Happy Black-Ass Pride 🏳️🌈
Welcome to the 42nd installment of This Black-Ass Life! This week we’re shining on a light on dope, Black-ass LGBTQ+ icons. Living at the intersection of Blackness and queerness is not easy – from the very obvious "No Blacks, Fems, or F*ggots” signs that existed at some gay clubs just a few years ago to the existing anti-Black structures in places where people socialize, date or just want to exist in community. Today, we give some extra love to Black queer and trans heroes who thrived and are thriving despite it all.
Don’t forget: We've managed to grow this list thanks to y'all forwarding to friends so please keep it up! Forward this link to subscribe to five friends. And send us topics you'd like to see covered, texts from your Black-ass people, and any Black-ass anything from around the world and web.
l. The Facts
We need to celebrate Black queer folks. Here’s a tiny fraction of Black LGBTQ+ heroes who have shaped our history.
Shouts to Barbara Smith, a black feminist, lesbian, BFF to Audre Lorde, and co-founder of the Combahee River Collective, an organization credited with developing and shaping our earliest definitions of intersectionality.
The GRAND DAME, Billie Holiday, was openly bisexual. The formerly incarcerated songbird gave us a discography that reshaped the American musical landscape.
A toast to Billie’s contemporary and the first Black international superstar, Josephine Baker, who also lived her life OUT loud. Read this story about how she and Frida Kahlo probably, most likely, definitely got it in. FUUUUUEEEGO!
Bayard Rustin, my (Jumoke) all-time favorite civil rights hero orchestrated the March on Washington. Did you all know he was BFF with Thurgood Marshall? I love historical friendships.
Alvin Ailey, world-renowned choreographer and dancer, was one of the gay men we lost during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s.
No list of heroes would be complete without Marsha P. Johnson. You wouldn’t know this by the centering of whiteness in the mainstream retelling of gay history, but there would be no modern LGBTQ+ movement without her.
From Stonewall to present-day, Miss Major helped spark trans rights movements.
Sidenote: her recent fundraising drive brings to attention the very specific issues aging LGBTQ+ people face, especially aging trans folks.
Don’t know if y’all know, but we are living in the age of a Black queer brilliance. Simply, we are contemporaries with greatness. Shouts to Lena Waithe, Crissle, Kid Fury, Jamal Lewis, Reina Gossett, Michael Twitty, Jenna Wortham, Billy Porter, Raquel Willis, Peppermint, Travon Free, Akwaeke Emezi, Wade Davis, Pepe Julian Onziema and on and on and on.
Why does it matter?
"The dirty little secret about the homosexual population is that White gay people are just as racist as White straight people.” - Author Keith Boykin
Black-ass people experience anti-Blackness globally, but it’s especially painful to experience racism in queer spaces that were specifically designated for people to feel welcomed as they are in a world.
A Chicago gay bar recently reversed its ban on rap music because it was perceived as anti-Black because that’s exactly what it was. This certainly isn’t the first gay bar or any other kind of bar to ban hip hop or enforce a dress code to avoid Black patrons.
Anti-Black, Asian and Hispanic racism got so bad on Grindr that the app launched a KindrGrindr campaign last fall – some say to educate on sexual racism others say to save face.
Find more stories re: sexual racism in this article about a man who threatened Grindr with an anti-discrimination class action lawsuit.
Black trans women experience horrific rates of violence and murder, and now Persimmon Putin wants to turn them away from shelters and take away their health care.
We ain’t free till we’re all free so if you’re straight & Black, hold up your LGBTQ+ siblings; and if you’re a non-Black, LGBTQ+ person, check anti-Blackness!
What can my Black ass do?
Learn from Black queer and trans people! Read: ‘It's OK to be ourselves’: Atlanta’s Black LGBTQ+ community in their own words. Watch Miss Major!
Here’s a twitter thread of Black LGBTQ+ people sharing how they want their communities to show up for them.
Follow these Poppin’ influencers.
Here are tips for how to be a better ally, including educating yourself, risking your own privilege and supporting effective policy solutions.
ll. Other Things
Hot girl summer is upon us. Don’t join a cult!
Meg Thee Stallion wants us to have a hot girl summer, but not too hot so go clean the ocean with her!
Pose returns this month and now they’re in the 90’s and I (Mitu) can’t contain my joy.
Look at this beautiful art piece honoring the dream of SF’s first black-owned gay bar.
I (Jumoke) feel exactly the same way, Lebron! I didn’t know it would make me so happy to know that LJ (that’s what I call him now that we are friends in my head) and I had something so essential to both our beings in common but here we are.
Summer travel is here! Check out this LGBTQ+-friendly alternative to Airbnb.
Per their site: “While misterb&b was founded by a gay man and does cater predominantly toward gay cisgender men, as of 2018 it’s open to hosts and guests of all genders and sexual orientations.”
Have y’all ever heard of the United Nation of Islam?! Nope, not Farrakhan and them, but an offshoot that is set on child labor and human trafficking. Saw this documentary a few days ago and I (Jumoke) am just astounded. Fuck cults.
Our Black-Ass song of the week (Mitu):
In honor of Pride and the fact that this woman celebrated herself and her birthday for at least two months: I’m Coming Out by Ms Diana Ross.
Things we are looking forward to / things we are not looking forward to:
I (Jumoke) look forward to Love, Take Two, a Hallmark Original Movies with Black people for their June Weddings series. I’m also going to watch the White people ones because I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m surviving Trump’s America with Hallmark movies, cheap wine, and frozen Trader Joe's Indian food. #selfcare
I (Mitu) do not look forward to people propping up Charlamagne tha God as a voice for the Black community. I don’t need to see any more 2020 candidates in that studio! Watch Desus & Mero roast Envy instead.
lll.Text from a Black-Ass Mama
“I don’t like this concept.”
Stay Black, thrive, celebrate who you are and light a candle for Binyavanga Wainaina (RIP). We’ll hit your inbox next on June 17.