I was living a lie, and people were becoming suspicious.Įvery year, the students in our class would change, and it was a new opportunity for me to meet other pupils. My straight, black friends started to think I was ‘uncool’ – they dubbed me ‘Mr Nice Guy’ or ‘The Friendly Giant’ (nicknames insinuating weakness), because I could talk the talk (although it wasn’t genuine), but I couldn’t walk the walk. The more I rejected my true self, the more I became an outsider. As I got older I started to feel isolated, and found that I could not build social circles like my counterparts could. I also started to develop interests that could be associated with being gay (I loved Britney Spears for example) and I couldn’t share this side of my personality with my straight friends. This affected my ability to make meaningful friendships and find my niche within the gay community. I found it hard to externally live up to the ‘black man’ stereotype, while internally wanting to embrace my homosexuality. This convoluted self-identity started to have its implications. In attempt to fit in with my classmates, I would openly sing along with these songs and call things/people gay in a derogatory manner. I struggled to find relatable personas within the Caribbean culture too. Hearing the words ‘chi-chi man’ or ‘batty man’ in Jamaican reggae or hip hop songs, or hearing people use the word ‘gay’ as an insult or put-down, made me shy away from my sexuality even further. I searched for a gay role model that looked and acted similar to myself, but had no luck finding one. As a black, gay man I suffered an identity crisis. However, this mentality directly opposes the general stereotype of homosexuals, as people who embrace their femininity. Maybe this is down to a long history of mistreatment and repression maybe we feel there is a need to assert our strength and authority in a world that has constantly tried to pit us as unequal.
I think that black men especially, have always felt the need to act manly, dominant and sometimes even, aggressive. Not only was I not white, I also didn’t possess the effeminate and ‘camp’ mannerisms that the men on these shows displayed, and were so loved for. Any feminine qualities I once possessed, I had been taught to hide. I had nothing in common with the gay men represented in mainstream media. Most were depicted as overtly feminine, white males and I just couldn’t relate to these personas. I remember my parents once saying that they liked ‘gay, white men’, (having seen and embraced these token comedic characters on tv) but ‘felt sick’ at the idea of a gay, black man. What I knew of gay culture, growing up, came from homosexual characters featured in British television sitcoms. Growing up I often questioned my sexuality although I recognised and accepted my attraction to men, I knew from a young age, that there would come a time when my parents would discover I was gay, and that this would be a significant and extremely difficult moment in my life. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.Jamel on his experience as a gay, black manĪs a homosexual man of British-Caribbean decent, I have struggled my entire life to satisfy the expectations of the black community, while still staying true to my gay self. New rules: Search for self-fulfillment in a world turned upside down. Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981.
The California School of Professional Psychology, Berkeley, 1980. White men loving black men: An explication of the experience within on-going erotic relationships. Levine (Ed.), Gay men: The sociology of male homosexuality. Sexual life between blacks and whites: The roots of racism.
Presented at the Second International Convention of Black and White Men Together, Washington, D.C., 16–20 June 1982.ĭay, B. Presented at the International Convention of Black and White Men Together, San Francisco, California, 26 June 1981.īush, J. New York: New American Library, 1979.īush, J.E. Racism: From a black perspective-A conversation.