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while Thurman's work has long been associated with male homosexuality as a subtext for his outcast protagonist in The Darker the
Berry (1929), which explores the prejudice of light-skin privileges
within the Black community as a dark-skinned woman is stigmatized because of her dark complexion. Dark-skinned and Black
and gay, Thurman would go on to write Infants of the Spring (1932),
which looks at a Harlem salon for denizens of the Harlem Renaissance literati, and the racial, sexual, and social themes that consume them.
This has been the prevailing sentiment in much of early Black
gay literary criticism for the greater part of the 1980s. Charles I.
Nero published "Toward a Black gay Aesthetic: Signifying in Contemporary Black gay Literature" published in Brother to Brother:
New Writings by Black gay Men ( 1991). My doctoral thesis at
Indiana University (Framing Culture: Africanism, Sexuali~ and
Performance Tongues Untied and Paris is Burning, 1997), and
a few subsequent pieces, are on Black gay men in film and video,
and chart the distinct outpouring of Black gay men's literature
during the 1980s. These writings fueled the development of a
number of filmic representations of Black gay men in the late
1980s into the 1990s, and, in turn, helped Americans discover the
voices of a number of Black gay artists and writers, such as Essex
Hemphill, Cyrus Cassells, E. Lynn Harris, James Earl Hardy,
Stephen McCauley, and others. Some of these were involved in
the production of Tongues Untied, others were not. More recently (2000), Siobhan B. Somerville's Queering the Color Line:
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society. Indeed, Dodson would write that "in view of the fact that
society frowns upon homosexuality and discriminates against the
Negro, one might assume this the Negro homosexual labors under
a double handicap. This has been found not to be the case" (Dodson,
p. 8). What might this "double handicap" be like? How could we
define it, if not as Black and gay? What relation do these bear to the
experience of racism or homophobia? Why is racism and homophobia not mentioned or named in the text?
Though considered ingenuously unsophisticated or rather indifferent, we need to re-examine Dodson's text in light of an evolving
Black gay male literary criticism and explore the impact of his text
on pre-1980s representations of Black gay men. Needless to say,
Dodson's thesis is at odds with the stated positions of many Black
gay men, especially in contemporary writings. Compare the statement by Dodson with that of poet and essayist Essex Hemphill
writing on Black gay male sexuality: "At the baths, certain bars, in
bookstores and cruising zones, Black men were welcome because
these constructions of pleasure allowed the races to mutually explore sexual fantasies and, after all, the Black man engaging in
such a construction only needed to whip out a penis of almost any
size to obtain the rapt attention withheld from him in other social
and political structures of the gay community." These sites of pleasure, he notes, were more tolerant of Black men because they enhanced the sexual ambiance, but that same tolerance did not always
continue once the sun began to rise (Hemphill, 1991, p. xix).
Hemphill seems to suggest that the sexual scene allows a certain
permissibility in terms of interracial sexuality that the social scene
does not, an issue not very often addressed by many gay organizations (although there are notable exceptions).
Dodson continues that Black gay people do not suffer discrimination and in fact are more easily "tolerated" by gay whites than
Blacks in general are tolerated by their heterosexual peers, and that
"the Negro homosexual seems to adjust comfortably to the ways of
the homosexual society," presumably all-male, all-white, and allheterosexual. The "Negro homosexual" does not, he relates, "feel
tied to the Black gay organizations ghetto and to the generations of
ancestral masochism which has played such an important part in
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his history," a racist way to examine Black history and the historical experiences of Blacks--indeed, the "sambo thesis" that Dodson
relies upon harkens back to Stanley Elkin's discussion of Sambo
and the childlike "nature" of the plantation slave, always loyal but
lazy, humble but chronically given to lying and stealing (p. 82),
also, as Bogle notes, "hearty, submissive, stoic, generous, selfless,
and oh-so-very kind" (p. 6).
The Negro homosexual "finds a warm and welcome place in the
various homosexual haunts. He has no fears of being refused service in a homosexual bar; he is not classified as an inferior when
socializing with the Caucasian homosexuals; his skin color is not a
cause for rejection from an apartment house that caters
to...homosexuals" (Dodson, p. 8). (In general, we think that the
Black movement of the '60s spurred and gave impetus to a number
of other social movements.) This does not always correspond to
the reportings of many Black gay men who have experienced discrimination at predominately white gay bars where they may be
carded, or asked for an abundance of identification, to enter. Yet to
Dodson, the category of the "homosexual" is sufficient to warrant
the experience of both. The liberation of homosexuals is framed in
terms of their sexual choices and acceptance, which is the defining
aspect in terms of how he chooses to frame his discussion. Race,
class, and gender do not factor into his analysis, that is, the multiple, overlapping areas of experience of Black or "Negro" homosexuals do not come into play because primarily they are unnamed.
