#Blog: Blacqueer

"Culture, blackened and queered, unapologetically."

This is the blog of a noncommittal person. Meaning updates will be sporadic. Reading this blog will make you queer but only if you are lucky. The few things I can guarantee sporadic boredom, occasional typos, rambling wine-fueled posts, pictures of anything that fascinates me, food talk, boy talk, venting, pop culture gushing, taking movies and images seriously, poems, academic jargon, and honesty.

Take a look an excerpt from a recent post by Blacqueer on Dating app Racism.

“DATING APP RACISM IS A HUGE PROBLEM FOR GAY MEN—AND WE ARE TALKING ABOUT IT ALL WRONG.” Weds 16th Sept 2015 by Blacqueer

By now we are used to the righteous outrage that accompanies stories about gay and queer folks’ behavior on dating apps. Usually it starts with some guy, usually a conventionally attractive white guy, or more accurately, the torso of a possibly attractive white guy, posting on his Grindr/Growlr/Scruff profile that he is looking just looking for friends and conversation, that he is masc. for masc. and oh, he isn’t into Blacks and or Asians. Then a person, often a Black or Asian queer boy writes the harms of sexual racism.

Next, the story goes viral and comments are posted on Facebook and Twitter, some echoing the author’s position. Then a rebuttal piece is inevitably published defending the queer right that is sexual preference. That story goes viral–somewhat, and comments are posted on Facebook and Twitter. Eventually, we all forget about sexual racism and then in a few months the cycle repeats. Exhausting.

This week Samantha Allen’s Daily Beast article, “‘No Blacks,’ Is Not a Sexual Preference. It’s Racism” set of the latest round of sexual racism discourse, and while she is not a Black queer boy the effect for me is the same: exhaustion. Popular media conversations about sexual racism are tiring and boring mainly because not only is nothing new being said, but the discourse always picots around the desires and practices of white gay men and this simultaneously privileges whiteness.

Privileging whiteness and white men is as American as apple pie. This privileging also ignores the problem of Black men who don’t seek out other people of color on hookups and queer culture. In other words, it begs a question: Why, beautiful Black boy, are you so upset that, that white boy in the window doesn’t want you?