Why do some of my favorite Pan Afrikan thinkers and black political scientists have to be such big homophobes?! As a transgender and queer black intellectual I don’t want to have to focus my work on black queer studies just cause most Pan Afrikan thinkers or black political scientists equate being gay and or trans with white supremacy. Where is the space for me in the Pan Afrikan discourse?
I appreciate those working hard in queer studies but that ain’t me. My transness my queerness is apart not the some total of me. Race first culture trumps all. Culture has layers. Queerness is a layer of my blackness. It gets frustrating to hear people who’s social political thoughts build and inspire one moment and condemn and cast me away the next. I’m starting to get tired of second guessing my usefulness in the movement because I am not hetero-normative. I will not retreat to a gay ghetto or LGBT land with affirming queers who have found false refuge amongst white LGBT people because black people’s homophobia beat them down so. Nor will I exotify the homophobia is the black community and make it out to be more lethal than any other’s group’s bigotry.
The issues I want my work to engage are too big for the LGBT box or any other box for that matter. I refuse to hide any part of me or pimp my identity to thrive in this world. I’m just as Afrikan as any other black person. Our black queer and transgender bodies are just as Afrikan as yours. Have you ever stopped to think maybe you got your homo and transphobia from the colonizer? Have you ever contemplated the power of the pansexual, multi gendered energy within me and the role the same gender loving, androgynous, and gender bending people (who were often amazing creative forces, healers, care takers, and shamans) played throughout various Afrikan cultures over time. The war on our people is to real for us to find ways to push each other away over petty differences. Pan Afrikan homophobes sit down.
Dirty Art Boi 