"Black and Gay" doesn't in this sense adequately speak to the Black
gay subject as Dodson constructs it. For Dodson, "even a heterosexual will accept the Negro on more or less of an even plane if the
Negro is homosexual and works at one of the 'categorized' homosexual trades." To put it bluntly, Dodson seems to suggest that only
stereotyped, perhaps cute and effeminate, gay Black men are accepted because they are easily identified as homosexual and not as
"Black," which "even a heterosexual" could easily accept though
this does not suggest an even plane.
For Dodson, the homosexual, both White and Black, lives his
life outside the perimeter of polite society. "This twilight society of
homosexuality is dawning more brightly with each passing year
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sible to delineate where the kernel of the story lies and where his
phantasmal imagination begins. In this sense, Dodson, in effect,
becomes the 20th century version of a Joel Chandler Harris, the
story-teller who tells other people's stories to other people.
What might have, ostensibly, been an important collection of
stories by Black men who are gay (and their relationships beyond
racial and sexual borders) becomes an indulgence in an exotic tourism that offers Dodson a platform to advance a naive treatise on
race relations especially in regard to gay men whom he purports to
understand. In adopting this approach to Black gay male textuality,
the Black gay men who are interviewed are desubjectivized in a
shallow view of interracial "harmony." Indeed, to take one example,
one need only look at the story of "Cliff" to understand the extent
to which Dodson fails to adequately comprehend the multiple conditions surrounding the lives he writes about but prefers instead to
fantasize them insignificant and inconsequential except as they conform to Dodson's phantasmic imaginary. In his quest to demonstrate that the path to ending racial strife is through sexuality, Dodson
downplays those tensions presented by his informants that are
present in "their" stories (if indeed they are in fact their stories.) In
these stories of contradiction, he first sexualizes then blames Black
gay men for the relations of power and the racism they encounter.
Although he seems to feel in his overview, introduction, and analysis of these stories that there is no hierarchicalization of race or skin
color, the narratives that he writes about would suggest the opposite (the same may hold true for relations of class, also, I would
add--both romanticized by Dodson).
Black & Gay is not a "great" work of literature. Its importance
here, as the work concerns representations of Black and gay men
(and is in fact another representation of them), is precisely that it is
an artifact that purports to detail Black gay lives and attempts to
argue the position. However, while the book remained in print, it
was well disseminated in popular format, the popular psychology
genre, and was available to a mass audience. Therefore, for the
period, 1969 to say 1979, Dodson was able to produce and disseminate similar kinds of unhealthy symbolic representations without significantly altering or questioning the dominant forms already
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mic stories do not extend Black and gay subjectivity but have the
effect of nullifying it. This is accomplished through the limited aims
of a narrow strategy of representation that both subjectivates and
substantiates the position of the author and simultaneously
marginalizes and limns Black and gay subjectivity. It is, precisely,
the voices of Black gay men that are lost in these fictionalized accounts of everyday encounters as the authorial, overseeing voice
of Dodson mutes Black gay tongues and subjectivity. Thus in these
stories Black men are tongue-tied. How does Dodson's constructed
"Negro Homosexual," tolerated by Whites, work to disadvantage
Black gay men? How does "race" work, in this instance, to mute
Black gay subjectivity? Is Dodson's view of race insufficiently
developed to consider power and cultural representation to advance
a more healthy view of both race and homosexuality, especially in
regard to Black gay men?
Dodson's approach is often simply insufficiently attentive to their
needs as living, breathing, creative, and dynamic human beings,
that is beyond stereotypical representations of Black gay men as
constituting a "problem" people (an all-too familiar portrait), beyond the angry passive-submissive, the extreme effeminate, the
macho sexual predator, the sexual victims, and the sexual prey. In
his effort to advance a racial theory or treatise involving Blacks and
homosexuals, Dodson is not as attuned to Black gay desire and
expression as a later generation would amass, especially in the face
of the AIDS pandemic in which many more Black gay men, following the lead of Black lesbian writers, would come to advance.
