How The Gay Community Culturally Appropriate Gay Black Men
Ball culture. Voguing. Gay vernacular.
The black LGBT community invented all of it and we are left uncredited and unacknowledged for it.
Like things such as hip-hop culture, a variety of terms originated from AAVE such as “on fleek” and “turnt up” with our black heterosexual counterparts, it has been watered down for white consumption. You have white people such as Ryan Seacrest backing a show called “Squad Goals” with two white writers at the helm. You have white folks telling you what “bae” ACTUALLY means to get you to stop using it (apparently, it’s the Danish word for “poop,” but clearly none of us live in Denmark nor know Danish to really give half a fuck about what a white person tells you). It seems that every day that black people rebirth a term that’s already been in uses for ages by black folks before them or a cool new dance that black people invented comes out, white people are around the corner, taking notes and using these terms as their own.
The white gay community is no different.
Terms like “throwing shade” and “spilling tea” are so commonplace in the community that there’s a podcast featuring a gay white guy and a white feminist CALLED “Throwing Shade.” White gays come up to me and ask me if I can vogue or twerk. Hell, it’s gotten to the point where white people think they can talk to their gay black friends in a “sassy” way and think they’re channeling their “inner black woman.”
Everyday as a gay black man, you see these things that were so unique to us becoming so common that you don’t even want to be associated with it anymore. Even more so, it gets to the point that because black culture and black gay culture is so unique that white gays think it’s perfectly okay to get away with all sorts of things.
I recently came across an advertisement for an event at a club called XY, located in Vancouver, which I call the Canadian Los Angeles.
The name of the event? Hoodrat.
Upon further research, the bulk of Vancouver’s population is white and Asian. Only 1% is black and 1.6% is Latino. The event is not a black-oriented event. The dancers they hired as entertainment are white and Asian.
…so tell me how you think calling your event a derogatory us black folks use to call out classless and uncouth people (who are usually FROM the hood) is perfectly okay? I mean, I shouldn’t have to spell out how offensive and irritating any black American seeing that would be.
In gay Asian California culture, I see the “n-word” thrown around so much via social media (and probably amongst their own circles) that I have half a mind to fly out to California and slap every single one of these kids that thinks it’s perfectly okay to use that word, especially when they’ve barely made contact with black people, let alone gay black men.
…and do you really need to get me started on the black and Latino trans and drag queen erasure that went into making the superflop known as Stonewall, that turned these iconic folks who started this whole LGBT Civil Rights Movement into background characters for some Midwest white boy that was made up so straight audiences will be entertained? If it wasn’t for these brave individuals, we would not have the strong community and support we have today.
There is such an issue with gay black cultural appropriation and we have yet to call bullshit on it. It’s not okay and it’s something we have to speak out about a bit more. Seeing white boys vogue, twerk, or talk to “their hunties about what tea they have on that one guy they’re interested in” is really grossing me out and I can’t help but wonder if everyone else is seeing it too.
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