keep our focus tight in order for this movement to succeed.” At what point do we realize that all movements are really the SAME movement? The more intersections a person has, the more likely they are to already know this.
The part about corporations: I’ve noticed that corporations, if they respond with something other than a PR campaign, often respond with a special program. John Deere created a program for Black farmers, for example: LEAP Coalition. It’s goal is to preserve Black-owned farmland, especially from “heirs’ property” laws which divide and subdivide ownership over time when there isn’t/wasn’t a will — or when white supremacy officials interfere in order to dispossess. (The same method of land theft was done to Indigenous peoples under the Dawes Act.) The John Deere leadership team has five white men, one white woman, one Black man, and one South Asian man. Their BOD is six white men, two white women, a Black woman, a Black man, and a South Asian man. “Special programs” feels like white saviorism to me: we’ll help you out, but don’t ask us to change. Not to say that such programs aren’t necessary — but it can’t be instead of changing our white selves, businesses, government. It has to be in addition to those things.
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“at what point do we realize that all movements are really the SAME movement,” so true. any movement, PR campaign, program, as you cite will benefit white people front and center unless deconstructed, led by BIPOC, and committed to north star values.
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” At what point do we realize that all movements are really the SAME movement? The more intersections a person has, the more likely they are to already know this.” As you point out, separating the movements is an act of protection and self-preservation on the point of the people who are more privileged in the movement. It’s essentially an act of fear, of losing the privilege that they have (even when not privileged in a specific area). We need to find ways to continue to move past the fear.
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I grew up in an overtly homophobic community where the racism was more covert so the look at the liberation timelines initially caught me offguard. Has me thinking that queer liberation has moved faster because white people are queer too so the privilege of whiteness was leveraged off the labor of a bipoc-inspired movement. That same whiteness is not being leveraged in the Black liberation movement. It needs to be. I am here to learn and practice and move into the world to do so.
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Can you tell me more about what you mean when you say that whiteness need to be leveraged in the Black liberation movement?
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This may sound like a cop out, but it depends. We white folk must be following BIPOC leadership and what we are asked to do varies from space to space. There is no monolithic answer other than to engage fully in whatever way we are directed to engage. In LoR, we are asked to engage with our full selves: our time, finances, and social capital. To leverage my power and privilege in sharing LoR content and bringing the ethos outside while pointing back to from whom I learned. To leverage my power and privilege to taking the internal work to the external.
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Christin, I agree that there needs to be more white leverage in the movements for Black liberation and standing with BIPOC. You do make a good point that the Pride movement and similar initiations in other marginalized communities, has moved much faster because of the predominant, front-and-center presence of white people. I think that has to be examined, hard. Especially because the white people who are dominating those spaces do not acknowledge where their liberation playbook came from.
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There’s definitely co-opting of work and movements and whiteness forcing itself over/on top. My whiteness does need to be leveraged but never in service of erasure. To amplify, not to take the mic away. To be interrogating to where my words and actions are pointing in any liberation/anti-racism work to ensure it’s not at me or at whiteness but always North Star centered.
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“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.”
This reminds me that drawing attention to feel-good parts of a movement, to the rainbow tchotchkes, is very much a strategy. And it works, if we let it distract us from asking those questions in the places I have the power and influence to ask them (so, everywhere I go as a white woman).
I’m noticing how Black women are so often invisible, even and especially from supposedly progressive places. We celebrate Pride Month and wax poetic about how far “we’ve” come while completely leaving out Black LGBTQ women from that celebration of progress. I’m reminded of Darnell Moore’s interview in the Relational Ethics series where he talks about the “edges of our love” that are revealed when we ignore the overlap between Black liberation and liberation related to other marginalized identities.
As Lace has said, Black women are ground zero for liberation. I’m working on retraining my brain to ask who is missing from the spaces I occupy, and making sure that Black LGBTQ women are the first people I look for and the first people whose safety I aim to ensure. I have a lot of work to do in learning about what safety means and then fighting for the answer.
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thank you for that reflection back to Darnell Moore’s “the edges of our love”. First I have to acknowledge that even if I don’t want to think there are edges to my love, there is, and secondly, the importance of knowing and acknowledging where they are, those choice points on the daily.
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At the heart of everything is race. And I am a white peer who easily forgets. Who has struggled to pivot to race.
I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking everyone had the same opportunity for my lived experience. The centering fog was always the lens I looked through. Holding power was front and center as was choosing to remain unaware or to look the other way. Oof.
“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.”
I’ve spent the last week in Tulsa honoring and remembering the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
History I was never taught in school or anywhere, for that matter.
It’s an interesting comparison when looking at 46 years and the right to marry and the 100 year centennial of a thriving Black Wall Street community being killed, decimated and burnt to the ground by a mob of white people.