III. Borders: R a c e / C l a s s / S e x / P o r n
Metaphorically speaking
his Black dick is so big
when it stands up erect
it silences
the sound of his voice.
It obscures his view
of the territory, his history,
the cosmology of his identity
is rendered invisible.
--Essex Hemphill, "Black Machismo" Ceremonies (1992, p. 130)
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lence we might note as "his mind was in a turmoil" since "he knew
he should fight off this perversion, yet there was something deep
inside him, some germ of truth that made his cock stiffen slightly.
He reached down and pushed it between his legs so that it would
not be noticed" (Dodson, p. 18).
Throughout these fantasy encounters, Cliff is forever "hiding"
his penis. One reads of Cliff that "he reached down and pushed it
between his legs so that it would not be noticed" (p. 18), "Cliff
cinched his legs tighter together and held his cock prisoner," and in
another instance Dodson notes that "Quickly Cliff again adjusted
his cock so its hardness was not evident" (p. 19). Although the
author reads this as Cliff's embarrassment at being sexually excited
by the scenario, it seems equally instructive to read it as an act by
Cliff to prevent the act of possession by Jarvis, who perhaps wishes
not so much to possess Cliff as to possess the phallus. Interestingly, after the incidents between Cliff and Jarvis, Dodson has Cliff
wondering if he is queer. But the story suggests that it is Jarvis who
might be doing the soul-searching, and not so much that he might
be queer but that he might be a rapist. The intersection of race,
class, and sexuality are here illuminating but thoroughly romanticized to release a violent pleasure, a pleasure gained at Cliff's peril.
The encounter ends with Jarvis' orgasm, and Cliff is ordered to
clean the coal bin, an act which at once highlights the romanticization of the nexus of race and class, which is in turn interwoven into
the stuff of pornographic fantasy. In some cases, white men, gay
and straight, do not focus on the pornographic implications of gay
male erotica or porn, especially in regard to race or interracial sexuality. Indeed, in recent gay male literary criticism, white gay men
seem to come from the opposite angle.
John Champagne, for example, includes essays on the works
Tongues Untied and Paris is Burning (both Black gay productions)
in his book, The Ethics of Marginalia: A New Approach to Gay
Studies. While ostensibly arguing for a new "ethics" his focus in
these essays is very often less a sustained focus on Black gay men
in literature and the visual (he ignores completely the literary precedents for the documentary Tongues Untied) than it is a furthering
of a sustained argument to refute the antipornographic. He finds
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articulations of the antipornographic riddled throughout contemporary Black and gay expression, particularly in the poetry and
prose of Essex Hemphill and in the video Tongues Untied, which
features the work of Hemphill and other poets--and while
Hemphill's essays on Mapplethorpe do argue against an objectification of the Black male they do acknowledge the desire and ambivalence of Black gay men toward those images as well as call for
new images and representations; but this is not to say that Hemphill's
work does not entertain the erotic, as some have criticized, or the
pornographic, but that it isn't racistly objectifying of Black m e n - gay or straight.
For example, in the poem "Le Salon," Hemphill writes "Lowering my pants/before another mouth ;/the cheap movie reel/rattles in
its compartment/while the silent color movie/for a quarter/grinds
around and around./We pant in a dark booth./The musk of hair/
burns our nostrils./I moan as his mouth/swallows me./This is the
first sound in this silent movie.ffhen he moans/giving the movie/its
dialogue" (1992, p. 151). While it may be true that certain feminists who in their desire to end pornography have allied themselves
dangerously with the radical right, and this may negatively impact
those who argue for the legal sanctioning of gay male pornography
(cf., Bronksi, 1984; Watney, 1987; Champagne, 1995; Stychin,
1995) there are profeminist Black gay men who signal a healthy
respect for gay male desire and at the same time articulate the dangers of racism (Beam, 1986; Hemphill, 1986; Riggs, Tongues Untied, 1989; Hemphill, 1992). Clearly Hemphill's poem is not
anti-pornographic so much as it is proerotic, the setting is a porn
house or adult theatre but the love-making in the movie booth outpaces the porn reel; the men are more interested in each other and
the moans they make add the soundtrack to this silent porn flick.
