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Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:
Having gone to Morehouse's (unofficial) sister school I feel compelled to comment on this Vibe Mean Girls article and subsequent fallout. In fact it feels kind of good to once again put this "audacity of parenting" thing on the back burner. Y'all ain't ready :)
If you haven't heard, Vibe acknowledged the fact that there are queer black folks in the world (more than CNN could do), let alone at the elite single sex HBCU, Morehouse College. The article profiles queer students who actively blur the binary line of gender and look damn good doing it. They wear their fierce so loud, proud and unapologetically they were dubbed "the plastics" by an ostensibly straight Morehouse brother of theirs.
The article title, while again evocative of a favorite literary device of mine, is sensational. It conflates the appropriated "plastics" moniker to girl identity which none of the students interviewed do themselves. They articulate a reveling in androgyny and gender bending that makes a lot of "straight" dudes uncomfortable, even administrators, hence the infamous dress code barring students from wearing women's clothing (Read my thoughts on the dress code here). One student is interviewed while shopping in a women's boutique in Atlanta and a store employee makes her shock regarding his attire known, providing a little more drama for an article already doing a lot by acknowledging the realities for these students. What we don't learn is how they are treated in the classroom or how daily jabs impact their ability to concentrate on their school work. A lot of them leave. Despite President Franklin's claim of a Morehouse that accepts all identities, students that too obviously flout gender conventions have a nearly impossible time of making it on campus.
Looking at the comments section made me swear off them for good as it was filled with the most hateful language and threats. I attended school when Gregory Love was attacked in the shower with a baseball bat for supposedly looking at another student. My then ally identified self went 30 deep with other feminist and queer sisters and brothers to a panel at Morehouse that disintegrated into violence when folks tried to discuss the issue. This reaction is not unique to black people but the costs of homophobia in groups that are multiply marginalized are so much higher. If we can't be at institutions that are on some level supposed to be for us, where do we go?
Morehouse may tout itself as a single sex institution but it is not a single gender one, as much as it may want to be. If female-assigned-at-birth students in the AUC can take classes there, hang out there, spend the night there (covertly :) ) etc. why can't male-assigned-at-birth students do the same in the same heels and make up? If any group should understand the fallacies of looking a certain way to be treated humanely its black people. And ye, black folks are determined to traffic in a politics of respectability that does little but make some of us tokens for a power structure that not all of us can access. People wonder why King's beloved community has given way as we increasingly limit the criteria for admittance. If the people who decide who has access are middle class, straight, Christian, black folks, that leaves a lot of people out in the cold.
That said, I get the nihilism and "do you" mentality of so many black folks excluded from "proper" blackness. When you know that people think and treat you as though you are less than human why continually try to convince them otherwise? Why not just go for self?
The cycles of violence created in the name of "uplift" never cease to amaze me. If we truly want a different world it's going to take seeing people for who they are not what you want them to be. Morehouse has a unique opportunity to engage students around questions of blackness and gender identity, to craft new black men and more, poised to create a better reality for many communities. We can't afford to hold on to antiquated notions of gender and blackness. The future is fierce.
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1 comment:
As a femme black queer man, im happy to see how good these boys look. Its the issues that people have within themselves that causes them to throw negative energy back at those that are happy and comfortable with themselves. Keep looking fresh boys!
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