All Boys Aren't Blue

by George M. Johnson

It’s not your fault, beloved. It was never your fault. 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.

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.

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.

Thankfully, they parented with my best interests in mind instead of their potential embarrassment for raising a child like me.

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.

It was the moment I realized that safety trumped satisfaction, even as a kid.

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

American history is truly the greatest fable ever written.

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.”

else in our history they are trying to absolve themselves 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.

They spoke to the boy and girl in me.

“I love all of my grandkids, but I love each of you differently. Because you each need different things.” That “different things” part spoke to my soul.