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As Mumford notes, they were by far the most famous gay men in America in the 1960s. Two of those are the prominent writer James Baldwin and the civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin, who was a key figure behind such events as the March on Washington in 1963. Much of Mumford’s book is built around key individuals – black gay men who worked to change attitudes and institutions. “Gay men are perceived only as white, and it’s very hard to get people to recognize queer people of color in terms of what they're like, and how they're different,” he said. Even today, black men are almost nonexistent in gay publications and in popular culture. Other challenges arose within the gay community, where black gay men were often portrayed in a hypersexualized way that was very dehumanizing, Mumford said. “One of the things you see in response is this defense of the normality of the black family … but of course, that normality says we do not have homosexuals in our families,” he said. In the same way, the 1965 Moynihan Report and the concerns it raised about “pathologies” in the black family also worked against those who were gay, Mumford said. “In this definition and redefinition of blackness, this black pride moment, to be gay was to not be black,” he said. With the rise of black power in the late 1960s, however, they sought to throw off that restraint and reclaim their masculinity and sexuality, Mumford said.īut black gay men were not part of that picture. Black men therefore often lived in fear and restrained their sexuality as a result. Historical racism, notions of black masculinity, concerns raised about the black family, and the “politics of respectability” that African-Americans often employed in response have all played a part, he said.įear of interracial sex, for instance, had been central to white resistance to integration and often the cause of black lynchings in the South prior to the civil rights movement. At the intersection of race and homosexuality, their challenges have been unique.
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“Black gay men have not led lives that are like white gay lives or that are like black straight lives,” Mumford said. The result is “Not Straight, Not White,” being published this month, and the title helps frame the story.