Thus, Black gay articulations of pornography are mostly about men
and not, as some feminists insist, that male homosexuality be about
women by appropriating gay men's images and desire toward an
antipornographic or anti-gay agenda that attempts to inscribe the
very heterosexual matrix, paradoxically, at the heart of the radical
feminist project (Butler 1993; Pinc heon 1997, p. 219). Butler describes such accusations as following the same kind of logic as
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those homophobic remarks that often follow upon the discovery that
one is a lesbian: a lesbian is one who must have had a bad experience
with men, or who has not yet found the right one (Butler, p. 127).
As Cliff is left to ponder whether or not he is gay, Dodson notes,
"It had to end sometime, Cliff told himself as he busied himself
with the work. 'I wonder when?' he said aloud. Yet there was something in the experience that aroused him. He frowned and wondered if this was what queers were supposed (sic) to be like. Was he
a queer? He got excited when Mr. Jarvis made him suck his c o c k - so if he got excited by it, then he must like it, he rationalized, and if
he liked it, then he must be a queer" (Dodson, p. 20). But in the
narrative, his thinking is quickly, in a familiar trope, disrupted. As
though to literalize the homophobic violence enacted in this fictionalized depiction, Dodson continues: "The door opened behind him
and Jarvis came back into the furnace room. 'You say anything about
this, boy, and we' 11skin that Black hide fight offa your back, hear?"
(Dodson, pp. 20-21 ). From there the rest is "history;' shall we say, in
Black and white with a plantation twist. In the narrative, Cliff becomes the "uppity nigger" who is punished for his "insolence" by a
beating and a force fuck, first by Jarvis and later by Jarvis' friends.
The narrative, although Dodson fails to make the connection, is
quite parallel in situation and plot to Steve Carter's Drum, the story
of a degraded male slave surrounded by sexual predators.
When Cliff returns to school, he reminisces "about those sex
orgies in the furnace room" (Dodson, p. 24). His own thoughts
turn to white boys. He thinks about Matt. "Matt was the most handsome white man he had ever seen in his life. He never knew m e n
could be so beautiful. W h e n Cliff closed his eyes he could envision
Matt's golden blond hair and those piercing blue eyes underlined
by that gentle but devilish crooked smile." Cliff feels his erection
and "Matt's face was shaken from his thoughts" (Dodson, p. 24).
It was during one of these moments of reminiscing that Cliff met Paul. Cliff
sat in the last chair in Miss Emery's class and although he knew he was
supposed to be studying the next day's assignment, he could not stop
Matt's face from creeping into his mind. Cliff's eyes closed and he stretched
out his legs and slumped in his chair as he let himself think about the time
that Matt had gotten into him. He was suddenly aroused from his day-
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Later, Paul asks Cliff to a game that evening. In what seems the
most realistic section of the narrative, Cliff, in his dialogue with
Paul, invokes the racial sanctions against Black and white friendship in their small, segregated town: "'Are you going to the game
tonight, Cliff?' 'Me? You're puttin' me on, man. I'm lucky to be
sittin' in the same class room as you, let along going out socially.'
He forced a chuckle. 'Shit! Who's goin to stop you from going to
the game?' 'Look, friend, not all white boys are as tolerant of us as
you are. This school ain't been integrated long enough to get folks
used to the idea of Black boys and girls together with white boys
and girls. We ain't safe out of our neighborhood at night, and you
know it!'" (Dodson, p. 28). This raises the point that if sexual or
interracial sexual equality is achieved, then is social equality automatically granted?
Paul invokes the power of his father, a prominent white citizen,
in an effort to allay Cliff's fears: "Come to the game with me. They
wouldn't lay a finger on you with me along-side you. You know
who my old man is, don't you?" (Dodson, p. 29). While Paul persists in attempting to pick Cliff up for the evening, Cliff registers
his concerns for the risks (to both himself and Paul) of their encounter. "You're off your bean. You drive into shanty town in that
new convertible of yours and you'd be as safe as I would be if I sat
down at the mayor's dinner table. You'd get your ass ripped right
off you. Don't forget, buddy boy, we Black boys aren't welcome
in your part of town and you white boys aren't welcome on our
side. That's the way it is and that's the way it's goin" stay for a long
time yet." Paul thought, then shot Cliff a playful look, his eyes
twinkled with mischief. "Then I'll pick you up on the borderline."
He held on to his silly little grin (Dodson, p. 29). The borderline in
this case is the railroad tracks separating Black and white residents
in their small segregated town. Historically in many southern towns,
the railroad tracks function as a dividing line, the metaphorical and
literal divide between racial groups, and Cliff and Paul decide to
play not only with a taboo sexuality, that is interracial homosexuality, but with crossing other borders as well.
