Race, Class and queer identities-Sean

I have always found the intersections of race, identities that are queer and how these two topics can get extremely complicated once an individual’s socio-economic status (s.e.s/class) is introduced.

I think that persons such as myself may queer the juxtaposition of what is visually queer (either by association or categorization) and the many identities that go unnoticed, affected and stigmatized.

 I feel that I should slow down a bit to unpack that just a bit. I liked something that Fanon wrote about the “fact of blackness” and how “not only must a black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man” (p.110). This points out that in order to “be” one thing, you must release any attainability to be that “other” which you are held against as a gauge or measure of sorts. Once this identity is solidified as belonging to you or to not belonging to you, you are then held subject by the identity that you will forever have and that which you can and will never attain.

I see this relating to the queer population as well because there are stereotypes of queer identities just as there are with race and class. If someone is assumed to be in one box by many, they are by certain limitations, exclusions from other boxes.

 A thought that I have been focusing some of my personal research into is the invisibility that groups of people have had over history and the inciting incidents that led to their emergences as visible groups who have true causes and battles to fight to gain acceptance and freedom from the constraints that my even be imposed by their own communities. Examples are abound when it comes to the history of the U.S. and civil rights, slaves winning freedom and validation as human beings to the majority.  What happens when an already stigmatized racial minority such as black people has sub-minority groups such as poor, wealthy, educated, and non-educated people? These people are placed in a position of having  “group” spokespeople when encountered by the larger racial classes who may have no “access” to the in-group dynamics that may exist.  It always seems that when a black person makes the news, they act as a sort of mainstream minstrel for the amusement of non-black people. 

It seems that this is the reason that older generations of black people raised those of us who are old enough to know what “home training” means. It means that we do not disrupt white people, do not scare them because you may end up being cut down from someone’s tree or locked up like the character Sophia from The Color Purple. It became an unwritten tradition that was passed from generation to generation of black people (especially here in the south) that your behavior can make ALL black people look bad, which I believe created a system of in-group policing. Policing needed to control any and all that would be seen as embarrassing to “us” as a whole people. Queer identities are hard fought within the black race. You have to be a good black person, and due to religious colonization, anything not found in the Bible had and are still seen as having no place in the black community. 

I can however, say that lately there appears to have been a major shift within the intersections mentioned here.  The generational shift that is currently dominating our culture with androgynous beings, gender benders, multiracial, id oriented people, delights me with how they are queering and educating the world.