#Crapitalism Panel Discussion

My girl KrisDeLaRash dropped her first mixtape, #Crapitalism. I was honored to be on the panel with such great voices/minds. The discussion took place at Rumble Arts' "Nights of Insight" in Chicago.

What's Your Occupation?

I occupy the space where the freedom of my identities exist
Where feminist, pro-Black, queer [etc.] shift
Each space I stand in
Reminds me of the saliency of my identities

An occupation in the norm is viewed as freedom
Free-dumb
Free-doom
Free-to(e)
Veto
What norms tend to do
Stop change instead of
Adopt range

We stay black and white
Ignoring shades of grey
But in the freedom of my identity
Is where I choose to stay

Grey represents ambiguity. Grey represents evolution. Grey represents a desire for context; an articulation of definition, all the while recognizing the presence of black and white.

I occupy the space where the freedom of my identities exists
Do you?

Our Families: LGBT African American Stories

Suppressing the Sissy

So grateful for all of the support I've received from this piece and to the Windy City Times for picking it up:

Suppressing the Sissy: My Complex Relationship with Gender

Beyonce 101

Two years ago, my undergraduate thesis centered around Lady Gaga and Beyonce's "Telephone" video. I remember talking with my peers and faculty advisors about how I would love to teach a course on Beyonce (once I was solid in the theories). Today, here we are! Beyonce 101 at Rutgers University. I just found my mo-jo #grinding

When My Brother Fell

Standing at the front lines

flanked by able brothers

who miss his eloquent courage,

his insistent voice

urging us to rebel,

urging us not to fear embracing

for more than sex,

for more than kisses

and notches in our belts.

