All Boys Aren't Blue

by George M. Johnson

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.

To go years without smiling in pictures, rarely being questioned why, leaves me to wonder how many signs of trauma we miss or ignore in Black children.

We bury the things that have happened to us, hoping that they don’t present themselves later in our adult life.

It’s necessary that we do the work to unpack our shit. It’s time for the world to let queer Black boys unpack their shit. Smile, Black boys.

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.

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.

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.

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

*exhales* 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.”

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.