As I was browsing
through the materials suggested for the lesson plan addressing gayness, I came
across the interview with James Baldwin. He was being regarded as a pioneer for
the gay lifestyle despite resenting the word “gay” and all the negative
connotations that it has been assigned by straight society. He didn’t feel like
a word should possess such power because in allowing someone to use it to
describe his sexual preferences, he was allowing them to stuff him into a
category. It’s almost as if he felt the world should not see “gayness” similar
to how some people don’t see color. However, I’m wondering if it might lead to
the same negative outcome as not being identified as black, that we’ve been
discussing in class. Is he proposing that because being gay is not something
that is immediately identified upon looking at someone, it does not need to be
the topic of conversation? He goes as far as saying that building a coalition
simply on sexual preference is “dubious”. He believed that people would benefit more
from a coalition that focused on “humanity” rather than focus on who people
chose to love or where they chose to find it.
The
interview was real interesting to me because Goldstein, the interviewer, was from
a much younger generation and he looked to Baldwin as a hero. I don’t believe
that the Baldwin he met that day in the café, was what he was expecting to
find. I believe that Goldstein expected to find a man with an intense desire to
rally and fight for the cause, but instead, he found a man that had been through
many trials and tribulations and had found his peace on a more spiritual level.
The man sitting at the café was looking to the future with optimism for what we
as humans would be capable of and acceptable of. He mentioned that men sleeping
with men is not a new thing. It has been done successfully for thousands of years
by men who fought and lead tribes of men with great success. It is our new
American culture that has elected to view it as a sin and furthermore, to use
it as a tool to make those who are feeling uncomfortable in their own skin to
chastise others and feel better about themselves.
In this day
and age, when being a bigot, being a sexist, being a violent criminal that
walks into schools with an automatic rifle and takes the lives of the innocent
should be qualified as being rattled with sin, we continue to focus on the
background noise and judge the oppressed.
Thanks for your post Brigette. I love the question you pose about Baldwin's discomfort with labeling particularly the label of gay. Does seeing people as people/ organizing around "humanity, amount to a kind of post-racial ideology? Like I don't see race/ sexual orientation, etc? Somehow I feel that if Baldwin were alive today (31 years after the interview), he might express these ideas differently...
ReplyDeleteAnd I feel you, everything feels shaped and shaded right now by the horrible events in FLA and also the students' uprisings.
Thanks for your reflections, Brigette. I think that your analysis of what Goldstein was expecting to find when he met with Baldwin vs. what actually went down in the interview is spot on. Your point about Baldwin's rejection of a label for his sexuality as being potentially parallel to colorblindness is super interesting. I wonder how he would feel about this in 2018 during a political and social moment that is bookended by a Trump presidency and the Black Lives Matter movement, which centers queer and trans POC organizers and leaders.
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