Chapter 11: Baby Love Yourself: Wisdom From a HBCU Black Gay Mentor Who Saved My Life

African American gay men and others within my circle of friends are surprised when I share with them my stories about “coming out” and finding Black gay mentors in Black social institutions like the family, Black churches and historically Black colleges and universities. They seems most surprised when I share with them the lessons I learned from my Black college mentor, Dr. Paul E. Logan, who in many ways rescued me from self-hatred and helped save my life in my early years of “coming out” at Howard University, one of the major HBCUs. I think the surprise of my friends and other African American gay men has something to do with what Cornel West calls “the taboo of Black sexuality” in the master narrative of race and sexuality socially constructed by Whiteness and the White gaze. This narrative and gaze create negative and derogatory representations of Black identity as “evil,” “dangerous,” and “criminal,” and therefore renders Black bodies as less attractive, less desirable, more vulgar, more oversexed, and more sexually pathological than White bodies. Cultural ideas, images, and structures that represent and maintain Blackness and Black bodies inferior to Whiteness and White bodies, are reasons why I believe that White LGBTQ and heterosexual folk have walked up to me at some given time or occasion during an a church conference/convention or academic setting and made assumptions about my experience stating: “Mark, it must be harder for you as a Black man to ‘come out’ and be gay in the Black community.” Their assumption about my experience is usually followed up by the question: “Why are Black people more homophobic than White people?” Claiming Black people are more homophobic than White people makes it easy for the White gaze and master narrative of race and sexuality to further demonize and devalue Blackness in Black institutions like Black families, Black churches and HBCUs. From my own experience living between intersections of race and sexuality, my response to their assumptions about my experience and notions about Black institutions is as follows: “Black folk and their institutions are no more homophobic than White folk, regardless of sexual orientation, and their institutions are racist.”