My Reaction to the Bearable Whiteness of Being Gay

I know I’m late on this article: The bearable whiteness of being gay, but I had to comment on it anyway. Gay men are as diverse as straight men, yet even I sometimes find myself with images of white males as the first idea that comes to my mind when I think of gay men. I read through some of the comments on the article and realized that even my image of white men is tainted. I don’t think of homeless or poor white men, I think in terms of middle class or above. This is not to say that I don’t think of homeless gay teens or black gay men or Hispanic gay men (hola Ricky Martin), but rather that my first thought is generally not in color. My first thought is white. The fact that I am black probably makes that admission a bit troubling to some people. It doesn’t bother me though because I know that my mind has been inundated with images of white gay males. In terms of representatives, white gay males represent the gay community. That is not to say that they are the only representatives, because everyone knows that gay men come in every shape, size and color.

There were two things in the article that stood out to me. The first was the idea of being overwhelmed with images of white males in the ads and only seeing black males in ads about HIV. I had to smile at that part because I have seen tons of HIV ads featuring black males and wondered why black males seem to be the faces of HIV. I dismissed it as information based on statistics. Black males are getting and giving HIV at an alarming rate. If that’s not true, then blame the media because that’s what it told me. It would be nice to see a black gay male advertising something other than HIV. Truth be told, they do, but you often have to go looking for those ads because they’re usually not the first ones that you see. There are gay black men in plenty of reality shows and there will be another show like Noah’s Arc one day. Hell, (shameless plug) I just wrote a book about a gay male growing up in Harlem (Bump This).

The other thing that struck me was the mention of the gay couple who stopped holding hands when they saw a black male approaching. Rob’s description of his uncertainty about how to react made me think of several similar situations that I have been in with interracial couples. I’m an equal opportunity dater. My pool is limited enough without me adding race to the mix so I’m open to my options. When I’m out and I see an interracial couple, I feel weird if the couple looks at me like I have a problem with them. Like, Rob, I’m tempted to smile, but something holds me back. Something whispers in my ear that they might misinterpret my smile and so I look away and try to avoid looking at them again. The couple saw a regular looking black male approaching and that triggered images of a homophobic group of people so the couple stopped holding hands as a way to make themselves look less “gay” to this stranger. I’m willing to bet that if Rob had been walking around with a rainbow on his t-shirt or in a tight shirt and wearing a nice pair of pumps or a purse, the men would have continued holding hands. Perception is everything and black males are perceived as threats until either their actions or clothes show otherwise. It’s a sad reality of our society.