The Art & Science of Building Our Political Power
We are in a fight for our collective survival. Losing is not an option
By Ravi Perry, Ph.D.
Since we have elected a KKK-endorsed president in the 21st century, Black LGBTQ lives have been in serious jeopardy. I believe we must be woke and awake to see the dangers in front of us in order to survive because our Black LGBTQ bodies are political.
For our collective survival we must continue to work together to alleviate the oppressive effects of Trumpism that marks our bodies as disposable and denies us our rights to control our own bodies. Feminist icon Audre Lorde has said that “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” The politics of LGBTQ policy adoption and representation that has evolved in the United States suggests that power is dominated by the elite. Yet, for decades, we have harnessed our own power.
From throwing bricks in bars to legal and legislative gains, the Black LGBTQ movement in nearly every case began locally in grassroots communities. The movement for Black LGBTQ lives has shown us what is possible when grassroots politics meets electoral politics and get married. The courting stage wasn’t always smooth, and the marriage has had its ups and downs, but we must stay committed. Just like marriages, our politics need to be ‘both/and’ not either/or.’ Why? Because to create change, we must first win. But not everyone’s witness counts the same in a society marred by prejudice.
On main street, on MLK Drives across this country, on Malcolm X Boulevards, on Rosa Parks byways, on streets throughout our inner cities and rural old cow-paths, the everyday lived conditions for poor and working-class Black LGBTQ Americans have gotten worse over time. We live in troubled times. Times troubled by the police, a global pandemic, poverty, homelessness, troubled by no money for rent, troubled by failing health. We live in an era where we have kids being thrown across classrooms with police authority. White backlash is out of control and we continue to round up thousands of our brown brothers and sisters at our southern border in cages. We can’t talk about ethnic studies or LGBTQ history in our public schools. As the clock ticks, someone else Black perishes at the hands of hatred, bigotry, oppression, and structural racism. For centuries, we Black Americans have cried out for justice. In the face of this domestic terror, our Black imaginations must be decolonized so not to dream a world that recreates the problems of today.
Most of the systemic and structural issues facing Black communities in the United States will require electoral politics to solve. Despite a sea of disadvantages, we Black LGBTQ people living in the United States have continued to press on the upward way toward equity in political representation. The first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States was Latino, and the first elected was a white woman. LGBTQ people are at least 4.5% of the U.S. adult population, but we only hold 0.17% of elected positions nationwide. We only make up 6% of the 843 currently serving openly LGBTQ elected officials. Black LGBTQ people have been winning elected office since 1989 when Keith St. John was elected to the city council in Albany, New York.
Today, there are more Black and openly LGBTQ people running for or serving in elected office than ever before. American attitudes have changed; most believe in our human rights and our political agency. Moreover, the myth of pervasive homophobia in the Black community has been proven to be false. Numbers also tell a story about our relative political strength and the issues that matter to us most. Last year, the Black Census, a national effort to accurately count Black Americans organized by the Black Futures Lab surveyed more than 5,400 Black people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or describe their sexual orientation as “other.” Several findings are noteworthy: Black people are more likely than white people to identify as LGBTQ and LGB+ Blacks are more likely to identify low wages as their biggest problem.
James Baldwin, when asked by a journalist what it was like to be a poor, Black, and gay writer — “You must of said to yourself gee how disadvantaged could I get?” — Baldwin replies, “No I thought I hit the jackpot. It was so outrageous you couldn’t go any further. So, you had to find a way to use it.”
Channeling their inner Baldwin presumptive incoming new members of Congress Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones have found a way to use their identities to powerful advantage. Jones won in the 17th Congressional District primary in NY, while Torres won the primary in the 15th Congressional District, in the Bronx. Both will almost certainly become the first openly gay Black and Black-Latinx members.
Currently of the 435 members of Congress, 7 identify as LGBTQ, and neither is Black. This past spring, in a survey of over 6,000 likely American voters, respondents were asked whether they would vote for Donald Trump or Pete Buttigieg, if the openly gay former mayor were to become the Democratic nominee. The research concluded that Blacks “can relate to the conditions of those who have been unfairly treated, even if they belong to a different group,” rejecting the notion that Blacks’ overwhelming identification with the Democratic Party accounts for our support of an openly LGBTQ candidate for public office. Empathy, derived from our shared experience as members of historically disadvantaged and oppressed groups, has resulted in this fact: Black voters are now more likely to support gay candidates and other minority candidates than non-Black voters.