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Still, Cliff remains unpersuaded. "I ain't goin' to the game and
that's that." "Then we don't have to go to the game. We'll go for a
drive into Raleigh.' .... Oh great,' Cliff said, showing his exasperation." "That'll look just peachy now, won't it? You and me, Black
and white together and all that kind of shit, driving as big as shit
down the highway to Raleigh. Just how far do you think we'd get
before the troops moved in? .... Oh, for Christ's sake, Cliff, I'm just
trying to be friendly. . . . " "I know you are," Cliff said almost in a
whisper," and I appreciate it, but it ain't much use to make friends
with someone who ain't of the same color. It just don't pay in the
end."
On this last note, "it just don't pay in the end," we see some of
Cliff's fears emerge, fears of retaliation, retribution for breaking
racial taboos, racial borders and sexual taboos and sexual borders.
Paul continues his attempt at persuading him. "'I personally think
you're mistaken, my friend,' Paul answered with the affected pomposity of a politician. 'And I'll tell you what I'm a-goin' do.' Cliff
couldn't hold back the smile.' .... Meet me at seven on the tracks
that cross River's place. You can walk there in about ten minutes.'
T l l streak along in my sporty little wagon and pick you up. We go
for a drive along the river and talk about girls--how's that for a
night on the town?'" (Dodson, pp. 29-30).
As they depart, Cliff stops at a drinking fountain and when he
turns to look at Paul, gathered with two of his friends, he notices
when they turn in unison toward him. "He heard Paul grumble
something at his buddies that sounded very much like, 'Go fuck
yourselves!' before he dashed up the stairs to his next class. His
friends were laughing. Cliff had a tight feeling in his stomach. He
was pretty sure he knew what they were laughing about" (Dodson,
p. 31).
The tight feeling that he felt earlier "stayed with him all day, and
when he was walking slowly toward Mr. River's place at about ten
of seven that night, he still hadn't convinced himself that he should
keep his date with Paul." Cliff felt certain that he would get hurt in
the end, and that Paul would get hurt, also by those white boys
who taunted Paul but who had called themselves his friends. "'Hey !
Where are you going?' Paul's voice rooted Cliff to the spot. He
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refrain in Black gay men's writing and poetry succinctly states how
Black gay men can characterize ghettoized Black gay male life and
one's introduction and/or initiation into Black gay male culture.
White men, Dodson notes, might conclude from Cliff's anger
that he harbors "a pure unadulterated hatred" for white males. Black
nationalists might read into the story that Cliff wanted to escape the
"responsibilities of manhood and submit to white men," and thus
that he hates Black people. Perhaps this story calls for a re-reading,
one which acknowledges that what the narrative itself suggests Cliff
wants first is love. Perhaps, as the narrative suggests, what he hates
is the white men's behavior and those actions directed toward him
which they do not recognize as harmful, that he might be hurt by
not receiving the love that he wants from a mutually rewarding
relationship. We are accustomed to reading this and other stories as
Dodson has, through a simplified prism of Black and white, which
in this instance yields no spectacular insight on Black gay men as
sexual subjects, as the center of their own beings, but merely the
snug conformism of a dull, uniform gray which would obscure
Black gay male desire, subjectivity and creativity.
Dodson concludes his summation of"Cliff's Story" by aligning
himself with the psychiatric institution, offering a psychological assessment which reverses the cards, so to speak, and places the kinds
of negative experiences that Cliff encounters in the narrative solely
on Cliff's shoulders and in fact blames him for those experiences:
A psychiatrist might claim that it was Cliff's first exposure to sex with
white males that seeded this feeling of resentment and distrust, hiding
Cliff's true inner feelings of pure unadulterated hatred. Under psychoanalysis it might be proven that Cliff did not want to perpetuate or continue the relationship with a white boy. It is not inconceivable that it was
Cliff who was actually using Paul, rather than the other way around.