--Essex Hemphill

Baby, Baby, Baby

Quote of the Day

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough." - Toni Morrison

Dear Mom & Dad: A Coming Out Story

Mom. Dad. I have something I need to tell you. For a while I've struggled with how I would break the news to you. After all, there are plenty of social taboos and myths surrounding what I'm about to say. But, after much deliberation, I don't think there is reason for me to be anything other than direct with you.
...I'm white.
Sure, you're probably a little confused. Perhaps you're wondering why I would want to talk about something so seemingly obvious especially given the paleness of my skin. However, we've never talked about what it actually means to be white. As a child, we'd talked about the difference between good and bad, the birds and the bees yet somehow, we had managed to overlook something as potent as whiteness.
Do you remember how weird the conversation about the birds and the bees was? I mean, the way you taught it to me left so much out of the conversation. Who would have ever guessed a bird could love a bird or a bee could love a bee? Yes, coming out as gay was difficult. I had to release the homophobia in my heart as well as the fear that you would peg me as one of the many hyper-sexualized, drug-addicted party boy stereotypes we're constantly fed through the media and homophobic institutions. The ones that fail to recognize the humanity of gay men and LGBTQ communities at large.
But coming out as white is different. My decision to come out today is rooted in a fear of something not given the same platform as gay rights today. We must consider those who are allowed to speak for mainstream gay rights. White, bourgeois, gays and lesbians. For me, coming out as gay and coming out as white aren't mutually exclusive acts as they are commonly thought of. I am a white gay man. While most of my other white gay brothers (and sisters) will dismiss their whiteness and focus solely on their oppressed identity (ies), I simply cannot remain silent on the potency of my whiteness anymore. I refuse to be a victim to my homosexuality while being a perpetrator of my whiteness.
Some of the reasons I felt the need to come out as gay were: 1) a desire to be honest and true about who I am (for myself) 2) to let people around me who may be struggling with their identity know it is okay to be transparent and honest about who they are 3) to end the silence and 4) to fight for change. Similarly, my decision to come out as white has similar meaning. One of the greatest privileges whiteness possesses in America is the inability to name itself. As white people, we don't have to name our racial identity unless we want to but all non-white persons should (in the eyes of the state). In the same way homophobia required my silence to function without interruption, so too does white supremacy.
As my parents, I hope you'll understand how important this decision is for me. I can't sit at the dinner table anymore and listen to you talk about "those people" in a demeaning manner that, yet again, re-inscribes whiteness as the center. I can't sit by as you talk about throwing people into jail for crimes they haven't even been proven guilty of; knowing the prison-industrial complex is disproportionately targeting people of color, queers, and queer people of color. I don't want to hear about the significance of "safety" in our community knowing that the state is surveillancing communities of color, even as you read this letter. Furthermore, I want us to stop the thing that white people have gotten so good at: whispering. Coming out as white is a declaration to live my politics publicly. Who better to begin my public declaration with then my family?
I can't sit back and watch you roll your eyes when the news finally brings up "Driving While Black" (despite its existence for decades) and it is dismissed as some mythical excuse people of color use to avoid taking responsibility. Absolutely not. If that's what you think, perhaps you would have liked to have been in the car when my friend was harassed by Chicago Police Department on the hood of his car, his vehicle searched and his spirit demeaned by their verbal assaults, all for running a red light. Even this scenario cannot capture the essence of white supremacy's destructive reign. It fails to acknowledge family life, educational disparities, interpersonal micro-aggressions and a seemingly never-ending list.
You see, I have to come out to you today. Coming out (as white) is me communicating I'm ready to take responsibility for whatever my identity means, to myself, to my communities and to society.
It means, I will be unapologetic in its meaning. I will not ignore the racist undertones of anyone close to me, including you two, simply because it's uncomfortable to discuss. Because guess what? So was talking about any of my relationships in the many heterosexist and/or hetero-normative spaces I existed within, the last family party for example. It means, I will discuss my whiteness aggressively in the presence of other white folks and be conscious of how it is operating as often as possible. To forget or willingly walk away from it is an exercise in its very privilege. It means I will admit when I've done or said something racist. Just because I am conscious of my whiteness does not excuse me from the impact of my identity.
Some people say coming out as gay creates the potential for a space someone else can feel a little safer in. If that's true, I hope my coming out as white will encourage other folks to come out as well. My coming out acknowledges the importance of decolonizing our minds of white supremacy. However, it cannot stop there because white supremacy functions on micro and macro levels. Just because I, as an individual, may be conscious of the relationship I have to whiteness and white supremacy, it does not mean the institutions that run our country (a country predicated on white supremacy) stop functioning. You've seen the pictures of those "forefathers", haven't you? The architects of our governmental structure? White as the snow that's beginning to fall this brisk December. And they wore wigs, but we'll talk about ol' George, Tom and Ben as drag queens another time.
So I hope you'll support my decision to come out. I hope your support comes with the openness and sensitivity to learn something that may be foreign to you, or all too familiar. I hope you'll stop and think before asking me if I'm suffering from internalized self-hatred because I acknowledge the reality and impact of white supremacy. Again, my identities do not exist in vacuums separate from one another. Being queer does not negate my white privilege. I love myself too much to sit back and watch as a system affords me privileges and rights that are not mine. Privileges and rights that come at the expense of others because no, I did not "earn" or "work hard" for them. My whiteness stole them. I also hope you'll make the decision to come out.
If you walk away from this letter with nothing other than an eye roll or dismissive sentiment, please remember: a failure to acknowledge your white privilege is your own implicit confession to your belief in white supremacy.
Love Always,
Johnny

Good Morning Revolution

Good morning Revolution:
You are the best friend
I ever had.
We gonna pal around together from now on.
Say, listen, Revolution:
You know the boss where I used to work,
The guy that gimme the air to cut expenses,
He wrote a long letter to the papers about you:
Said you was a trouble maker, a alien-enemy,
In other words a son-of-a-bitch.
He called up the police
And told’em to watch out for a guy
Named Revolution

You see,
The boss knows you are my friend.
He sees us hanging out together
He knows we’re hungry and ragged,
And ain’t got a damn thing in this world –
And are gonna to do something about it.

The boss got all his needs, certainly,
Eats swell,
Owns a lotta houses,
Goes vacationin’,
Breaks strikes,
Runs politics, bribes police
Pays off congress
And struts all over earth –

But me, I ain’t never had enough to eat.
Me, I ain’t never been warm in winter.
Me, I ain’t never known security –
All my life, been livin’ hand to mouth
Hand to mouth.

Listen, Revolution,
We’re buddies, see –
Together,
We can take everything:
Factories, arsenals, houses, ships,
Railroads, forests, fields, orchards,
Bus lines, telegraphs, radios,
(Jesus! Raise hell with radios!)
Steel mills, coal mines, oil wells, gas,
All the tools of production.
(Great day in the morning!)
Everything –
And turn’em over to the people who work.
Rule and run’em for us people who work.

