Black People! To Love Black Queer and Trans Folxs You Must Reckon with the Intimacy of the Violence you Commit
Content Warning: Full transparency, this piece centers Black cisgender heterosexual folks which means as a Black fat queer person I hope you all decide to tip. And for my Black queer and trans family make sure to click on all the links in this piece for a little joy. Additionally, this piece hits on both violence and trauma — Give yourself grace as you reckon, and hold yourself accountable.
Black folks love to scream from mountain tops that we love Black people. You can buy t-shirts, headbands, tote bags, hats, and jackets that speaks your love of Black people. Your favorite artist might profess Black Lives Matter at a concert or during an award show acceptance speech. However, it’s trendy to love Black people, but not all Black folxs.
Loving Black queer and trans folxs ain’t easy. It takes courage and energy — unlearning what we’ve been taught about the human experience, thinking deeply on who taught us about the human experience, and boldness to radically decenter ourselves as we learn more about the human experience. For there to be any radical growth within the Black community, we must reckon with the ways white supremacy has shaped our traditions and fears, specifically in regards to how we treat one another around gender and sexual orientation.
I hope this piece allows cisgender heterosexual Black folks to dig deep and have the transformational conversations Black queer and trans folks need them to have. A conversation that not only hold us in our fullness, but one that implicates the intentions and delusions of our oppressors who are also our mothers, fathers, guardians, siblings, and friends.
Radically, sit with these three questions:
Who are the most vulnerable Black folxs within our community? And what is your relationship to them?
Have you had critical conversations around class, homophobia, transphobia, the plight of Black women, etc? Did you practice not making it about you?
What are you willing to risk to improve the lives of the very folks you say you love?
In a time when we’re having more direct conversations with Black parents and guardians around queer and transantagonism, we are reminded that there is a lot of work to be done within our community. We move as if care and words equate to action — holding love, healing, and accountability as merely theory. We don’t talk about how we express this love within our most intimate relationships.
Recently, Dwayne Wade did an interview with Ellen around parenting a Black trans child — it was beautiful and radical in spirit. I’m not saying Dwayne and Gabrielle deserve cookies for humanizing their very own child, however, we must admit that they have a chance to be possibility models for all (cis-heterosexual) Black parents. My favorite statement in the interview is Dwayne telling Zaya “you are our leader” which are such powerful words spoken. Dwayne did not say teach us what this all means or tell us what to do. Dwayne and Gabrielle said be our leader and we’ll do our part to catch up, as they consulted the cast of Pose for what I know to be great advice (hoping they were paid for their labor).
Instead of leaning on the violence of tradition, explore the many other ways of being, living, and loving that leaves us all full and thriving. Embrace Black queer and trans people in your lives with all the love you can muster. Love us in action.
Below I reference a story from my childhood in hopes of making this conversation a bit more intimate. It is nearly impossible for Black queer and trans folxs to tell our stories without acknowledging the violence we experience, without re-traumatizing ourselves, without compromising our politic, without implicating the dearest people in our lives, in addition to, not getting paid for our labor. The violence is intimate, and amends must be made in a similar fashion. I hope this story helps us reckon with the ways we shame and dehumanize the Black queer and trans folxs in our lives. I hope this story is not only looked at as an exploitation of my pain, but a sacrifice, yet again, for my Black siblings who often fall short.
Story time-
I was 8 years old when that rock hit me squarely in my two front teeth, chipping one tooth as it made impact. I fell to the ground, not in disbelief that this just happened to me, but in an attempt to retrieve the chipped off piece of tooth. I thought I could possibly glue it back on before my mother returned home from her day job.
I knew I would never utter the truth of what happened that afternoon to my mother; I knew I would be blamed for it. I would tell her I tripped and fell on my face on the way home from school; I would tell her my friend accidentally elbowed me in the mouth in PE class; I would tell her I bit into a whole shelled pecan and the tooth just popped off. I would lean on my creativity, like many Black queer kids, and tell her a lie — anything other than the truth. I didn’t want my Black mother to have another problem to solve. I didn’t want her to go to my school and complain about the other students and make the situation worse. I didn’t want my queerness to be known or made a problem.
I remember fumbling in the grass while Gabriel, a poor Mexican boy who lived in my apartment complex, yelled nigger faggot from afar. I watched as he ran to catch up with his laughing friends. Honestly, I was just glad that it was over, even if just for that moment. It never occurred to me to fight or hurl words back at them, instead, I stayed silent. And I would be silent throughout my teens and early to mid-twenties.
Days later, still feeling down from the chipped tooth trauma, I remember taking a nap with my oldest brother. It always made me feel better when we laid together playing thumb wrestling. This day he left the room for some reason and didn’t come back right away — I can’t remember why exactly. I got up to go looking for him and once I found him, I asked him to come back to bed with me. I remember the look he gave me (and the words that followed). He seemed overwhelmed by me, as if the thought of me being needy and effeminate disgusted him.
“Stop acting like a little girl — you’re a little boy. Toughen up, Snig (my nickname)”
From that moment on, I knew family would never be a place that I could retreat to for safety. This little husky queer effeminate Black boy would never be prioritized in their fullness. I would either fall deep into isolation or begin to create my very own family and ways of living.
I wouldn’t have access to fixing that tooth until my second year in my first professional position at the age of 25.
Implications of Story time-
Storytelling, routine reflection, and radical reckoning with the truth are powerful tools of resistance. Moreover, these tool allow us to implicate ourselves in the mess — recognizing the ways we place our normative identities and values in the center. Here are a few implications of the above story:
Black Queer and trans folks are consistently expected to sacrifice happiness, safety, and our dreams to be in relationship with cisgender heterosexual family members and friends.
Family does not equate to safety or understanding.
Shame is a powerful tool the system uses to silence the most vulnerable folks within our community.
It’s not enough for Black queer and trans folxs to be alive — we are entitled to being prioritized and celebrated.
Poverty is attached to so many emotions, moments, and traumas
I was only 8 years old. 8 YEARS OLD. Think of the impact on Black queer and trans children navigating other children, institutions, and their very own families.
Pay attention to the subtle (and overt) ways Black cisgender heterosexual people refuse to empathize with our pain, often derailing conversations to a more comfortable place.
Anti-Blackness is everywhere — and internalized anti-Blackness is in play when Black folx deny and erase the queer and trans folxs within
<insert your own lessons>
Bio:
Cody Charles is the author of ’RuPaul’s Drag Race’: On BeBe Zahara Benet And Pushing Back Against The Anti-Black Sentiment In Drag, 6 Scenes from ‘Moonlight’ That I Still Dream About, College Advice for Students of Marginalized Identities, The Vixen Is The Queen We Deserve, Radical Friendship Contract: 10 Expectations for Loving People Fully, 10 Common Things Well-Intentioned Allies Do That Are Actually Counterproductive, Black Joy, We Deserve It, and What Growing Up Black And Poor Taught Me About Resiliency. Join them for more conversation on Twitter (@_codykeith_) and Facebook (Follow Cody Charles). Please visit their blog, Reclaiming Anger, to learn more about him.
