A recent article in The Defender Online quotes my essay on Bessie Smith from the new anthology “My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them.” While I’m always excited to be quoted, or mentioned (especially when not preceded or followed by “that asshole”), the article stirred up my old anxiety about this business of gay guys and divas - anxiety I tried to address in my contribution to the book, but which demands a lot more interrogation.

The piece in the Defender highlights the creepiness of white gay guys’ habit of fetishizing black divas, but it does so almost inadvertently - without going on to point out what’s wrong with that habit. The author talks about a white gay guy who wanted to be reborn as a black woman “because they can sing. They can wear hats. They are strong. And nooo-body,” he paused, waving his finger in front of his face, “ever tells a black woman to shut up!””

I know lots of white gay guys feel this way. I know it sounds very respectful and celebratory. The fact is, this perspective depends on a deep ignorance of (A) the continued realities of racist oppression, and (B) the extent to which white gay men continue to benefit from american institutionalized racism - no matter how oppressed we feel in a homophobic world.

bell hooks, writing about some offensive Madonna quote where Miss Thing talked about how she “felt black” or “wanted to be black as a child,” wrote “It is a sign of privilege to be able to “see” blackness and black culture from a standpoint where only the rich culture of opposition black people have created in resistance marks and defines us. Such a perspective enables one to ignore white supremacist domination and the hurt it inflicts via oppression, exploitation, and everyday wounds and pains.”

To celebrate black strength and black culture, we have to acknowledge black oppression. And if we acknowledge black oppression, white folks have to choose between sitting back and saying “gee, that’s terrible” while continuing to benefit from it… or DOING SOMETHING about it.

Kenyon Farrow has written “No matter how many black divas wail over club beats in white gay clubs all over America (Mammy goes disco!) with gay men appropriating language and other black cultural norms (specifically from black women), white gay men continue to function as cultural imperialists the same way straight white boys appropriate hip-hop…”

And cultural appropriation, insofar as it can’t be stopped, needs to come with accountability. That means owning up to how white people - including white gay men - benefit from the systems that have been created to control and exploit people of color (to name a few: the prison-industrial complex, the homeless shelter system, labor laws that leave domestic workers out of labor protections)… and the need for white folks to step up and support the dismantling of those systems.

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