News & Letters, October 1998

Queer perspectives on Black Radical Congress

Editor's note: Below we print excerpts from an interview about the Black Radical Congress with Tamara Jones, a Black lesbian feminist working in New York City with the Audre Lorde Project on issues of police violence as they affect queer people of color, and with the newly founded organization, Caribbean Pride.

I was really energized by the Black Radical Congress. It was the first time of which I am aware that a Black left organization was from the start affirming gay and lesbian identities, not just in the spirit of toleration but right in its principles of unity and at the center of its political analysis.

But it's not all a bed of roses. Even in the BRC there is a need to educate organizers about how lesbian and gay issues impact the work they're doing. There is a need to educate people about homophobia and how it expresses itself in Black communities. As a Lesbian and Gay Caucus, we're thinking about working with some of the other BRC caucuses and groups. We have to insure that the BRC is for the liberation of ALL Black people. We have a role to play in this, by pushing people to think about sexuality and its relationship to our politics.

The Congress gave us a starting point in building a left organization where the starting premise is lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender visibility and the centrality of gender and sexual identity to any political analysis we develop. This is why I found the tone of Angela Ard's article in the NATION (July 27/Aug. 3, 1998) so disappointing. It failed to capture the energy, the commitment and the radical alternative that was present at the Congress. I found it to be a one-sided story that discounted the BRC's relevance at a time when the Right is dominating public discussion.

As one of the speakers at the "Fighting Homophobia" workshop, I found that two points were especially well-received. People are hungry for ideas and concrete guidelines about how queer people of color's organizations can work with nonqueer people of color's organizations. We talk about coalitions, but we don't always know how to form or sustain them. I spoke about our successful experience at the Audre Lorde Project working as the only queer-identified group among the five grassroots organizations forming the Coalition Against Police Brutality, which organized Racial Justice Day 1998 to protest police brutality and racist/homophobic violence in communities of color. Also well-received was our analysis of police violence which sees it as attempts by the state to control the spaces in which we live, work and play. People are looking for ways to talk about these issues in ways that are accessible without losing their complexity. When you start talking about how homophobia, racism, sexism, and classism interact and reinforce each other, things can get very complicated.

I also participated in the Black Radical Congress Feminist Institute which was held one day before the official start of the Congress. Originally we thought we would be happy if 30 people attended. We found there were never fewer than 50 in the room at one time, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a total of about 75. Among other things, we discussed definitions of patriarchy, looking at how it expresses itself in Black organizations and in the Black community. One example is the Afrocentric idea of "complementarity," the belief that Black men have their special role to play and that Black women have theirs. In the rhetoric of Black nationalism and Black culture, this is very Black. So if you're a feminist and queer, your Blackness is automatically questioned under this belief because you're violating your assigned sexual role.

One thing that impressed me throughout the Congress was the strong alliance that formed between the Feminist and Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered Caucuses. There were moments in which someone from the Feminist Caucus would address issues of gender and sexuality, followed by someone from the Lesbian and Gay Caucus addressing sexuality and gender. Thiswas powerful because there are so few models of organizations with strong commitments to fighting both sexism AND homophobia. National feminist organizations are still scared to deal with issues of sexuality, afraid to be painted with that brush. And sexism persists in too many queer organizations, especially among gay men.

This is partly because the Right has gotten very good at shaping the public conversation, not just at the national but at the local level through their grassroots organizations. Many left organizations are just responding to the conservatives, rather than taking the lead in envisioning and enacting new ways of struggling for justice that are not built on traditional practices that support injustice within our own ranks. Too many leftists are afraid of losing mass support so they don't suggest or do anything that isn't already familiar. But we need to create a politic that reflects and responds to the many changes and new developments that have taken place in our communities over the last few decades.

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