There is still no justice or reparations or reconciliation for the victims and their families. It’s telling of the real issues that as Lace said are very much still extant.
Three people are still alive today that were there that horrifying Memorial Day in 1921, when everything was taken from them.
The lawsuit that was filed took 80 years to reach the Supreme Court and was dismissed because too much time had passed.
There are so many hard truths and facts with this atrocity at the hands of white people. So much covering up. So much holding power. So much centering fog and looking the other way.
100 years of knees on necks.
No significant or very much deserved progress and change from the white cohort of which I’m a part.
I’ve changed this past year thanks to this community and space. The fog has lifted, and I am working hard every day to uncenter. I will remember, North Star front and center. I will be involved, financially contribute and show up.
Pivoting to race is front of mind. I am present and continuing to work on my relentless reliability and how I stand with.
I’m excited to celebrate Pride month and our shared humanity; I will also not be distracted.
There is much work to be done. My walking continues with my rainbow beads.
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I, too spent most of my life thinking everyone had similar experiences. Being outraged and then not following it up was my m.o. Can’t look away any longer. I like the idea of walking with rainbow beads….
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The complete lack of acknowledgment, much less proper reconciliation or reparations has also got me thinking about the residential schools where Indigenous children were kidnapped into and in some cases, killed. Not to draw attention away from the experience of Black people, but recognize how deeply some of these tragedies still run today and aren’t really part of “history” at all. They’re still very much embedded in both individuals who are still living, the multi-generational trauma, and the systems that both made them possible and are still carrying on in various ways today.
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I don’t know if I wasn’t in stores in previous years around this time – I know I wasn’t in stores at this time of year last year – but the number of stores with large prominent Pride gear displays seems to be at a level I’ve never seen before. I see them and I feel the dopamine thinking about how there were never displays when I was a kid and my own queer child gets to grow up in a world where these things are not hidden at least for part of the year. My curiosity is piqued and I browse and quickly see that it’s all been churned out quickly with little art put into the design and almost definitely produced by exploited Black and brown labor overseas. That makes it easy to not give in to an impulse buy that looks like it supports pride and actually supports corporations that harm Black and brown queer people. If the corporation hit on a design that actually made my heart sing, would I so easily say no and wait for opportunities to buy from Black and brown queer artists whenever I happen to find their product, even if it’s not in May or June? It would be hard, but being relentlessly reliable isn’t just saying no when I don’t really want it anyway. It’s also saying no when I really want it despite the harm it causes.
It would also be easy to frame my queer child as the ubervictim, choosing to see their identifiers as making them the a person experiencing the most discrimination, a move similar to white feminism. But the truth is they experience very little discrimination largely because they are white. And they benefit greatly from the work of queer liberation. Instead of focusing on them as a victim and on white queer liberation, we learn the history of the Black and brown women who came before in the movement, doing the heavy lifting, and those of today as well. Our family’s participation with our local resource center does involve getting the support our family needs, but also on service, on giving back to the center and giving support to the community in whatever ways we can think of to do so and in whatever ways we are asked to. We get an unfair share of benefits from being white. We have a pretty good safety net protecting us so that when we take risks, we are never risking as much as Marsha P Johnson risked to do the work that she did. We owe it to her to take risks and not leave them to those without safety nets to take. We must risk. We must serve. We must bring that history into focus when the corporations will not.
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How much of the profit of Pride gear goes to Pride organizations was on my radar but not the additional exploitation by corporations of Black and brown people when you said “That makes it easy to not give in to an impulse buy that looks like it supports pride and actually supports corporations that harm Black and brown queer people.”. So many ways that I might think I’m supporting Pride but am causing harm.
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so important to look for those still being harmed during/by our celebrations. There is joy that your child will grow up with more visual representations a vital reminder that that’s not what’s at the center for corporations when monetizing celebrations
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I hadn’t heard of Lady Marsha P. Johnson before which is part of her erasure or at least silence about her contribution to the Gay Liberation movement because she was Black. The fact that the Gay Liberation movement is happening quickly by using the same methods as the Black Liberation movement is perpetuation of racism and white supremacy within another marginalized group and by the public who are supporting one movement with concrete changes while doing nothing for the other movement. Digging deeper into the actual operation of corporations who claim to support either movement will no doubt reveal it’s superficial. Keeping the North Star of lessening harm to BIPOC by white people (including me) and white supremacy front and center no matter the conversation, movement, or celebration will continuously reveal both the incredible contributions and struggles of Black and brown people as racism is in everything. I can locate myself in wanting to celebrate and being distracted by shiny things while still working to lessen harm to BIPOC; I need to be able to do both things at once everyday.
