My Event Write Up

Going Home Ain’t Always Easy: Southern (Dis)Comfort and the Politics of Performing History”: A Lecture by E. Patrick Johnson, Northwestern University

On Sunday, September 28, 2008, The Mahmoud El-Kati Distinguished Lectureship in American Studies honored its first guest of the year in the Weyerhauser Boardroom at Macalester College. Professor E. Patrick Johnson, Department Chair of Performance Studies, based his lecture on his book “Sweet Tea: An Oral History of Black Gay Men in the South.” Professor Johnson’s work brings a group silenced both by Southern Culture and Black Machismo to the center of the conversation of sexuality.

Johnson was very deliberate in his method of using oral history to document the lives of his interviewees. He interviewed over 70 men, all from various Southern states, to start a conversation about life as gay individuals. The men he interviewed were as young as 19 and as old as 93. Some of the men were openly gay, bisexual, transgendered, many married to women, and even more married to the church. These men were preachers, drag queens, business men, socialites, and choir teachers. The men interviewed ranged from economically poor to economically wealthy. Some men spoke anonymously while others were more than happy to give both their first and last name. Johnson recounted how many men chose pseudonyms based on the name of the street they grew up on and the name of their first pet. Most importantly, regardless of their name, class, or career, all of these men were overlooked in many conversations about black sexuality. Johnson, although practicing critical ethnography, allowed the men to tell their stories their way and without fear of their voice being usurped in an expository manner. Johnson, a gay black male from the South, wrote this book to enter black gay men into the discourse of race, region and sexuality.

While attending Johnson’s talk, I employed a feminist lens to flush out correlations between the men in Johnson’s book and the theory we use in class. Johnson discusses how many gay black men from the South suffer from “simultaneous oppressions” Many black gay men are bound by black respectability. However, black respectability is synonymous with heteronormativity and Black Machismo. A black man is supposed to be a pimp, a player, a womanizer, and the protector of the race. However, gay black men are seen as effeminate, thus, they are viewed as weak sissies and oppressed because they are too much like women. This allowed Johnson to make a very huge critique of sexism as well as homophobia found in the black community. Johnson discussed how many people equate the gay black male to bringing down the race because they are working with white people to oppress black individuals. Johnsons makes this argument based on the once common belief that being gay is a white man’s issue. Therefore, these black gay men are not seen as black because cannot love the race if they love another man. Johnsons goes on to detail how Southern black life is so intertwined with the black church. Many of the men he interviewed cannot reconcile being gay and also being physically apart of the church. Therefore, these men either believe they can pray their gayness away, they sit in church and endure homophobia, they go to a more gay friendly church, or they withdraw from the physical space of church altogether. Religion plays a major role in the lives of many Southern black gay men. The struggle between loving oneself, loving god, and legitimizing one’s Blackness creates a life of contradictions for many of the men Johnson’s talks about. Many men know who they are while others struggle everyday with accepting themselves based on finding acceptance from their communities.

One man in particular, Chas/Chastity, lives his life as a woman everyday except on Sunday when he attends church. While interviewing Chastity, Johnsons felt uncomfortable. Johnsons did not want to be seen with Chastity because he feared his reputation would somehow be ruined. All his life, Johnson tried to be the best of everything to make up for the fact he was gay. Although he is out to his family, he also became a victim of black respectability which keeps many of these men silenced. However, this allowed Johnsons to examine his own positionality. Johnson, who is privileged because he was the first person from his town to receive a PHD, realized he had to account for his own privilege and his own biases during his project. The conversations with these men allowed him to do so, therefore, he approached his work with the intention to document these men’s stories and not to expose them or misrepresent their subcultures.

The best thing about the talk was the level of honesty and sincerity Johnson maintained. He has a one man live show in order to allow these stories to reach a broader audience. He performs their characters to help end homophobia by portraying black gay men as human beings deserving of love. He also performs his characters to help anyone struggling with their sexuality based on a culture which silences black gay men. Johnson said he is donating the stories of these men to an archive so that they will no longer be silenced in history.