All Boys Aren't Blue

by George M. Johnson

We are not as different as you think, and all our stories matter and deserve to be celebrated and told.

I believe that the dominant society establishes an idea of what “normal” is simply to suppress differences, which means that any of us who fall outside of their “normal” will eventually be oppressed.

I understand now that my Blackness is self-defined and that to use the n-word or not use the n-word is my choice. But it shouldn’t be based on the comfort of those who constantly seek to invalidate me. I understand now that there is no such thing as “a respectable negro” in the eyes of society, nor was I ever made to be one.

Most kids aren’t inherently mean. Their parents, however, can make them mean.

it, “Y’all can run the streets all you want, my grandkids will not.”

Unfortunately, my life story is proof that no amount of money, love, or support

can protect you from a society intent on killing you for your Blackness.

Any community that has been taught that anyone not “straight” is dangerous, is in itself a ...

I used to daydream a lot as a little boy. But in my daydreams, I was always a girl.

girly. I thought a girl was the only thing I could be.

However, I was old enough to know that I would find safety only in the arms of suppression—hiding my true self—because let’s face it, kids can be cruel.

When I sit with this memory, there is no sound in the moment. I can see it.

It’s strange how near to home and safety one can be when some of the most traumatic things in life occur.

I, the invisible boy, somehow became the biggest target.

Unfortunately, part of what I forgot was how to smile.

The fact that I don’t feel happy when I look at those images lets me know there wasn’t any happiness when I took them.

When I did smile, it was a coping mechanism. My smile was a mask that hid the pain of suppressing who I was.

life. Oddly enough, many of us connect with each other through trauma and pain: broken people finding other broken people in the hopes of fixing one another.

trauma becomes the thing that bonds us together.

Our community struggles to connect with joy in the way that we have with pain.

I still had that five-year-old in me who was not ready to smile.

With a truth that most in my family were not ready for me to learn, whatever their reasons: “THAT’S WHY YOUR REAL NAME IS GEORGE.”

Your name is one of the most important pieces of your identity. It is the thing that you own. It is attached to every piece of work that you put into the world. Your name holds power when you walk into a room. No two people with the same name are the same person. It’s important that, like everything else you grow to love in life, your name is something you appreciate as well.

Let yourself unlearn everything you thought you knew about yourself, and listen to what you need to know about those who navigate life outside the margins of a heterosexual box. I bet most of you never thought to ever question if you even like your name. Or question if that was something you had the power to change if you didn’t. I hope you will now …

I just like to think about all the ways I came to be me.

The fear of being that vulnerable again outweighs the happiness that comes with being who you are, and so you agree to erase that something.

But later that night, I realized the only place that was truly safe for me would be in my imagination.

We often talk about bullies in school, but rarely when they are in our own families. He could be my biggest protector and my worst enemy.

usual,

Navigating in a space that questions your humanity isn’t really living at all. It’s existing. We all deserve more than just the ability to exist.

Although we were taught to love and adore Abe Lincoln for freeing us from slavery, I never once questioned why a hundred years later, Martin Luther King Jr. was still fighting for our civil rights.

You sometimes don’t know you exist until you realize someone like you existed before.

What it doesn’t show is that the Pilgrims stole the American Indians’ food when they first arrived on the Mayflower, because they weren’t prepared for winter.

American history is truly the greatest fable ever written.

arena. Even today, institutions are still having “the first Black person to…” And it means something.

Symbolism gives folks hope. But I’ve come to learn that symbolism is a threat to actual change—it’s a chance for those in power to say, “Look how far you have come” rather than admitting, “Look how long we’ve stopped you from getting here.”

“The talk” is what we call it in Black families. Not about the birds and the bees, but about the dangers of interacting with non-Black people, because they will assume the worst of you as a Black boy.

of. Saying that something was “a norm” of the past is a way not to have to deal with its ripple effects in the present. It removes the fact that hate doesn’t just stop because a law or the time changed. Folks use this excuse because they are often unwilling to accept how full of phobias and -isms they are themselves—or at least how they benefit from social structures that privilege them.

“The first person you are ever an activist for is yourself.”

The greatest tool you have in fighting the oppression of your Blackness and queerness and anything else within your identity is to be fully educated on it. Knowledge is truly your sharpest weapon in a world hell-bent on telling you stories that are simply not true. Honest Abe lied to you. I won’t.

swim. But really, they were teaching me how to fight for myself—with the reminder that they would always be there to support me when I needed them.

Using education as a tool of division has a distinct history in Black society. W.E.B. Du Bois highly publicized “the talented tenth” principle, a belief that the top 10 percent of Black intellectuals would lead the other 90 percent out of oppression. Although division of people through intelligence isn’t exclusive to the Black community, it has much different connotations when you know that white folks, regardless of where they fall in school, can achieve. Donald Trump went from a reality TV star to being president of the United States. There will always be a different set of standards for us.

As a kid, I didn’t fully take in what it meant to spend time with her. I think about how important every minute I get to spend with her is now and how back then, those minutes felt infinite. I never thought about the day when she would no longer be here in the physical form. She was my grandmother, of course, but more importantly, she was always my friend. She gave me things to be proud of: My ability to help people with less than I had. My ability to make money.

How could one family get so right what the world has gotten so wrong? We should have been the rule. Not the exception.

In other words, they knew queer when they saw it, but not enough to teach me the ropes and potential pitfalls of it.

The how comes in being willing to take a chance on yourself and create the support system you wish to have.

The way I grew up always knowing that I would have a friend in Nanny, is the same way I hope Black queer boys, who may never meet me but will hear and see my words, know they always have a friend in me. Sometimes all it takes is someone seeing you as you are. Nanny saw me, I see you, and now you see yourself.

Make it a requirement to hold your abuser accountable.

graduated and moved to Virginia. He still had

Be bold and brave and queer.