Tiyale Hayes:
SAY IT LOUD! I’m Black And I’m PROUD!
By Kevin E. Taylor
This story is really personal for this author. There was a point in the early 90s (like 1991-92) when I felt like I was the only Black Gay creature in the entire entertainment industry. Working at BET those first few years, I had to fight with a producer who was trying to book Buju Banton (who had “BOOM BYE BYE,” a track about hunting a gay couple and killing them) and I was the Co-Chair of the DC Coalition of Black Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgenders, so I was ready to fight. That following year, when I was Music Research/ Record Label Liaison, VIBE Magazine wanted to do an article about being openly gay in the industry and I was told that no one else would speak on the record. The article never got written. I felt like I had to fight the same kinds of micro-aggressions that we talk about with white people and race, except in the Black community, they are often macro-aggressions with sermons and songs and street altercations involved.
So what a joy and a pleasure it has been to meet and get to know Tiyale Hayes, Sr. VP for Brand Strategy and Marketing for BET Networks, who is waving the blood-stained banner of Black community hurt that the Black LGBTQIA+ community has carried, while singing in choirs and expertly providing essential talents to music deities who have sometimes taken them for granted. Add to that the conflicts with the white/ mainstream LGBTQIA+ community that butthead with the culture of us and you can see where Black culture isn’t always a safe space for those who identify in anyway that’s beyond cisgender and #ForTheCulture. But Tiyale Hayes has gallantly been doing a new level of work, inside the institution that is Black Entertainment Television, a place that is not just a TV station for Black folks. In so many ways, it carries the weight of culture and faith and representation and that weight has sometimes been daunting.
In the past few years—this year with Lil Nas X feeling snubbed for receiving no nominations at the BET Awards, where last year he was a star and a spotlight, especially after kissing a male dancer and in recent years, there was a conflict with how now transgender identified social media personality B. Scott was handled by the network while hosting a televised event—BET has been hammered about its LGBTQIA+ representation. But this is the same network that gave heavy rotation to RuPaul before most other networks would shine a spotlight on the statuesque music superstar and that played the flamboyantly fabulous Sylvester’s music videos with loud and proud support. This is the same BET that included out lesbian rapper Young MA (2016) and out gay and fierce Kidd Kenn (2021) at the BET HipHop Awards in the show’s epic cyphers and Pose star, actress/singer MJ Rodriguez opening the Soul Train Awards with hosts Tichina Arnold and Tisha Campbell. And let’s not forget that Tyler the Creator has performed and received a BET Hip Hop Award and from LL Cool J no less.
Is Black Entertainment Television conflicted by trying to be too much for too many? Can BET carry the weight of trying to be everything to everyone, including those who don’t want to see the full spectrum of the Black cultural experience, in an era when other culturally competent networks are trying to serve and celebrate the same communities? Tiyale thinks that there’s much more to explore.
“What’s interesting for us is that June is such a huge month for us. June is probably one of our biggest months. We’ve got Black Music Month, Pride Month, Father’s Day, Juneteenth and BET Awards,” (the network’s annual music celebration that garners millions of viewers across many of the channels on the Viacom universe of stations) “and it seems like every few days, we have another activation happening. What we’ve done from a brand strategy standpoint is really leaned into those moments. It really shows the expansiveness of Black culture and it gives us the ability to really celebrate every facet. What we try not to do is to keep them in separate buckets, but really showing up as one brand, representing the fullness of Black culture. We really want BET to be the place where Black culture lives!”
The network tapped Hayes, who is a proud Black gay man who is married and a parent and (serves on the board of an organization that works with LGBTQIA+ youth), who engages those in his immediate reach, but also works with those around the network in other spaces as well as in the industry. He does so to ensure that BET is “thoughtful about how we think about the intersectionality of the Black and LGBTQIA+ communities, so that we can create space for people to be Black AND. A space where people can bring their Black and all its experiences to the same tables where they bring their lives as gay or lesbian or transgender or left-handed,” whatever their Black expression and experience happens to be. And that’s not just platitudes, but that is the network boldly stating that they “want to ground (you) in a couple of facts. We say at BET that we represent the fullness of Black culture and that is a definitive position that we have some receipts behind, acknowledging that there is not a SINGLE programming in the original programming of BET that doesn’t have a representative of the LGBTQIA+ within its cast, with over 20 Black people who show up consistently, every day on our TV screens.” In many of the cases, their sexuality isn’t the central part of their character, from Hattie in TWENTIES, who is not only a Black lesbian lead who is an aggressive in perception but wrought with angst in her twenty-something energy around life (with B. Scott being the host of the after-show as the first trans/non-binary person to have a talk show on network TV) to the fact that the iconic B-Boy Blues (a story of Black gay love between 2 Black chocolate men) to have been added to the roster of spotlighted movies airing on BET+ is altogether groundbreaking.
