In our latest dialogue with hetero Brothers, The Gatekeepers
Collective and Codify Art, a queer POC artists collective, looked at the role
of Buck Breaking during slavery as the potential root of anti-homosexual
perspectives among African descended people in a conversation billed as, Buck
Breaking & the Myth of Homophobia Among Black People.
As a point of departure for the dialogue, participants
watched a video excerpt of a film titled Hidden Colors 4 treating on buck
breaking, the practice in which slave holders and overseers (beginning in the
Middle Passage), publicly sodomized enslaved African men, in many instances
before the entire community, including the African men’s wives and children
towards ‘breaking’ them.
In response to the video, participants were asked to take a
few minutes to write their reactions.
Then, they reported:
“It’s like, I’m a man having sex with another man…”
“Rape is not about sex, it’s about power…”
“If I was home, I would have turned the TV off…It raises my
pulse and [blood] pressure…It enraged me…A lot of the problems that Black men
are having today [come from this kind of abuse]…A culture can’t recover from
this [level of violence] in one or two generations…What kind of monsters would
behave in this way?...I have two grandchildren…I don’t know if I want them to
see this…[At the same time] this kind of knowledge can promote healing…”
“It was disgusting…It makes my blood boil…Rape is about
power…”
“I have a healthy skepticism…I’m not convinced that this was
systematic…”
“It makes a lot of sense…I love this documentary series…I
think about Quentin Tarantino films…Django [Unchained] and Pulp Fiction…He
always uses issues and images that re-traumatize Black people…It made me think
of prison rape…”
Facilitator says, “That
makes sense, inasmuch as prison is the modern plantation…”
“Tragic…tragedy…[It] makes sense [as a reinforcement of]
white masculinity…”
“If you have a rapist [and a person who’s being raped], it’s
sex to the rapist…”
“For me, it get’s back to, we didn’t have rights…”
Facilitator says, “Yes…
looked at from the perspective of the prevailing social order, because we were
deemed property, as distinct from people, the rape of the Africans wasn’t
considered rape at all…They were exercising their rights over their
property…which only intensified the dehumanization and humiliation of the
enslaved Africans…”
“They knew we were people…”
“History is the story we tell ourselves about
ourselves…Black people are the product of rape in America…and the trauma gets
passed on [from one generation to the next]…”
Facilitator says, “We
rarely talk about slavery…And, in those instances when we do deign to talk
about it, the conversation rarely extends beyond the [truism] about our mothers
having been raped…But, in a patriarchal society…that is, a society wherein
manhood is defined in terms of power, control, and domination over others…and
which is undergirded by misogyny…we dare not talk about the fact that
homosexuality wasn’t invented at the turn of the 20th Century with [Sigmund]
Freud…It has existed throughout nature, and from time immemorial…And, our
fathers were used as objects of abuse and of pleasure, the same as our mothers….perhaps
making this the ultimate humiliation…”
Black people are the product of rape in America…[And] The
trauma gets passed on…”
“The lineage of the homophobia… We’re carrying this
traumatized DNA, and that’s a real and present danger…Your representation of
self is a way to access power…And, if [I perceive] the White man is the
pinnacle [then] I have to do what he does…[In this construction] being feminine
is going to lower my social capital…”
“White gay maleness is powerful now…They wield a lot of
power…unlike gay people of color…”
“It’s purely about power…not about desire necessarily…
Present day…The football player that was killed in the road rage
[incident]…[For] the one who shot him, it was about power…”
Facilitator asks, “Hetero
Brothers, do you believe Buck Breaking might be the root of some of the most
visceral contempt and even hatred towards homosexuals and homosexuality among
Black people?”
“I guess, yes…But, it doesn’t have to be…This is a new
time…a new era…a lot of people don’t like change…I don’t know what we [have to
do to change people’s perspective]…’
“I have this theory about religion and hierarchy… Most of us
have been trained that, to get to heaven…[for there to be] a heaven, there has
to be a hell…Hierarchy…Women and homosexuals have to fit in…There has to be
somebody below…”
“I feel like this is a good lens on this binary…Good
person/bad person…gay/straight…I don’t know that there is anything we do that
is not about power…Heterosexual identity is a dominant identity, but not
necessarily a supported identity…As a dark-skinned Black man in high school, if
they said I was gay, I was enraged….I said, “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!”…They couldn’t take
away my one privilege…You have to get to a point where you can do that
introspection to see who you are and who you want to be…”
“How do we know this history is real? …That this really
happened?...”
Facilitator says, “You’re
looking for what is called primary source materials [to verify the alleged
violations]…”
“I think it’s
real…The idea of literature delegitimizing history [is dangerous]…[As if] If it
wasn’t written down, it didn’t happen…We should be able to accept the truths
that are told, and ancestral [legacies, including] memory…I work in technology,
and look at language as the oldest technology…”
“[But, there’s a danger that] it leaves the door open to
anybody being able to say anything…Trump was clocked at lying more than 70% of
the time…”
“My parents got remarried back in the early ‘90s and I was a
young teen, and my dad said that in church, ‘I remember Mothers Day being the
most attended day, and Fathers Day being the least attended day’…[There was an
urgent push to] get fathers back to being the heads of their households…”
“[I question the reliability of] These translations of these
stories, and these folk[s]y stories…”
Facilitator says, “it’s
vital that we remember that, not only is ours is an oral tradition, meaning,
that was the primary means by which we passed on our history but, for the first
few hundred years here, reading and writing were criminal offenses for
Africans…And, it is highly unlikely that slaveholders or overseers would have
documented their barbarity, cum savagery…”
“The White man has a method to tell his history…you have to
use your tools…[I wonder] if you should look to their traditions for people to
tell [you] who you are…”
“I don’t think it’s productive to see ourselves as totally
other…”
“We’re talking about a people who had no literacy…There was
no way for them to read [or write]…”
“You can feel vibrations from intrinsic truth…Look at all the
people we’ve held up as truth tellers…We’re being asked to look internally to
have [faith in our innate capacity to discern truth]…”
Facilitator says, “The
challenge in talking about this stuff is that it involves risking
acknowledging… that is, revisiting…our having been utterly powerless…and having
been violated in savage fashion in the face of our powerlessness…This is dangerous
duty, and we have been courageous here…We are particularly indebted to our
hetero Brothers for having had the courage to march their hetero ass asses up
in here…” [Laughter] “The question
is, do we think this exploration can be [a] useful [healing device] for more of
the community?”
[The community agree, and commit to continuing the
dialogue.]
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