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In February I was wondering if Marsha P Johnson would be one of the people we would study here for Black history month. Black history is more than February though and June is an excellent time to be introduced to her and to read more. I am challenging myself in LOR Black History Month style to learn more about her now. One thing I learned reading (beyond her friendship with Silvia Rivera and the P standing for Pay it No Mind as well as her founding STAR to support homeless gay and trans youth) was that her nickname was the Saint of Christopher Street (where the Stonewall Inn is located) because of her generosity to the NY LGBT community. I am thinking about how she was often unhoused and working in street level survival economies to survive and she was still such a strong activist for other people. I hadn’t read about how Marsha P Johnson died before. What we know about her death (1992) so closely mirrors what we till see happening to dozens of Black trans women every year although now these deaths are more likely to be determined to be murder. I didn’t know that she performed regularly with the Hot Peaches Review or that she was photographed by Andy Warhol.
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Good idea, Emily. I’m joining you in researching Lady Johnson in the LoR Black History Month style. I had initially researched her quickly but wasn’t seeing good information that was giving her the credit that is due so I gave up; that’s a reminder to me to stay in the car with people dead, alive, in the same room as me, or that I’ve never and will never meet.
I found most of the same info you summarized above but also found the following in a Washington Post article:
“But as the gay rights movement grew, some wanted people like Johnson and Rivera pushed out. Some gay and lesbian activists took the tack that they were no different from their straight peers, and thought that argument was harder to make if Johnson showed up in plastic heels and with fruit in her hair.”
So the Gay Liberation movement was twisting itself to include or at least only publicly include gay people that would be most palatable to straight people. That conditional support from straight people that says “we’ll support you IF you meet our standards and rules” happens everyday from white people to BIPOC where white people decide they can stop supporting as soon as there’s something they don’t like. I think it’s safe to say that racism was also involved when the gay activists were pushing Johnson out of the spotlight of the movement although she did most of the hard work to effect change.
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Sine I opened myself to the internal work necessary as opposed to just becoming a well read racist – I see again and again how wp will say we welcome you and mean on the condition that you are or become or at least present to others that you are like me. Anything that makes you stand out as “different” has to be changed, or at least hidden away, and then – you are welcome. I know now that I cannot just point the finger out at others, but to look inside. When have I said welcome – on my terms? Or even without saying it, made someone else feel that they are only welcome on my terms? I know I judge. I know that I have several areas where my instinctive, knee jerk reaction is one of judgement and of suspicion. I know that I am more comfortable about my gay friends who are not “flamboyantly” gay, for example. I know I am more comfortable around someone gay than around what society calls a cross dresser. I worked with a transfemale who didn’t easily “pass” as female. Initially – it took effort for me to behave normally around her. As I got to know her, it was easier and I was just normal around her – I didn’t have to try to be normal.I’m still working on it.
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I keep forgetting to click the notify button…
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Michelle, I believe your awareness is the first step. Without awareness (and discomfort), we have no chance at all of mitigating the harm we do to brown and black and LGBTQ+ people.
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As long as I continue to move beyond the awareness. It is a first step, but it cannot be the only step. Otherwise, I am back to being a well read racist, well read ally, well read fill in the blank. Continuing to walk to increase the awareness and to move beyond.
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To further help us all be better allies, just a note on word choice. Trans women like being referred to as trans women – or even just women, unless the trans part is necessary. (In this conversation, it would be.)
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Re reading things I realized I never thanked you for pointing out my incorrect words usage of trans female instead of trans woman. I use female and woman interchangeably and did not have the knowledge that trans female is incorrect. I have made note of it and changed my language in other settings. I did want to make sure to thank you for that knowledge.
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Wow – your research shouldn’t come as a surprise to me but like Michelle mentioned the last part – about changing yourself and “fitting in” was eye opening. We wp do that a lot. Follow the rules (that we made), stay within the lines (that we drew) and we will all play together. Thank you for the Washington Post wake up quotes.
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Like others have mentioned I hadn’t heard of Lady Johnson before and will do some more research. It is sad that it’s not surprising that I hadn’t heard about her. Like someone else mentioned I’m sure that queer liberation moved much faster because there were white people involved.
The marketing of causes is a tough one for me. Partially (or a big part) is because I work in marketing. I agree that we really need to make sure that corporations are walking the walk and not just cashing in on the cause of the day. I feel like this is another case where some research needs to be involved. Like the “good trouble” t-shirts. Where is the money going? Who benefits? I know, in the past, I haven’t been as diligent about where the money goes but Lace and LoR has helped me reevaluate those decisions and do some research. I’m going to keep walking.
Christin Spoolstra.
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