All Boys Aren't Blue

by George M. Johnson

How could you know on the day you were born that this world wasn’t a safe place for you to be? That the most beautiful of joys—the birth of a child—would be met with a denial of your very existence? Oh, but be clear. You were meant to be here.

The whole world was shut down by the deadly disease Covid-19. Millions of lives were lost to it. The world experienced a universal grief while people in power prioritized labor and the economy over the health of their citizens. Some people thought their individual choices mattered more than our public health and safety. Wearing a mask for the community’s safety became the new “oppression” for those who have never known true oppression.

Pundits claimed the economy was going to be stronger than ever as we all went back to work, acting as if Covid-19 was just a bad nightmare in the American Dream. As I write this, roughly eight hundred people still die from Covid every week, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Black folks are still being killed by the police at an alarming rate, making up 23% of those deaths from only 13% of the population. Firearms are now the leading cause of death in American children. Our lives are not worth those of guns.

Books are being banned across the country. This book, which you are currently reading, is the second-most banned book in the United States as I write this. This book, which has never taken a life. Never caused harm. A book that has helped build empathy. Helped so many of you learn about the agency you have as young adults. The power you already have to change this world. Your right to know the truth about the topics you live through on a daily basis that folks think are too heavy to discuss with you. They won’t ban assault weapons to protect you, but they will ban books.

Which then makes me think about all of you, readers. I think about you watching the passage of legislation that will affect your lives for the next fifty years, when all you want to think about is your first kiss. Or going to the prom. Or what you are going to wear today. The SAT and college applications. The changes happening to your body. What you want to be when you grow up. Keep thinking about those things. Keep finding joy in the midst of this chaos. But also pay attention to what’s going on around you. You are the future that can change it. And they know that. They fear you. That’s why they don’t want you to read and learn. That’s why they don’t want you reading this book.

And for those of you who do have privilege in this world, spend it. Share it with those who don’t have it. Equalize the playing field. Build bridges not walls. Help one another. Form a coalition of equality and equity. Protect the queer persons in your life. Fight for Black folks and Latinx folks and all people of color. You have the power to change things. Don’t use that power to oppress.

You’re the future that can change it. Will you allow history to repeat itself? Or will you make history by being the first generation to stop it? The choice has always been yours.

We have become socially conditioned to participate in the gendering of children at the earliest possible moment—whenever a sonogram can identify its genitalia. Gender-reveal parties have become a trendy way to celebrate the child’s fate, steering them down a life of masculine or feminine ideals before ever meeting them. It’s as if the more visible LGBTQIAP+ people become, the harder the heterosexual community attempts to apply new norms. I think the majority fear becoming the minority, and so they will do anything and everything to protect their power.

I often wonder what this world would look like if people were simply told, You are having a baby with a penis or a vagina or other genitalia. Look up intersex if you’re confused about “other.” What if parents were also given instructions to nurture their baby by paying attention to what the child naturally gravitates toward and to simply feed those interests? What if parents let their child explore their own gender instead of pushing them down one of the only two roads society tells us exist?

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.

As an adult, I have gone through the unlearning to understand that my community’s treatment of Black queer children is in fact a by-product of a system of assimilation to whiteness and respectability that forces Black people to fit one mold in society, one where being a man means you must be straight and masculine. I didn’t have the ability to separate my Blackness from my queerness.

This is about identity. This is about culture and how it dictates what is a “good” and “bad” name, especially in the Black community. This is about the politics around sex and gender, and that when our parents choose a name that we as children are uncomfortable with, we have the right to change it. My mother respected my agency by allowing me to choose what would work best for me. But would that conversation have been so simple if I’d wanted my name to be Dominique or Samantha? Even as a child, there was an understanding that the name I went by was meant for the comfort of my family. That yes, even though they didn’t want to call a baby George, at some point it would no longer be their decision to make. My name was meant for me, and me alone.

Agency—a word I didn’t know when I was that young—is a guiding principle that I wish we taught young kids about more. Rather than saying, “You are wearing this,” I hope more adults will ask, “What would you like to wear?” And then have a conversation about those choices. When we see our children not conforming to the societal standards of heterosexuality or we see them gravitating to things of the “opposite gender,” I would love for us to ask the deeper questions about who and what they are.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned about “gay lingo.” Terms like shade and yaaassss that we so often hear used in television or on social media—especially by those not from the LGBTQIAP+ community—have become common in pop culture. Lingo that children like me were ostracized for using. Lingo that queer children today still get ostracized for using. And yet straight people use it out of context safely. This lingo or slang was created by “Black femmes,” which is an umbrella term that captures Black trans women, Black queer men, nonbinary folk, cishet Black women, and anyone else I may be missing. However, a lot of this history has been erased from those who identify as queer, which has allowed the notion that queer culture comes from emulating Black cishet women to spread. But it’s not true. That erasure also allows the hetero community to get “a pass” for using language that would often get queer folk harmed.

