Deray McKesson is an activist, he ran for mayor of Baltimore, he’s gay, he’s a black man, and last night during protests in Baton Rouge he was arrested.
For those who don’t know, Deray’s activism has been noticed by President Obama, Reverend Al Sharpton, CNN, Stephen Colbert, and many others. He’s a household name in the #BlackLivesMatter movement and now the nation is waiting to see if anything happens to him while in police custody. They wait because they’ve realized that his arrest was no coincidence. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested many times during his activism, so was Huey P. Newton. They became targets because they preached against the abuse of power that was common to the police. Deray’s arrest is not a surprise, but it still has people holding their breath as they wait.
However, not everybody is positively anticipating his release. Many are rooting for police to follow their previous actions and end another black life. A Trump supporter offered that the “good old boys at Baton Rouge Police Department” should make Deray disappear. He believes the act would be heroic. And though not everyone is as violent with their disagreement, they are just as wrong. Cisgender heterosexual Black men have decided to come forth with not only their homophobia and transphobia, but also with their own internalized anti-blackness. They talk of how they found out about Deray’s sexuality and immediately, they felt they could no longer respect him as a black man and activist. Deray’s activism is not limited to advocating for the lives of straight cisgender black men. It extends to the black LGBTQA+ community as well. He is truly in support of ALL black people everywhere and yet these men choose not to support him for his sexuality. Where Deray’s actions scream selflessness, their actions reek of entitlement.
Like many other black minority activists, Deray is putting himself in the frontline of this battle against police brutality, a battle that benefits black people everywhere. This has always been the case with black minorities, and the attitude shown towards Deray mirrors the attitude shown to the other activists who risk their own safety for someone else. As a black man sits in jail accused of crimes that he is not guilty of, straight cisgender black men can only talk about his sexuality, not his work as an activist for their lives. Not only are we tasked with watching his back against white supremacists who would rather see him dead than fighting for us, but we must also keep a look out for the homophobic tendencies of men and women in our own communities. This struggle is not exclusive to straight, cisgender black men! It affects us all- and the minorities are the ones doing a lot of the grunt work.
A gay black man whose work helps everyone in our community was arrested trying to fight for your right to live– on his birthday– and all you can talk about is that you can’t respect the fact that he’s gay? He respects and values your life enough to go and risk his own but you can’t get over his sexuality. Black women and black (sexual?) minorities have never stopped fighting for the rights of black people and it sickens those who appreciate their work to see people fail to realize that when you celebrate blackness, you also celebrate queerness. For Deray, his sexual identity and his race go hand in hand, making him a target to more than one group of bigots. Black men need not include themselves in either of those groups as Deray and many others have risked far too much to stand with us without a second thought.
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