Fuckery & Foolishness: Reflections on National Black HIV & AIDS Awareness Day

se-lah:

“You think you know all of Yolo, but you Don’t/ One side of him is far too mean/ the  watered  down one/ the one you know/was made up CENTURIES ago/they made him sound all whack  and corny/yes he’s blasted/AWFUL boring/ twisted fiction/ w strict omissions/ wanna meet the other one children?/ THEN ZIP IT./ LISTEN.”

  Yesterday, I sat and reflected on National Black HIV & AIDS awareness day.  I reflected on all the work being done in the black community and in the black gay community specifically. My first feeling was gratefulness. There are so many amazing individuals on the front lines, working hard every day to educate and empower our community to finally deal head on with this pandemic. I have had the honor of working with many of these talented individuals  and I am so grateful to see their work carry on.The next feeling that arose within me was anger. No scratch that. Rage. Though I know that the intention of the work is well meaning, there is more f*ckery and foolishness going on in the world of Black gay HIV & AIDS work than most outside of the field can even fathom. Mind you, f*ckery and foolishness is not unique to black gay HIV & AIDS organizations, the white gay orgs and everyone else does it too, but we do have our own special store bought brand that I would like to take some time to discuss here.

 

You see, It is this f*ckery and foolishness that I would argue contributes largely to many community based organizations inability to effectively heal, empower and educate our communities. It is a phenomenon that science cannot effectively measure, one rooted in the emotional scars and psychic trauma that many black gay men carry into this work and continue to inflict on the populations they serve.The assumption for so long has been, to serve a community best, those who are a part of that community should do it. In other words, to help black gay folks, black gay folks should be doing the community work to a great extent. However, much of HIV & AIDS prevention relies on the disruption of norms around sexuality and silence etc, norms that the individuals who are  a part of said communities embody and enact as members of that population.

The little training  that is provided by most orgs. does not offer black gay men tools with which to become self aware and develop consciousness around the fact that they too must deal with their own issues. Many of the trainings assume that the intellectual absorption of ideas and theories immediately translates into facilitators and educators’ embodiment and understanding of how not to perpetuate unhealthy norms.  This is just simply not the case.

Far too often I have experienced the horror of sitting in spaces and working with organizations where managers, CEO’s  and supervisors have said some of the most troubling and destructive things to clients that have been directly linked to their own trauma and the agencies failure to train individuals to note their own issues.  What do you make of a manager of a community center telling the kids they might go to hell if they are HIV positive and don’t use condoms? What do you make of a group education session where the facilitator tells the participants that “y’all just wish you were tops, but I know y’all are bottoms?”  How do you measure the various subtle but harmful emotional abuses that group facilitators, unchecked and poorly supervised, inflict amongst the group?  How do we explain the fact the many of the leaders in the black gay community doing HIV & AIDS work have become tyrannical, destructive, dramatic and abusive entities and yet are consistently allowed to stay in power? How do we effectively barrage the endless mileu of economic embezzlements, sexual indiscretion, and abuse?

 

As far as I’m concerned, the first thing we need to do is bring these realities to light. For far too long the black gay HIV & AIDS community has functioned with a “dirty laundry” mentality, ignoring the countless abuses organizations are making with no or little public statement about it in order to save political face or make sure they can cash the next CDC government check when it comes.

 

So what do we do?

I have some ideas.

 Get the Dictators OUT:  Many of the black gay men, like Mubarak in Egypt, have been in power for too damn long. Brilliant even as they are abusive, these men have used their organizations as sites where they can exert control in their lives in order to avoid the looming despair and distress of their emotional state. Many of them have had to live through the horror of the early days of HIV & AIDS, when they lost dozens of friends, and lived with a fear that is incomparable to what an HIV positive result is today. Many have not even begun to deal with how that trauma has impacted them and it has shown up in the catty abusive dynamics between and within organizations. We simply can no longer afford to let this continue. We must demand that these leaders (and you know who they are, they are all over the country) develop a succession plan and issue public apologies for the ridiculous and innane things they have done. If they can do nothing less than this, than they should be removed by the communities they serve. Immediately.

 

Develop Self Awareness Trainings: If we are to effectively save ourselves as black gay men, then we need to start looking within in order to change our realities without. We need mandatory trainings that give the staff of HIV & AIDS organizations critical self awareness of their own psycho-social histories and issues as well as tools to help them check themselves (and each other) in loving and accountable ways. We need intentional dialogue trainings and models of power in our organizations that are not based on the dysfunctional, abusive corporate model. We need “open door policy” ( meaning that our doors are open to criticism and dialogue) to not really mean that I will kick you out if you don’t f*ck me.We have to confront head on our stuff and go to work not just in our heads but in our hearts. We cannot afford to continue the black family dynamic of gossip, side talk, and eye cutting when it comes to our lives. We need change now. Our lives depend on it.

Check yourself: All the egotistical behavior and one-upmanship is just an attempt to mask the fact that we all are hurting, insecure, struggling to survive, and love each other in this place and time. Let’s get real and be honest about it instead of looking for the next place to prove how tough we are. We are each other. If you are a mess, than that means I’m a mess too. Let’s hold each other accountable without the competition.

 To close, let me drop this for the white gays who may be ready to run with “look at how messed up the black gays are.” The fact that the rates of infection are so high in the black community are not just about our own challenges, but the social privilege you receive by virtue of being white and the historic legacy of your culture that has participated in the intentional devastation and destruction of our communities. Reality is, the white gay community is often so racist and elitist that they are more concerned with their property values and their dogs than the lives of black gay men (unless they are adopting black children to help assuage their white liberal guilt or to fulfill some psychic cultural longing for a return to having direct ownership of black bodies). Mind you this is not always the case for all white gay folks, but it is for many more than we would like to imagine.If you find yourself reacting, chances are it might be you. Either way, check yourself.

To the black heterosexual community, who may also go to finger pointing, the same goes for you. If you weren’t so busy projecting all of your sexual trauma on us,  kicking us out and ostracizing your own queer and gay children in true “Christian” and Christ(NOT)like fashion and just being in general denial about everything that doesn’t fit into your “partridge family in black face” lie, then we would not be here in the first place. The fact that you are not dealing with this and the many other big pink elephants masturbating with a two sided dildo in the room at this point in our history is just ridiculous and inexcusable. So check yourself. We all got issues. We’ve all contributed to the mess. Let’s get real with each other and get to changing.

 In the spirit of anger and transformation,
Yolo

http://www.YoloAkili.com

Yolo Akili is an author, Yoga Teacher, Performance Artist and Public Speaker. He  can be reached via his website YoloAkili.com and by email at Yolo@yoloakili.com

yes to all of this…