When you are a child that is different, there always seems to be a “something.” You can’t switch, you can’t say that, you can’t act this way. There is always a something that must be erased—and with it, a piece of you. 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.

Language is interesting, especially as a child. Kids have been known to create their own words and languages that they can share amongst themselves—often looked at as harmless. Yet in this case, my invented language was seen as a threat to masculinity—an ideal I was supposed to be living up to even though I wasn’t old enough to fully understand its meaning or, for that matter, even how to spell it.

But later that night, I realized the only place that was truly safe for me would be in my imagination. My ability to be a kid came at the expense of my gender identity. The suppression continued that day. The moments that I wanted to cry would be covered up with laughter. A fake closed-lip smile would be used to hide the pain I was feeling from my inability to be me. That was the first day I began wearing the mask. The mask that would cover my face, so no one could see who I really was.

People who are straight that associate with me now, as an adult, still get questioned about their sexuality. Simply because they are friends with me. Adults who participate in homophobia create kids that do the same.

Homophobia denies queer people happiness. I imagine there are a lot of queer people who would love to play sports or do traditionally “masculine” activities, but they hold themselves back based on the fear of interacting with people they can’t trust. People who have made it very clear that queer people are unwelcome despite the fact they have talent. Homophobia is the reason that so many who currently play sports are closeted—as there is no way football, baseball, and basketball are 99.9 percent heterosexual.

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.

I remember how I saw all the “good” white and Black figures as being the same. Men like Jefferson and Washington were taught to us in a way that glossed over the fact that they owned slaves—while someone like Robert E. Lee was painted in a much different light for supporting those same things. History has a funny way of painting.

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

Every single teacher I had for my years in elementary school was white. The only Black teachers, Ms. Chiles and Mr. Robinson, had a reputation for having the “bad students.” Funny how those classes had only Black students in them. I guess I was being taught to separate myself from my own, just as straight kids were being taught to separate from folk like me. There are levels to the oppression.

Black History Month was always bittersweet, because as quickly as it came it was gone. White history didn’t need a month; we were always learning about it. And because we had one teacher teaching various subjects, we learned history every day, but mainly centered around how much the white forefathers did to create the United States. I remember being just as excited about white history, because at t...

I have this image of a poster they used to hang on the wall around Thanksgiving time ingrained in my head. It showed American Indians sharing food with the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving. *takes deep breath* 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. And many American Indians died from the diseases brought by white settlers. “Peace” was often a survival tactic. *exhales* American history is truly the greatest fable ever written.

The interesting thing about studying history is how much it starts to change based on the school setting and who is teaching it. And it’s not always about how those teachers view history, but how they view you. And your place in history.

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.”

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.

Knowledge is truly your sharpest weapon in a world hell-bent on telling you stories that are simply not true.

In Rose Hackman’s article in the Guardian on post-segregation public swimming pools, she explains how Black kids drown at roughly three times the rate of white kids due to a lack of resources, both tangible and cultural, as well as racism. It’s interesting how many things in this country white kids do as a given but Black kids continue to struggle with for generations.

Elevating a community viewed as below you to having the same equity and equality harms no one but the oppressor.

There is truly something to be said about the fact that you sometimes can’t see yourself if you can’t see other people like you existing, thriving, working.

It is not a requirement that you ever find empathy for an abuser. Make it a requirement to hold your abuser accountable.

We see coming-out stories all the time. Some for the better, many for the worse. What we don’t get to see is what led up to that moment. How many times a person tried to push past that barrier to get to that point.

It is not a final thing. It’s something that is ever occurring. You are always having to come out somewhere. Every new job. Every new city you live in. Every new person you meet, you are likely having to explain your identity.

The risk factors for queer people engaging in sex continue to be higher than that of all other communities. We are prone to having a higher chance of contracting sexually transmitted infections. The CDC has already stated that 50 percent of Black men who have sex with men will contract HIV over their lifetime. And a quarter of Latino queer men will also contract the virus. To deny the queer community a basic sex education as teens is to perpetuate the prevalence of those statistics.

Queer folks often live a second adolescence throughout much of their adult lives because of this deprivation. I didn’t explore sexuality during my teen years. I didn’t have openly gay friends or mentors growing up. I didn’t have the opportunity to date boys or have a boyfriend. I had to figure a lot of this shit out on my own. So the mistakes people make and the lessons they learn by exploring in their teens, I was just starting to learn as I transitioned into adulthood. We suppress who we are during those early formative years when we should be learning and growing beside our straight peers, and within the safety and support of our families. The heteronormative systems in our society literally have the power to change the trajectory of our lives.