Boy! Them radios!
Broadcasting that very first morning to USSR:
Another member of the International Soviet’s done come
Greetings to the Socialist Soviet Republics
Hey you rising workers everywhere greetings –
And we’ll sign it: Germany
Sign it: China
Sign it: Africa
Sign it: Italy
Sign it: America
Sign it with my one name: Worker
On that day when no one will be hungry, cold oppressed,
Anywhere in the world again.

That’s our job!

I been starvin’ too long
Ain’t you?

Let’s go, Revolution!

-Langston Hughes, 1932

First Love

Let It Flow: Reflections of My One-Time Hairstylist

I know I am not the only gay man who finds the thought of using a new, unfamiliar hair-stylist frightening. After all, the way someone "whips your buttah" can make or break your look. But this is not a style editorial. Though, that fear was certainly the sentiment I experienced when I was forced to venture off into the land of "my-regular-stylist-is-unavailable-and-my-rat's-nest-is-out-of-control."

Chicago's Boystown neighborhood has a couple of salon's scattered across the Halsted strip. Prior to this particular salon's television cameo, I stopped in with my then-boyfriend (let's call him: Edward) to get cleaned up for an event I was attending the following weekend. As I prepared to sit down with this very attractive stylist (let's call him: Derek), Edward decided to take care of some errands.

Poised in my seat, we began one of, what many might consider ritual, gab sessions that take place frequently in so many salon chairs across America. After a series of surface level conversations, Derek began to tell me about his experiences with race in Boystown. In his defense, I had probably alluded to some racial component of Boystown or what have you, so it may not have been completely random. Honestly, I do not remember but my friends can vouch for the fact it would not be farfetched.

After sharing his experiences, it was his next statement that really threw me for a loop. Derek stopped the comb in a sweep of my hair, looked at me through the mirror, and said: "It makes me so happy to see you and your boyfriend together. It gives me hope that there are interracial couples in Boystown."

Over two years later, I am finally beginning to have the vocabulary to express why my heart sunk in that moment. Looking back, I wish I could have asked this beautiful bi-racial man why he had such a difficult time dating; that is, until I remembered it was Boystown. Racism, and racial tensions, in Boystown is not a new concept, well, unless you're blinded by your privilege. I wish I could have asked Derek why he needed hope to believe in interracial couplings. As a bi-racial man, all of his relationships will inherently be interracial. Furthermore, interracial relationships are privileged when one of the individuals is (perceived as) white. There are so many questions I wish I could have asked this man.

However, what resonates most with me is not what I could have learned from him or make attempts to psychoanalyze him. Instead, I wish I could have shared my story with him. I wish I could have told him about the psychological and emotional abuse Edward had been subjecting me to; abuse that I was too weak and insecure to walk away from. You see, Edward had all of these ideas about what our relationship was supposed to look like. Some of his ideas were, in fact, racialized. In the same way, he expected me to be submissive because of my age, he had probably consumed many of the racialized images that assert white/Black relationships as being solely about power and domination. Thus, my age and race made me the perfect candidate to submit to him (in his mind). Needless to say, he must not know 'bout me.

I should have told Derek about Edward's drinking problem or the abusive language he used towards me. I should have told him about the time Edward called me fat after he packed on some l-b's, in yet another projection of his own baggage and insecurities. But I didn't. Instead, I let Derek believe whatever romanticized ideas he had about our relationship. Not only because it was comforting for him, but it was also comforting for me. It allowed me to get lost in images rather than live in the reality that I was in an unhealthy relationship.

How many of us are walking around clinging to relationships with people because of how we imagine people and/or relationships to be? How many of us are glamorizing other people's relationships and putting them under some idealistic lens that paints their relationship as one without problems? Two years later Derek's comments remind me that we should never become too concrete in our perceptions for we may never understand what's happening on the other side of the coin.

I wish I could've remembered Derek for a spectacular haircut but such was not the case. Instead, he offered me some life lessons. When it comes to confronting our past and our pain, don't be afraid to let it flow...just like my bangs.

"He's Gay, Unfortunately": Microaggressions & "Gay Best Friends"

As with many marginalized communities, it astounds me that one of the connectors of gay men in America is the heterosexism we experience from those [supposedly] closest to us. It seems ironic to me that oppression has the potential to unite us. Yet, the conversations we have with our "best friends", or other loved ones, highlights an astounding number of gay and/or queer men who've listened or stood by as these very people relay charged statements. We've sat by and been shot by the heterosexist bullets of our peers.

