Posted on 10/21/2009 10:43:22 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Black History Month should help break down homophobia by celebrating the sexuality of black heroes such as Malcolm
October is Black History Month in Britain – a wonderful celebration of the huge, important and valuable contribution that black people have made to humanity and to popular culture.
It is also worth celebrating that many leading black icons have been lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), most notably the US black liberation hero Malcolm X. Other prominent black LGBTs include jazz singer Billie Holiday, author and civil rights activist James Baldwin, soul singer-songwriter Luther Vandross, blues singer Bessie Smith, poet and short story writer Langston Hughes, singer Johnny Mathis, novelist Alice Walker, civil rights activist and organiser of the 1963 March on Washington Bayard Rustin, blues singer Ma Rainey, dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey, actress, singer and dancer Josephine Baker, Olympic diving gold medallist Greg Louganis, singer and songwriter Little Richard, political activist and philosopher Angela Davis, singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman and drag performer and singer RuPaul.
Few of these prominent black LGBT achievers are listed on the most comprehensive UK Black History Month website, which hosts biographies of notable black men and women. In the section on people, only Davis is mentioned and her lesbianism is not acknowledged. The website fails to identify the vast majority of black public and historical figures who are LGBT. The Official Guide to Black History Month UK is equally remiss. Why these omissions? Black people are not one homogenous heterosexual mass. Where is the recognition of sexual diversity within the black communities and black history?
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
"could you imagine being bisexual? think of all the phone numbers you'd accumulate! you might as well walk around with the white pages under your arm!"
Yes. At least partly. I always knew him that way.
1st time I ever heard of him being “gay” or whatever was some story my manager (car store; gritty guys) was giving. Claiming Johnny was present for naming a street after him and it was raining, so the prissy wouldn’t get out of the car for it. That was almost 20 years ago.
My parents played his stuff in the car all the time. We sang to it. I love Johnny.
I can't either, I can't imagine him having any attraction at all to women.
55 seconds!
What? Prince and Michael Jackson didn’t make the list? Oh, right. MJ’s not black.
Some are well known. Others are news to me.
It’s still news to me that Greg Louganis is black!
I liked the Diceman's line, "You either .... .... or you do not .... .... there is no in-between."
Wikipedia says that Louganis is of “Samoan/Swedish descent” and was adopted by Grrek-American parents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Louganis
Must have been black Swedes.
It's news to him too.
Prince is like Obama - half black.
MJ - “sexuality: unknown”. ;-)
Yeah. I didn’t know that either. I knew he was gay, because he once hit his head on the dive platform and bled into the pool. This mattered because at the time it became know that he was HIV positive.
How it became known, I can’t remember, but I believe that the bleed incident came BEFORE it became known that he had HIV, which is why it made news.
Now it all makes sense Malcolm X going Muslim with the homo relationships he had. I still think Malcolm X was mostly heterosexual
LOL
Samoan/polynesian I can believe (I thought he looked hispanic).
Never once did I think he looked any bit black.
But leave it to a Brit not to really understand who blacks are.
Uh... Greg Louganis?
His adoptive parents are Greek and he is half-Samoan half-Swedish according to his biography.
Little hard to call him “black” isn’t it?
I try to have sex with every person I see.
Swegros.
Idiots. Good black people (conservatives) need to fight this BS! They’re not pushing this to help Black people, they’re pushing their own sex-freak agenda. Malcolm X’s sexual orientation is completely irrelevant. Just as Barbara Jordan’s (a true patriot).
Regardless of his bisexuality, I’m not sure why you would want to celebrate Malcolm X in the first place. Unless you admire racial hatred, destructiveness, and violence.
I'm laughing because I was joking :-)
I should have included the /s tag.
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