On Jason Collins and The Embrace of White Culture

 

Dear Queerty commenter,

I'm not sure why the website flagged this reply to you. Maybe it took me too long to pull my thoughts together, type them out, and click the send button which triggered some spam sensor or other. At any rate this is what I was trying to say:

Yeah, I was kind of waiting for this.

As soon as I read Jason Collins explaining the significance of the number 98 on his jersey, I knew some tone deaf malcontent (straight or queer, and most likely Black) was going to take issue with it, objecting on the grounds of race. Collins making the decision to come out of his NBA closet is an awesome cultural, social and political moment. But it seems all you've managed to take from it is how wrong it feels for him to honor the memory of a dead White boy.

Just tell me this, please. Precisely whom of all those Black men and boys whose brutalization Collins is supposedly ignoring would you have him publicly recognize? You yourself named no one in particular and that, surely, is the point. There are too many to name (especially if we include in the tally all the Black women and girls you don't bother to acknowledge), and their deaths by gay bashing are harder to track as such because their grieving families often cloak the details, refusing to allow their slain children to be publicly identified as LGBT. Too often it is Black homophobia, and the denial it produces, that subverts proper justice for Black victims of anti-gay violence.

Matthew Shepard's 1998 torture/murder was heinous and heartless, galvanizing the grief and anger of all kinds of people--not just White and not just gay--here in the United States and around the world. It was also one of the few gay bashings that shocked mainstream press organizations out of their collective indifference, forcing them to acknowledge that LGBT lives matter--and so do our deaths. Matthew's murder, the sheer mindless cruelty of it, became a call to action, and his face and name have--with his parents' full cooperation--come to symbolize the horrifying consequences of homophobia.

This, I'm sure, is why Jason Collins selected 98. It isn't that other victims, known or unknown, don't matter; rather the nod to Matthew is meant to acknowledge all the victims of intolerance and hatred--Black Trannies, White Bisexuals, Lesbian Latinas, Asian Gays and every gender, racial and ethnic rainbow member in between--that Matthew's martyrdom represents.

I'm sorry, but I do not see how Jason's public acknowledgment of Matthew Shepard translates as an "embrace of white culture and all that comes with it." Nor, at this writing, has Collins revealed he has a boyfriend or partner, White or otherwise. But even if he does, so what? You seem to be suggesting that Black queers should stay on their side of the color line where they belong. You identify as a Black gay man--are you sure you want to say that? Would that sentiment be agreeable to you coming out of the mouth of a White person?

To your final point, if Black gay relationships are "invisible," overwhelmingly the reason for it is that too many Black men, most especially those with public profiles, persist in living DL existences.

In which case your quarrel is absolutely not with Jason Collins.