By no means do I attempt to universalize some "gay male experience" for it would be damn near impossible. The complexities of sexuality are far too often overlooked nor are they unpacked. In the same way some gay or queer men share cultural ties, we share differences that many of our heterosexual peers wish to overlook. Perhaps it is because it makes them uncomfortable to have to remove us from the safety of the boxes they've packed us into.

However, in my conversations with other gay/queer men in America, the microaggressions we encounter with our family and friends seems to unite some of us. How many of us have heard from our girlfriends (heterosexual, cis-gendered gal pals): "I saw this sexy man at [insert whatever location] the other day. Too bad he's gay." Or what about, "Well, you know what I mean about the gay 'thing.'" And if I hear the word "lifestyle" one more time, I very well may scream. In the same way, we live "lifestyles," heterosexuals do too.

I can remember a time in my life where I would tell my aunts, my cousins, my closest friends, that "if I could be straight, I would. Imagine how much easier my life might be." I might never have to worry about being called a "faggot" or being laughed at for holding my lovers hand on the street, for sneaking in a kiss. But the reality is, it is not only gay men who are called "faggot" and even if I were heterosexual, people would still watch my relationships intently because so many people walk around here miserable. We all know misery loves company.

While I could say I look back on that period of my life with disappointment or shock, it's hard for me to be disappointed in myself for internalizing the heterosexist logic I was indoctrinated into. Since birth, I had been bombarded by heterosexual imagery. My family, the television, everywhere I looked society affirmed heterosexuality. And if it wasn't denigrating non-heterosexuality, it had silenced it so that I couldn't see it. So that I may potentially never know or be accepting of anything other than a heterosexual paradigm.

Well, my paradigm has shifted. I will no longer accept feeling silenced when the people in my life pass their judgmental comments my way; comments that implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) suggest someone might be "better" or "more valuable" if they were heterosexual.

We are not solely your interior designers, your hair stylists, your make-up artists, or silent ears to listen to your bullshit. We are full human beings that command our humanity. Yes, some of us will feed into some "stereotype" the media has forced down our throats but that doesn't excuse your behavior. Some of us enjoy these roles. I've watched as some gay and queer men run from the things they love because they didn't want to be looked at as some stereotype by people.

I don't know if there is a "Sex and the City" syndrome affecting heterosexual women everywhere, but gay men are not your accessories. We are not the background to your foreground. We are not here to listen to your relationship stories, your sex life, your drama and then when it comes time to share our stories, you can't be bothered. Or you redirect the conversation to your life. While the rest of society may suggest the world revolves around you, I'm not having it anymore.

I'm going to talk about my relationships. I'm going to hold my lovers hand as I walk down the street. I'm going to talk about my sex life and not fear that you will ONLY see me as some hypersexualized creature because I am so much more than that. I'm going to hold you accountable to the heterosexist things you say to me that suggest that heterosexuality is better than all other sexualities despite all evidence to the contrary. Heterosexism IS homophobic.

I look back at my former self and I'm so happy he can see me now. I'm so happy he can see me PROUD to be an openly gay man in a society that would rather see him dead. Even if you don't recognize me, I'm still here...

[Un]Hide Your Beauty

Here
In the quiet confinements of you and I
We share tales of pain and glory
You bare your soul in a way few can
Communicating vulnerability
Sharing your story

There is NOTHING more beautiful than vulnerability

It is our vehicle
Our connection
Our destination
Your soul and mine
Intertwine

Beautiful

When no one else
Can find your home
Rest assured
My soul is your garage
Attached
Home to that vehicle of vulnerability

Inspirational
It reminds me
We can lock it away
Or open it freely

Our soul can only be stolen
If we leave the keys behind

Like X, I want to know
Who taught you to hate yourself?
So I can ask Y
Because your infinite beauty astounds me

There is nothing more U
Than vulnerability

Birthed in environments
Fed self-deprecating images
How are we all hungry?
But not for those

We lust for meaning
Starved for connection
My stomach growls
Longing for the sensitivity in your eyes
The fear in your voice
Yet trust in your prose
As you share the pieces of yourself you thought you left behind
The first time "they" broke your heart

Only the first will never be the last
And as humans grow
I hope you know
You must forgive your past

I whisper in your ear
It will all be alright
Hoping
I didn't just lie to you

While evils may reside in homes of love
You hold the keys
Unlock your heart
Free your beauty
Unhide it
To share your vulnerability

Because despite whatever they may say

Your freedom sleeps
Here

Everything But The Burden

This book just got bumped up in my reading wishlist.