part III: racial nationalism and homophobia

{First, a brief recap of the last two posts... for fully new stuff, read from the first pink text onward}

What I learned over the last two posts:

I have spent the last two entries advocating for insider perspectives on black homophobia. Considering that residential and educational segregation persist and, consequently, most private (non-state) violence is intra-racial, I am skeptical of claims made from outside regarding the roots and ramifications of black homophobia.

Furthermore, I have maintained that the usual indexes of black homophobia (hip-hop lyrics, sermons and religious doctrine, poll data, and laws) are unreliable indicators of everyday behavior and beliefs. Explicit and public, they provide what, to modify James C. Scott, I might call an official transcript. Laws indicate how an elite wants a society to run; they prohibit those things that might interrupt productivity or unsettle hierarchies. That is, law attempts to regulate what is already occurring and, therefore, cannot indicate what a society actually is but instead projects an ideal elites wish to establish. (It's even arguable that such elites do not wish for the ideal to  come into existence, for without the constant threat of destabilization, they could never justify the violence necessary to insist on regulation).

Sermons are much the same as laws, the speech of a voice with authority but not absolute control over the congregation. In the specific case of African-American pastors' sermons, marches, and statements since the advent of George W. Bush, it is worth tracing the content of sermons to the offer of federal funds for marriage promotion. Even if federal money did not inspire the doctrine, it may well have contributed to increased emphasis on 'traditional marriage.'

With sermons, hip-hop lyrics, laws, votes, and other indicators bracketed (not ignored, just suspended before being put back into the mix), I'd like to offer a definition of black homophobia from within rather than without. In brief, it is that the most entrenched roots of black and white homophobia have to do with nationalisms--beliefs about what is necessary to protect, continue, and purify the nation. Even the most doctrinal oppositions to homophobia--within the Christian tradition, at least--are soaked with references to 'nations'--populations who are selected or chosen by God according to their faithfulness. Both biblical text and contemporary Protestant evangelicalism are framed in the language of opposing faith traditions as opposing national groups with differential access to God's favor and punishment. Therefore, nationalism is the field in which, to mix a metaphor, the attempt to uproot homophobia will bear the most fruit.

if you have to ask

When jazz was on the border between subcultural pleasure and mainstream commodity, Louis Armstrong was asked to define it. Although perhaps apocryphal, the story goes that he replied -- if you have to ask, you'll never know.


Nevertheless, I did think that, as a second post, I might try to explain why the phrase I ain't studying you appeals to me. The task poses a bit of a dilemma. That is, it forces me to confront two (of many) opposing forces in the stalled cultural "dialogue about race" in the United States. At one end, we have the proponents of cultural diversity. Put in charitable terms, these are cultural relativists who believe equality and understanding can come from a sharing of "perspectives" and-- usually--food and dancing. Although in theory this sort of ethnic sharing is supposed to avoid making any one culture central, diversity in the United States means "divergence" from a presumably white American-ness. This tendency places an undue burden on non-white people to explain themselves to what can only seem like a mainstream culture suffering from Alzheimer's. We remember white granddad, but he doesn't seem to remember us. So we have to let him feel our hair, nose, and face and sing him one of our people's traditional songs in the hopes of a brief flicker of recognition. The product has been the other pole--a group of deservedly exhausted non-white folks who are tired of explaining themselves and, in fact, refuse to do it. Their credo would be something like: To hell with explaining myself to you. Read a book!

Finding the middle is not always a virtue, especially if the poles keep moving (as they do with the two major parties in US politics). So, even if I make the wishy-washy concession, as I will here, that "both sides have a point," you can rest assured, it will not be my habit.  I still believe one has to choose in order to avoid paralysis. Luckily, we get to make a series of choices and correct for past errors.

In this case, though I do tire of having to explain myself to a white majority that always has the choice to listen or to stop their ears, I also chose an explaining profession. I am an educator. So, for me, the question is not whether to explain things across cultures, it's when, how, and with what amount of my energy. Of course, there is the larger question of why--to what ends do I explain? For me, that answer has two parts. First, there is the human desire to want to be heard and understood by somebody--anybody. The second aspect is a bit more specific to African-American life. To quote James Baldwin:

A people at the center of the Western world, and in the midst of so hostile a population, has not endured and transcended by means of what is patronizingly called a 'dialect.' We, the blacks, are in trouble, certainly, but we are not doomed, and we are not inarticulate because we are not compelled to defend a morality that we know to be a lie.

This is not to suggest that I am interested in donating my time to be the earthy black conscience of whites who, by their elevation, have lost touch with their--you get the drift. No Jimminy-Cricket in blackface for me. I'm not that altruistic. I am willing to "explain" to white people not for their own moral betterment--although that's a perfectly acceptable by-product. Instead, I am hoping to ensure more just treatment. I am hoping to inspire not a personal conversion but a disposition toward decision-making that does not immediately rule out the voices of the very parties who are most adversely impacted. In a deliciously precise and understated gloss, Toni Morrison calls this "studied indifference." Think about that. She means that people got diplomas and degrees, filled libraries, and funded research on not studying you.