I believe we can make transformative change now even within the constraints of a far less than perfect system. Dred Scott is no more. It was replaced by the 14th amendment. Plessy v. Ferguson has fallen. It was beaten by Brown v. Board. Jim and Jane Crow is at least gone on paper. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ensured that. Poll taxes have surrendered to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
If we judged ourselves based on what many considered to be the goals of the civil rights movement – we have been very successful and we have continued to revise as we expand our notions of inclusion. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was just affirmed by the Supreme Court this summer to include protections for LGBTQ Americans for the first time.
The dogged persistence of anti-Black forces requires that our movement be fully inclusive to continue to maximize the broadest coalition possible. We must resist folks whose limited visions of America consist of dreaming about a country that erases trans people. We must not ignore biphobia, inter-sexed persons, or the increasing number of Black non-heterosexuals who identify as queer. Too often forgotten, we must learn their names and honor our own stories.
I know a thing or two about being counted out as life as thrown me a hardball at times. I was born premature in my native Ohio destined to have failing health, presumed to die. I began my life fighting for survival, and it created a fire in my belly that has been raging since I was a high schooler involved in student activism and government. In 2003, I found myself facing another life altering health challenge when I was diagnosed with HIV at the age of 21. In spite of these myriad difficulties, I have been blessed to continue to thrive.
I am privileged. I grew up in an urban blue-collar city that wasn’t plush with community resources. My older siblings and I benefited from having two very well-educated parents. Mom and Dad, members of the silent generation, were able to support our learning needs because they were career teachers. They provided me with the theoretical foundation and the skills to implement sociopolitical change in grassroots communities. As an adult, I have since practiced what I first learned at home by working with those of us that have been left out and left behind in places like rural Mississippi, New England, Richmond – the former capital of the Confederacy, and here in Washington, DC.
My male privilege and middle class status has helped me in the areas of academic and professional achievement as I have sought to employ and deploy whatever talents I have to fight for others in academia and community. This includes fighting for our individual rights to be treated fairly and given every chance to succeed by being exactly who we are and were born to be.
As a professor of political science at Howard University, and an At-Large candidate for the DC State Board of Education, I believe we must do everything we can to defeat the ideology of Trumpism and its influence on our young people.
The ideologies that are anti public education also want to dismantle government, pollute the air, cut clean water standards, eliminate food in schools, and so much more. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and other far right conservatives will have us believe that we can increase “success” and expand opportunity only by moving the education of our youth in underserved communities from 100% publicly funded neighborhood schools to private or charter institutions. This ultimatum provides the illusion of choice and promises “better outcomes” by creating two separate systems that are inherently unequal. This is ill-informed for the exact reason stated, while some students in select areas may have an opportunity to access technology or environments more conducive to learning, schools are not the entirety of where learning takes place. Educational achievement is about considering the whole student: where they live, how their education and development is supported or left to struggle, and the tools that each student is able to harness to actualize their personal academic success.
The battleground for each of these issues begins with public education and ends at the ballot box. In our campaign, re-imagining education is about breaking down the walls of the school system and thinking through solutions that include the family and community, not as an ancillary factor but an integral part of how we help students succeed. There are no discards or lost causes in this approach; this is a student-centered approach that engages with individual schools to break down their walls and advance strategies that achieve 360 degree learning opportunities for each individual student to develop a lifetime love of learning.
I believe we must make space for radical imagination to avoid being incarcerated and caged in by all these ideas as beings who have been gendered, racialized, and situated in class dynamics. I invite us all to embrace this work from cradle to grave as a calling we put into action every day. Let us do justice. Let us vote justice. Let us roll up our sleeves and fight fairly and vigorously in each election going forward.
On November 3rd, we yet have the chance to break free. By every vote we cast. By every virtual public meeting we attend. By every representative we call, we can break free. All because we vote. We vote with our feet. We vote with our blood. We vote with our hearts. We must not stop hearing the call for justice now. This is not only our civic duty, it’s our moral imperative. The movement is not yet over. The battle for the next generation is not yet won. We are in a fight for our collective survival. Losing is not an option.
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Dr. Perry currently Chairs the Political Science Department at Howard University, and is also an At-Large Candidate for the School Board in the District of Columbia. @RAVIPERRY4DC.COM