And this work of full representation is personal to Hayes in so many ways, as one of 3 members of the LGBTQIA+ community among his 6 siblings, including a gay brother and a transgender sister. He is an activist in his own family, as the oldest sibling, who also had a stutter as a child and who was teased for being left-handed. He is mindful that he is called into this world and this work to create a world for his children and for the future of us all by doing some reverse mentoring of the younger generation who also changed the hearts of the Black community when they didn’t imagine a Black man as president.
“It is an honor and a privilege for me to do this work. I have really dedicated my life to service and the life that many of us get to live is but a dream. For a little queer boy from Richmond (VA) to now be sitting in NYC and looking out over Times Square, in this office where I work for a television station that I used to watch, that sits on me very heavy, in a very real way. I take my job very seriously. My wish is that people really receive what we are doing in this space, with this intention that it is, which is to be a part of the conversation and to push the conversation. We want to be leaders. Most importantly for us, it’s about showing the community our commitment because similarly BET was founded in a way where Black people were able to see themselves in a different way. When Black artists and Black music videos weren’t being played on other networks, BET was a home for us to create our own stars. We keep a light on and we create space for (our) music. It’s no different in our purpose then as our purpose now—as we’ve evolved as a society, to be very thoughtful that we are representing the fullness of Black culture, which includes this community and having (LGBTQIA+) community represented in every way possible that we can! There is a strong sense of pride to be a part of a brand that is changing the conversation and the culture. There’s deep pride in that.”
One of the revelatory things that Hayes offers to the conversation and to the culture is this: “Representing those who don’t have voices. There is a lot of pride in that. One of the things that I often say to people is that most gay children live with straight parents. They don’t come into our community until they get older, so it is our job to protect them. I am doing things for children who will come into our community in 10 years! They don’t know that they’re a part of my community right now. But their parents know! The work that we’re doing is about those people. For me to be a part of consistently displaying moments of normality about this community is deeply prideful.” And then he offers a post – he received a notice from a mother who said “thank you for showing my daughter on TV” after she watched Hattie on TWENTIES. Her daughter looked like the lead character and she said in closing “My daughter is a masculine presenting lesbian and I’ve spent so much time debating with my family, trying to explain her existence when she’s not in the room. And now you put Hattie on TV and you can do some of the lifting for me.”
Finally, Tiyale Hayes unpacking the process of rewriting of BET’s brand purpose (the doctrine that we use to guide our decisions, the reasons why we exist) and what he [working with Kim Page, the network’s Chief Marketing Officer] begins to beam around the idea of advancing “Black Love, Joy, Power and Pride!” “Does this check on Black love, Black joy, Black power or Black pride. It’s got to do one of those 4 or we can’t do it as a brand. Hopefully, it does more than one! In those words, we have a lot of richness in what our intentionality behind that is. I live in the intersection of Black culture and the reason why we are pushing ‘BLACK LOVE’ is that many people still don’t have it. It was taken away from us, so for me, it’s about giving you these random moments when you can just fall in love with yourself. You see you on TV. I want little gay kids to realize that you can be good at numbers. That makes you just as whole as anyone else in the community. Our wish is that by giving these gifts of representation and visual manifestation of identity, we have a chance for someone to see a bit of love, a bit of joy.”
And he said something that should be a mantra for us all: “I have said that I do believe firmly that if I were not a queer kid, I would not have been able to change the circumstances of my life. I was so fundamentally different from everything around me that I had to become adaptable quickly, and I am very comfortable being uncomfortable. I had to create my own safe space and I carry it with me everywhere! My secret wish through this process of representation is that we realize that a lot of things that were told to us (as Black people) were not true and that we unlock something inside of ourselves that will change how we see the world.”
