All Boy’s Aren’t Blue

I can’t recall how I came across George Johnson’s All Boy’s Aren’t Blue. I think I saw a friend mention it on social media just after it was published. Needless to say, the book spoke profoundly to my experience as a Black gay cis-gender man. A saving grace and spiritual booster while engaging in the resurgence of a new intersectional social justice movement pushing against an administration actively perpetuating racism and dismantling LGBTQIA+ rights.

As a memoir-manifesto, the book fulfills a greater purpose of being a personal, yet shared narrative exploring the intersections of race, sexuality and gender. It is both subjective and objective in one. Within George’s narrative each of these social identities can be defined distinctly or together in an interdependent or sometime opposing fashion without space for either. The book bares the deep humanity of Black queer folks living in a stigmatized, phobic, and ism’ed world. It is a monumental blueprint mechanizing storytelling to promote pragmatic reflection, healing, survival, and most importantly thrival in our God given lives. A tasteful, nutrient dense slither of the counter-storytelling tenet proposed in critical race theory.

The narrative; respective to the details of George’s experiences, is one in I deeply connected to and felt the history of my young life become vibrant with meaning. Woven between George’s words and reflections, I found myself recalling my own battle to understand how my race and sexuality functioned. Am I truly Black if I don’t do this or participate in that? Am I gay if I have had sex with women and find them romantically attractive? Only in recent years have I thought about my personal merit recognizing the intersection of being Black and gay. Though these identities have played active themes of bravery and resilience, nuanced with stress and pain, I never truly considered how each functioned separately and together in my differing social spheres. Furthermore, I realize that while my identities do shape beautiful and large components of my living, alone or separate they do not define me, and I will not allow others to constrain me to narratives and colors the world wishes to dress me in.

“When our gender is assigned at birth, we are also assigned responsibilities to grow and maneuver through life based on the simple checking off to those boxes. Male. Female. Black. White. Straight. Gay. Kids who don’t fit the perfect boxes are often left asking themselves what the truth is

Am I a….” (pg.3)

To think society attempts to assign us, as individuals and communities, value and predictions of our paths before we are even born, it’s absurd. Breaking free of these chaining, draining requirements is feat and an individual’s journey, yet we are alone not in it. George shares vivid insights on finding our confidence in our identities through remembrance of his cousin Hope, formerly known as Jermaine. It’s communal support. When we see, celebrate and value persons living outside of the regurgitated assignments of society, we have opportunity to then manifest ourselves living free and true, irrespective of nurture vs. nature argument. Margins had no hold on Hope.

The below section of the narrative consistently stands out for me because at a young age George was able to see the humanity of another, and in cycle, the humanity of himself. George brings clarity that identity and understanding of self is not stagnant or fixed, but everchanging, especially as we learn and see ourselves in others and others in ourselves. There’s a universal, interpersonal connection found in his expression synonymous to social connectedness concepts expressed in Alderian psychology. Nothing, no one, occurs in isolation.

George humbly and courageously shares with us the precarious nature of learning to love one’s relatively hidden identity, sexuality and/or gender, as a Black child in a systemically, both actively and passively, anti-Black world. Safe spaces for one social identity could easily be a double-edged sword and become the harmful zone for the other, and vice versa. Where is the space of safety between the White hierarchal LGBTQIA+ community and the binary cis-heteronormative Black community? It makes me reflect on how the Black church congregation can be a joyous and uplifting space for a Black person’s humanity, all until one rationalizes the normalcy of ones marginalized sexuality or opposite gender assignment, and within one scripture reading the offender becomes villainized and fit for communal damnation. At the same time, the White LGBTQIA+ family readily consumes the cultural products and creations of Black femmes, while “romantically” weaponizing racial identity through White-only sexual/dating preferences, or BBC-dominant fetishes, or simply anything else to reinstate racial power.

“I fight very hard for myself and my community because I have seen firsthand what the destruction of it looks like. A Blackness that can’t tolerate and protect queerness. A white society wanting to destroy us all. You gave hope to me, living as the person you wanted to be, dying as the person you wanted to be.” (pg.175)

So, how do we overcome such stigmatized barriers in life? How does one manifest enough power, enough courage, enough hope to find oneself a manifestation of all the colors one chooses and acknowledges oneself to be? I think, I learned, and I am certain it starts with love. Love in your family and/or your chosen family; people not given to you at birth, but who you have come to call on throughout life. I find George growing in this dynamic love via his relationships to his Mother and Nanny. Speaking in a letter to his mom:

“The world gives you no breaks as a Black woman. I know it was likely even harder raising a Black queer kid in society….

There was no time when I didn’t feel safe in your presence or that I couldn’t talk to you…

I can totally understand that many of the choices you made were out of safety, not the denial of my personality…

Thank you for… always reassuring me that I was perfectly made for this journey. I love you.” (pg.177-189)

George concludes his story stating that he, similar to others, did not have a road map “in order to understand what I was going through as a kid.” And that this highly recommended book should hopefully serve purpose, much like Hope to him, in helping young Black queers and their families find themselves in community, not alone.

And bringing it home for me, George shares that his overall “Black family dynamic that isn’t often talked about, a family that is queer affirming, while still learning about and navigating difficult spaces.” This for me honors the steady tempo of progression regardless of where you are. That we all have work to do to break down barriers, both overt and covert, so that we create a world where folks can walk and thrive and be all they are here to be, in love and in hope.