My comments in this thread are coming in pretty late, I know. (Finals'll do that to you, don'tcha know.) My own feelings about the interactions of race and sexuality have been shaped primarily by four works I've been exposed to over the last nine months. The first, certainly, was TONGUES UNTIED. The second was THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY BACK, and the third, Joseph Beam's 1986 collection IN THE LIFE, stories by and about black gay men, both of which I read this semester for my seminar on the history of homosexuality. The most recent was an article published anonymously in PRISM, an on-campus magazine last semester, and is entitled "Life in the 0.6% Club": I've been at Amherst for awhile, and I've been silent. Now, I would like to tell everyone about a kind of stress that they probably haven't given much thought. I've been told that I appear so calm and collected that it's difficult to imagine me stressed out over something. But that's only my outside. I get occasional facial ticks, I grind my teeth in my sleep -- now sometimes when I am awake -- and I have a mild ulcer: all symptoms of stress. I am Black (African-American), male, and homosexual. Hiding what might reveal myself as homosexual from my roommates; from the Blacks whose company I value and need; glossing over what makes me different (my Blackness) when I am with White homosexuals ... all this creates stress, which creates problems, which keeps me from doing the things of which I might otherwise be capable. There's not one of those labels I listed above that hasn't, at one time or another or continually, created an enormous source of stress for me; there's also not one of them that I would change, even if I could. The problem is not with who I am; the problem is with how the overriding American social reality has taught people (of all colors, of all orientations) to view and treat me: destructively. There are some very scary statistics available on suicide among homosexuals and the drug-, death-, crime-, and murder-rates among Black males. Please take another glance at those labels listed above -- those are the labels I'll take if I have to take labels, and those labels list the world view that I know (and know very well). It is from the confines of those labels that I will speak. In order for you to understand better what it is that I want to relate, it's necessary that I explain a few things basic to my experience and alien to most others. First of all, because of the bizarre way this society has shaped me (and this surprises me too), I have as much in comon with a White homosexual as I have with a Black heterosexual. My soul is nourished and withered by the company of both. Both groups possess qualities intrinsically fundamental in myself and attractive to me that feel necessary. At the same time, my relationships with both have never been nourishing in a balanced sort of way -- enough of one thing, not enough of another (like a diet of all protein, or a diet of all vitamins). So now I often hear people saying, in the on-going dialogue on race issues, "Blacks and Whites are just the same. People should stop emphasizing differences that are only skin deep." I wish that this were true. If one were to lay down a Black newborn beside a White newborn, one would be correct in stating that they are fundamentally identical except for the color of their skins. But by the time those two infants are, say, 19-year-old men, each has been molded by experiences that are so very different from the other's that the Black teenager has basic sections of his psyche, general experiences, and world view that are similar to those of all other African-American males, but no longer similar to the White teenager. And, obviously, the society has equally shaped and differentiated the White teenager. Their differences have become much more than skin deep. So it is also with a heterosexual and a homosexual. As infants (yes, I believe I was born that way) there is no great difference, but as young adults (or even children) they have both had parallel, non-overlapping sets of experiences -- gone down tracks of life that unify them with one group and separate them from another. Of course a White homosexual is a _White_ homosexual; that is, as shaped by race as by sexual orientation. I have experienced racism from White homosexuals, and my experiences make me comfortable generalizing that their homosexuality teaches them to be only slightly more comfortable with my Blackness than would be a White heterosexual. So, while my experiences can connect me in ways (in very deep and basic ways) to those who are White and homosexual, I am also separate from them -- very different in ways that are equally deep and basic. So it also is with me and Black heterosexuals. It would be self-destructive for me to try and separate myself from my Black identity -- and that identity can only be supported by the presence of other Blacks. However, Black heterosexuals (and again my experiences allow me to make this generalization) are generally much more homophobic than White heterosexuals (which is not to say that White heterosexuals aren't very homophobic!) and Black heterosexual society is heterosexist to an extent that still stuns me when I immerse myself into the depths of it. Because of the powerful likelihood of ostracism, and the virulent potential for abuse, Blacks who may be homosexual are much less likely to make themselves known as such (within the larger Black community). Blacks tend to stay "in the closet" more. So often, in either a group of Blacks or homosexuals, I find myself (to my knowledge) the only person with my particular set of variables. And it wears, it wears, it wears. Being silent about myself among both Blacks and homosexuals, it gets me down and makes every day a climb up Mt. Everest when some should be a stroll in the park. I love both halves of myself. Both have given me such deep and precious insigts into what it means to be human, that someone who does not possess my set of variables cannot even imagine the things I notice from this perspective. I value my Blacknes and homosexuality, but both bring me pain. In the first paragraph I listed some of the physical symptoms of my experience; mentally, emotionally, and spiritually I feel the pressure also. When I work creatively (writing, drawing, etc.) I feel myself censoring myself into not revealing more of myself than I think others can handle. My mother is Baptist, I was raised under that religion, and I still feel attracted to Baptism. But the religion (or the way it is practiced) is powerfully homophobic. It would be poisonous for me to be a Baptist. And emotionally? My emotional body is a giant mass of scar tissue. Because I can trust no one, I have no real friends -- no one has yet shown that they could be trusted with the controversial whole of me. I haven't had a lover because a person with the right set of variables has not come along -- but that is not really so cruel and unusual for someone my age (19). What is cruel and unusual is that my society, the American in which we are all presently living, has not trained me to be a good lover, HOW to be a good lover, when that gentleman finally comes along. He and I will have to self-create and self-define every aspect of our relationship -- a task most heterosexuals cannot even imagine. I didn't write this article thinking to change the world, or even of changing a few minds. Note that I did not give my name, a sign that I fear the consequences. I wrote this article because (even pseudonymously) I've never read a discussion of my particular dilemma before. Whether you sympathize or are disgusted, it's important that you at least be aware that I, and others like me, exist. A little knowledge is the first step toward any solution. -- The Voice -- ____ Tim Pierce / "Well, there's homosexuality in all animals \ / twpierce@amherst.edu / but one, and that's the pig. If it weren't \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) / for homosexuals we'd all have to live like pigs." -- overheard at Sydney Mardi Gras