(Dodson, p. 46)
- - B u t why resentment and distrust toward Paul? whom Cliff
professes love if not that Paul weren't able to return that love? This
would support my premise that these are not the stories of Black
men who are gay. Who's zooming who? If homophobia is an irrational hatred or fear of homosexuality, then it is hard to characterize
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Cliff's feelings as "pure unadulterated hatred" or fear of h o m o sexuality in this instance since Cliff isn't afraid o f a relationship
with Paul (on the contrary it is he who expresses an unrequited
desire for a relationship) so m u c h as a pure unadulterated fear o f
possible racial penalties. The stories that D o d s o n records are not
n e w to some. Writing about growing up in the south o f Georgia,
Little Richard would write:
I went through a lot when I was a boy. They called me sissy, punk, freak,
and faggot. If I ever went out to friends' houses on my own, the guys would
try to catch me, about eight or twenty of them together. They would run
me. I never knew I could run so fast, but I was scared. They would jump on
me, you know, 'cos they didn't like my action . . . . Sometimes white men
would pick me up in their car and take me to the woods and try to get me
to suck them. A whole lot of Black people have had to do that. It happened
to me and my friend, Hester. I ran offinto the woods. My friends, he didn't.
9.I was scared. (cited in Julien and Mercer, p. 167)
T h e first person voice rings true in a m a n n e r that D o d s o n ' s stories are not allowed to infuse the tone and texture o f his volume.
The authorial voice of the author, his insinuating tone, transforms
the stories from Black gay texts more properly to mediated ones.
For example, instead o f approaching the stories f r o m this angle,
that is the Black gay man often afraid for or unsure of himself in the
face o f homophobia, often uncertain of the racial climate in which
he is emersed or afraid of acts o f hatred and racism, Dodson blames
Cliffas though those feelings are uncomprehendable. In Dodson's
analysis of these stories, neither racism nor h o m o p h o b i a are m e n tioned. Thus, Dodson's stories are often, instead o f first-person singular texts of Black gay male experience, summations of sexualized
racial fantasies and those negative conditions and experiences which
m e n w h o are both Black and gay m a y encounter in a racist and
homophobic s o c i e t y - - e v e n t s both actual and real, and those fantasies riddled throughout the popular imagination as they concern
Black gay men in general and interracial male relations in particular-which the phobic imagination always attempts to vividly concretize
and steadfastly engender, and which because of the historical context
of a racist society are not for that reason to be divorced f r o m those
oppressive acts and situations e n g e n d e r e d by a racist society.
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But therein lies the evidence of things not seen, the inner workings of the phobic imaginary, offering itself up as the "true" and
real against the actual words and voices that constitute the texts of
gay Black men, texts vocal and written that are worthy of sustained
attention. In their off-Broadway run of Strange Fruit, the Black
gay performance trio Pomo Afro Homo take more creative license
with "Cliff's Story." While Paul and Cliff are sitting in the car making love, they are caught by their teacher, Miss Emery. The teacher
is shocked to find the two boys together (the town is still segregated) and even more shocked that they are "caught in the act," so
to speak, as the two are engaged sexually. She impresses upon
Paul that he should not be with Cliff who is Black. Paul's sexuality
is not an issue for Miss Emery because she obviously feels that it is
Cliff who "instigates" the act (and therefore, such goes the logic,
somehow responsible for Paul's homosexuality) and who is in fact
then blamed for the whole scenario because of his race and because he is gay. Cliff is then the predatory homosexual in this instance, just as Dodson in the end describes Cliff as a hard, cold,
calculating homosexual as he leaves the small town to enter the
"thriving city" of New York. Paul, however, does not speak up and
come to his defense. Cliff, unlike Paul, has prejudicial penalties
levied against him. Miss Emery informs him that for such "unseemly" behavior, she has decided not to recommend him for a
scholarship that he desperately wants to attend college. The penalty is severe and Cliff is crushed.
This scenario highlights what Cliff, who is young, Black, and
the son of poor parents, attempts to communicate to Paul who,
although young, is the son of wealth and whiteness. When the gauntlet falls, it falls unevenly. This was so in early American society
when Blacks who were apprehended for engaging in acts of sodomy were punished much more severely than Whites (Pincheon,
2000b). The differential treatment of Black and White gay men by
society is what might have emerged from Dodson's analysis.
That Black gay men and gays of color more generally are often
blamed for conditions of homophobia and racism, and those situations of violence in which they often find themselves and which
they did not manufacture is but a legacy of such discrimination.
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This paper was presented at the 1999 29th Annual Popular Culture Association and 21st American Culture Association Annual
Conference in San Diego, CA, as "Constructing the Black gay
Subject in the Popular Literature of the 1970s."
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