I like to say there was something in the air that made Pride 2017—here and abroad—one of the most contentious events in its history. Many, however, in our LGBTQ communities say the tension was always present.
Pride parades will be taking place across the country this month. And, as we all rev up for this year's festivities so, too, will the fault lines of race, gender identity and class emerge. In addition to the main Pride events taking place in many major cities and towns, there will be segments of our communities—from women to trans people to people of color—holding their own.
Pride is about the varied expressions of the life, gifts and talents of the entire community. But the divisions in our communities during Pride also show us something troubling and broken within ourselves. And, last year a Black queer resistance rose up ( nationally and globally ) denouncing the glib notion that "gay is the new black."
Philly's flag
For example, last year Philadelphia memorably had a controversy over its new Pride flag. Black and brown stripes were added to the rainbow flag as part of the city's campaign "More Color More Pride"—a way to visibly include people of color. in the celebrations.
"It's a push for people to start listening to people of color in our community, start hearing what they're saying, and really to believe them and to step up and say, 'What can I do to help eradicate these issues in our community?" said Amber Hikes, the new executive director of Philadelphia's Office of LGBT Affairs told NBC OUT.
D.C.'s segregation
The nation's capital is always a big draw for LGBTQIA communities across the country come Pride, but D.C.'s white communities aren't always inviting and welcoming, and last year many people of African descent spoke out about it.
"We don't socialize together. There are very few places where Black and white socialize together, which is the basis of relationships and friendships, the basis of understanding," Earl Fowlkes told the Washington Blade. Fowlkes is executive director of the Center for Black Equity, a D.C.-based group that advocates for African-American LGBT people and helps organize Black Pride events in the U.S. and abroad.
"And until we start doing that and creating those spaces to do that we're going to have misunderstandings and a lack of sensitivity toward issues of race."
Boston being Boston
Boston Black Pride 2017 took place in February, offering hip-hop yoga, commemorating Black History Month and National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness, and a mix-and-mingle drag paint party, to name a few. Sadly, the growing distance between our larger white LGBTQ community and LGBTQ communities of color is shown by how, for example, a health issue like HIV/AIDS—which was once an entire LGBTQ community problem—is now predominately impacting communities of color. LGBTQ people of African descent have focused not only on HIV/AIDS and same-sex marriage but also unemployment, housing, gang violence, and LGBTQ youth homelessness, to name a few.
Montreal's protest
Then there was Montreal—my go-to place when I want to flee both my home in Massachusetts and the entire United States—which had their troubles last year at Pride, too.
Organizers of Black Queer Lives Matter ( BQLM ) disrupted the minute of silence during the parade because of Pride's whitewashing and complicity in the erasure of its Black and racialized origins during the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
This is part of BQLM's statement at Montreal Pride:
"Pride Montréal will have to answer for its decisions, its actions or its lack of actions before the LGBTQ Montreal racialized communities. Recognize that we have created Pride and give it back to us!
Marsha P Johnson
Stormé DeLarverie
Sylvia Rivera
Let the names of these trans and queer women resonate in your heads and be visible in all editions of Pride! They are trans and from POC communities and are at the origin of the Pride movement!"
The growing distance between our larger and white LGBTQ community and LGBTQ communities of color has a historical antecedent, as BQLM showed. Many LGBTQ people of African descent and Latinos argue that the gulf between whites and themselves is also about how the dominant queer community rewrote and continued to control the history of Stonewall.
The Stonewall Riot of June 27-29, 1969 in Greenwich Village, New York City, started on the backs of working-class African-American and Latinx queers who patronized that bar. Those brown and Black LGBTQ people are not only absent from the photos of that night, but they are also bleached from its written history. Because of said bleaching, the beginnings of the LGBTQ movement post-Stonewall is an appropriation of a Black, brown, trans and queer liberation narrative. And it is the deliberate visible absence of these African-American, Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander LGBTQ people that makes it harder, if not near impossible, for LGBTQ communities to build trusted coalitions with white LGBTQ communities.
With the passings of hate-crime laws, the legalization of same-sex marriage across the country and other advancements, the LGBTQ movement has come a long way since the first Pride March in 1969. Many laud the distance the LGBTQ community has traveled in such a short time from a disenfranchised group on the fringe of the country's mainstream to a community now embraced. But not all members of our community have crossed the finish line. Some are waving the cautionary finger that within our community not all are equal. And Pride events can be public displays of those disparities.
Cultural acceptance is just one of a few things LGBTQ people of color do not experience from larger Pride events. Many Pride celebrations are predominately white, and many LGBTQ of color revelers experience social exclusion and invisibility within these spaces. After decades of Pride events where many LGBTQ people of color tried to be included and weren't, Black, Asian and Latino Pride events were born.
Fighting among ourselves
As we feud with one another, this is what is at stake: erosion of our protections.
For example, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The case, which has many of us on pins and needles, will be decided this Pride season, and a baker's right to refuse to make a wedding cake for same-sex couples on the grounds of religious freedom could be enshrined by the high court.
Since Donald Trump has taken office, there has been an erosion of LGBTQ civil rights under the guise of religious liberty. There are bills are called Religious Freedom Restoration Acts that are a backlash to the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage. Lawmakers want to use them to codify LGBTQ discrimination to justify denying us services on state and local levels, and Trump is in lockstep with these discriminatory practices.
Meanwhile, transgender Americans being denied access to public lavatories is eerily reminiscent of the country's Jim Crow era, denying African-Americans access to lunch counters, water fountains, libraries, gas stations, theaters and even restrooms.
Then there are the laws passed in Kansas and Oklahoma that allow adoption agencies to refuse to place children in the homes of families they find morally reprehensible ( a.k.a. us ).
Where do we go from here?
Where we go from here now, in my opinion, is in recognizing the need to network and build coalitions beyond one's immediate communities—thus, creating an intersectional social-justice activism throughout our cities and towns to foster healthy and wholesome communities.
While Pride events are still fraught with divisions, at their core, they are invitations for communities to connect their political activism with their celebratory acts of song and dance in its continued fight for justice. They should highlight the multicultural aspect of joy and celebration that symbolizes not only our uniqueness as individuals and communities but also affirms our varied expressions of LGBTQIA life in this country.
