Everything Under Heaven: A Lesson in Palatability & Raceblind Queerness in America

“[...] to become truly human and acceptable, [they] must first become like us [white]. This assumption once accepted, the Negro in America can only acquiesce in the obliteration of his own personality.”

Everybody’s Protest Novel, James Baldwin

While many activists associated with the Civil Rights Movement, such as Baldwin or Rustin, were prominent figures in the queer community, the Queer Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Movement have, for all intents and purposes, been depicted as disparate causes aligning with distinct interests. It is a portrayal that makes sense at first glance- not intersectional, but parallel crusades. 

 This is perhaps affirmed by the many queer commentators who have drawn tone-deaf parallels to the Civil Rights Movement, claiming the fight for LGBT rights to be “colourblind”- or, as The Advocate put it, “Gay is the new black!” And the Civil Rights Movement did not consider queer rights to be an “appropriate” force, many summarily rejecting all association. Yet both share the same striking consensus for the people whose cause they championed: one must adopt the values of the ideal all-American citizen to expedite the process of gaining citizenship. When you become “boring” and “like everyone else,” you gain acceptance —regardless of the loss.  Conforming to the theatre of white heteronormativity was required, and one must perform.

Thus, behaviours not considered “conventional” but often associated with the cultural identity of both groups were scrubbed away to satisfy the requirements of the mainstream. This meant that queer African-Americans were often left unmoored in both movements: too divisive for civil rights, and too Black for queerness. This, of course, did not impact their huge contributions to both movements, but the lack of a safe harbour reverberated through the decades in their stories. 

The exclusionary patterns of the U.S. Queer Movement became more evident as it gained traction. It increasingly operated under the rhetoric of colourblindness, that the fight against racial inequality has been, if not won, then resolved. It posits that sexuality is analogous to race and racial inequity, and even that the struggle for queer liberation has “replaced” the Civil Rights Movement as the next great cause. With the focus on heteronormativity and the inclusion of queer people in the “mainstream”, a system that is the greatest threat to Black lives (palatable or not), the divide within the marginalised groups becomes more and more evident. This is the phenomenon termed “homonormativity”, where queer movements ask people to focus on becoming “good citizens” by conforming, leading to a kind of queer politics that does not contest heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them via reaffirming one of the “normal” axes- whiteness. Thus, white, middle-class, gay men become the poster children of the struggle and racialised queer people are sidelined. No wonder, to this day, people of colour struggle to place themselves in the movement. It is still, for better and for worse, a continuation of the tradition that sidelined them.

On the other hand, the civil rights movement was often mired in respectability politics to combat racist stereotypes. The idea of the nuclear family-strong father, devout mother and good children- was promoted. In this framework, queerness could gain no foothold. Rather, it was considered a deviant force which undermined the African-American people and reaffirmed their “backwardness”. Discourse tends to centre cisgender, straight people and treats queerness as something other, something that is not integral to the community. This becomes even more disheartening when this regressive shift is compared to the earlier attitudes of Black communities. The blue-collar working class was much more accepting of “deviants”, even celebrating them. This is evidenced in the leading role gay and bisexual creatives played in the Harlem Renaissance- Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Bruce Nugent, and many more.

The shift was driven by middle-class African-Americans, especially in the 1950s. For instance, Bayard Rustin, one of the pioneers of non-violent demonstrations and deeply influential in shaping Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy, was never allowed to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, despite his innumerable contributions to the struggle. As MLK put it, “I think he [Rustin] controls himself pretty well until he gets to drinking, and he would approach these students and they started talking with people about it, and there was something of a reflection on me, so that was really the main problem”. From his own writings, King was never a proponent of hostility towards the queer community, but he felt that integration could never happen without the formation of a unified Black heteronormative identity. The quiet tragedy of men like Rustin, who bled for their cause, was symbolic of the divergence of the Civil Rights Movement from the queer struggle.

Thus, the interplay of the above factors disenfranchises queer people of colour from movements which were ostensibly for them- further marginalising an already voiceless community.

“Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?”

Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

Queer movements around the world would never have had the impact they do if not for the presence of African-American queer activists. Whether in Baldwin’s poignant words, articulating the grief and artless rage of a gay Black man, in Rustin and his revolutionary work, even as he was held at arm’s length- a different kind of untouchability- or in every single activist who marched for Civil Rights, and then carried the torch forward for the sake of their queer brethren. The world, in these moments, was a brighter, more colourful place. Perhaps, as I write about them now, the sunlight will fall more warmly on us tomorrow.

Bibliography

Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Penguin Classics, 2017

D’Emilio, John. Lost Prophet: The Life & Times of Bayard Rustin. University of Chicago Press, 2004. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo3644370.html.

Duggan, Lisa. “The New Homonormativity.” Duke University Press eBooks, 2002, pp. 175–94. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822383901-007.

Kiesling, Elena. “The Missing Colors of the Rainbow: Black Queer Resistance.” European Journal of American Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, Jan. 2017, https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.11830.

King, Martin Luther. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume IV: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957-December 1958. Edited by Clayborne Carson et al., 1st ed., vol. 4, University of California Press, 2000. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/publications/papers-martin-luther-king-jr-volume-iv 

Leighton, Jared E. “Freedom Indivisible: Gays and Lesbians in the African American Civil Rights Movement.” DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln, digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/61.

Russell, Thaddeus. "The Color of Discipline: Civil Rights and Black Sexuality." American Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, 2008, p. 101-128. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2008.0000.

Written by Shambhavi Sharma, 2nd Year, English Hons