Written by:
Gala Oliver
In her book "Sister Outsider", Audre Lorde writes: "Being an open lesbian in the Black community is not easy, although being closeted is harder."
As a 35-year-old, middle-class, Black lesbian feminist, and a member of an interracial couple, I run the gamut between many worlds. I have experienced external racism, classism, sexism and homophobia, but I've found that oppression hurts a lot more when it comes from "one of your own."
I came out to myself when I was 11 years old. It was 1976, just two years after the American Psychiatric Association struck homosexuality off its list of mental disorders. People just didn't talk about homosexuality then. Unfortunately, in the Black community, we still don't.
And if it is ever discussed, it is often misnamed or mislabeled. I mean, even at 11 years of age, I had heard terms like "punk," "fag," "bulldagger," "he-she" and "lezzie," but "homosexuality" was reserved exclusively for crazy white people, because the majority of Black people mislabeled it as being a "white thang" — a product of the decadence of white culture.
So many of us who grew up in the Black community never hearing the term "homosexual" applied to us believed that it had to be a white thing and if we were to embrace homosexuality it would mean that we were truly crazy for adopting "the white man's sickness" from our oppressors.
One of the reasons Black lesbians and gays are ignored or discounted is that our presence threatens the Black family model, which is still rooted in the Black matriarchy myth.
The myth basically says that Black women not only dominate the Black family, but are in cohoots with the white power structure to disempower Black men.
Many Black men still use this myth to assert that the Black male should be reinstated into his "rightful" role as head of the Black family; of course, that means that the Black woman's role is reduced solely to supporting her man, often at the expense of her own self-definition. From a Black nationalist point of view, anything that isn't in line with this male-dominant/female-subordinate model is considered to be anti-Black family.
As a woman-identified Black woman who doesn't depend on men for my self-definition, I am amazed by how my Black sisters who are invested in relationships with abusive Black men and Black men who openly cheat on them will "dis" and reject their lesbian sisters, yet defend their man and his infidelity in order to say, "At least I got a man!"
I grew up in and now live in what is considered to be "The Bible Belt," and for as long as I can remember, the church and Black family values have always been intrinsically linked. The church helped to ensure that I was granted basic human rights as an African American, but fell far short of extending those liberties to me as a woman and a lesbian.
In fact, the church has contributed to Black homophobia in that it also uses biblical teachings to mislabel and misname homosexuality. I mean, how many times have we been told that "It's an abomination before God!" "It's the worst kind of sin, and you're going to go to hell for it!"?
"It's tough enough being female and Black. Why would you want to be a lesbian on top of everything else?" Until recently, I would have avoided this question at any cost, for fear of being ostracized by my Black sisters and brothers. But now, out of my desire to be a whole person who recognizes and embraces all aspects of myself, I would answer from a place of self-acceptance rather than social shame. I would answer, "Being an open lesbian in the Black community is not easy, but being closeted is a lot harder."
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