By Colwyn Burchall, Jr.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” – Audre Lorde

Black people in the GTA and beyond have to realize that in an unapologetically white supremacist society, everything about them - from the kinkiness of their hair, the fullness of their hips, lips and buttocks, the revolutionary retooling of oppressor tongues (French, English, Portuguese and Spanish), to the polyrhythmic dynamism of their musical forms - is and forever will be ‘queer’/ ‘unnatural’/ ‘abnormal’.

Whether or not we are so-called ‘straight’, gay, transgender, or we occupy another space on the spectrum won’t do a damn thing to change this fact.

Consider:

- when James Byrd Jr. was dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas, by those white boys, they didn’t stop and ask him: “Are you gay?”

- when 18-year-old Junior Alexander Manon was murdered by Toronto’s finest, they didn’t pause to inquire about his sexual orientation.

- when the Obama administration and its NATO water carriers laid waste to Libya and overthrew its leader, they didn’t do a head count to ensure that they weren’t dropping their bombs on Libyan heterosexuals.

Here is the simple, painful truth: regardless of who we vote for, the class position that we occupy, the level of education that we have achieved, or who we choose to share our bodies and hearts with, we are viewed (by the wider, whiter community) as an undifferentiated mass of dusky humanity called NIGGER.

We are denied access to goods and services, demonized in the media, ignored by politicians and brutalized by the police because it is clearly understood that, of all of the ‘races’ in the human family, we alone are the unnatural ones and, as such, are worthy recipients of inhuman treatment.

And when we ingest these crippling, divisive beliefs and then regurgitate them - clothed in the dubious finery of homophobic rhetoric - in an effort to deny equal recognition to our LGBTQ kin, we are essentially serving the ‘divide, conquer and destroy’ interests of those who, not too many moons ago, derived great pleasure from seeing our kind swinging, bug-eyed and lifeless, from the boughs of trees.

We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. With no exceptions. This is natural and normal.

Any effort to tear asunder what many of our Ancestors fought and died to put together - namely, Black unity across all boundaries, be they of class, caste, religion, geographical location, language or sexual orientation - is unnatural and abnormal and should be roundly condemned wherever it rears its ugly head.

Understand this: we will rise or fall together. We will RISE or FALL….TOGETHER.

Despite enduring the savage caress of white supremacy for the past five centuries, we have yet to fully grasp this self-evident truth.

Clearly, then, we still have much to learn.

Colwyn Burchall, Jr. is a co-facilitator of the upcoming BDC Taboo discussion, “Queer as (Black) Folk: A Conversation on Homophobia and Homosexuality in the Black Community.” The event will take place at the George Vari Engineering and Computer Centre on Saturday, November 26^th 2011.

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