Trans-Scripts 1 (2011)

An Interrogation of the Black Presence in the

Queer Project

Darnell L. Moore 

Are you Black first or are you queer? This question embodies a central
conflict many African American lesbians, bisexuals, and gays (lesbigays)
experience in dealing with two identities that are often at odds with each
other. The answer to this question varies.
-- Gregory Conerly (7)

Personally speaking, I do not consider myself a “queer” activist or, for

that matter, “queer” anything. This is not because I do not consider
myself an activist; in fact, I hold my political work to be one of my most
important contributions to all of my communities. But like other lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgendered activists of color, I find the label
“queer” fraught with unspoken assumptions which inhibit the radical
political potential of this category.
-- Cathy Cohen (451)

There is a wonderful African proverb that reads, “A wanderer cannot know

the full meaning of home.” If “home” represents one’s place of contented
habitation – the riskless space wherein one can fully be and become – then all
other temporary accommodations will, simply, never do. This is the
contention that undergirds my response to Conerly’s striking question above,
namely, “Are you Black first or are you queer?” Although, Conerly’s question
seems to presume a false prioritizing of identities – in contrast to the more
obliging notion of intersectionality that refutes the hierarchical “which-
identity-comes-first” charades – it forced me to consider more than the mere
discomfort that grips me, and other same-gender loving (SGL) African
American women and men, regarding the use of the word “queer” to identify


Darnell L. Moore is a 2010 Visiting Scholar in the Center for the Study of Gender
and Sexuality at New York University and is active in the queer of color organizing
community in Newark, NJ. This paper was presented at the Feminism for the Planet:
5th Annual Rutgers Newark Women’s Studies Symposium in March 2009.

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our sexuate identities. 1 It also prompted me to consider the following: Can

African American SGL women and men really find solace – be at home – in
the queer topography?

I personally experience discomfort when attempting to “settle down”

during my ephemeral treks through literature within the queer studies/theory
terrain. 2 Yet, I am not the first critic, African American or otherwise, who
has attempted to interrogate the ethos – the starting place and
presuppositions – and/or structure of queer studies/theory. Many scholars
have turned to innovative approaches in response to the lack of attention
given to matters of race, class, and transnationality within the queer studies
project, while others have even called for a rehabilitated queer studies that
“insists on a broadened consideration of the late twentieth-century global
crises that have configured historical relations among political economies, the
geopolitics of war and terror, and national manifestations of sexual, racial,
and gendered hierarchies” (Eng, Halberstam and Perez 1). But as an African
American SGL individual who subsists, along with many other SGL people
of color, within an intersectional matrix wherein oppression(s) based on race,
class, gender, and sexuate identity thrives, I am not totally convinced that
queer studies/theory can generate and sustain analysis and action that
aggressively counters technologies of power, like white racist ideology and
white privilege, which buttress this repressive matrix. Thus, it seems fair to
argue that queer studies/theory, if it is to be applicable to African Americans,
should interrogate and deconstruct notions of whiteness and white privilege.
As such, I wonder: Does queer studies/theory seek to aggressively raze the
white xenophobic ideologies that are entrenched within the national, and

1
I will use the term “sexuate” identity, a term advanced by Drucilla Cornell,
throughout this paper. Cornell uses the phrase “sexuate being to represent the sexed
body of our human being when engaged with a framework by which we orient
ourselves; because we are sexuate beings we have to orient ourselves sexually” (7).
In this light, I take up the term sexuate identity to specifically speak to the ways in
which we orient ourselves as “having sex” and “having a sex.” See At the Heart of
Freedom 6-8.
2
Throughout the paper I will use either queer studies/theory or a use of the terms
interchangeably as a means to characterize the enmeshment of queer studies and
theory. Although queer studies can be likened to LGBT studies and queer theory as
a specific methodological deployment of a postmodern intervention in sexuality
theorizing, both, in some ways, can be characterized by the same ethos. In addition,
I will use the term “queer studies project” throughout the paper as opposed to
discipline as a means to illuminate the fluidity of the project as opposed to an
understanding of “queer studies” as a fixed discipline. For more on the fluidity of
“queer studies” see Judith Halberstam’s helpful essay “Queer Studies” 67-72.
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transnational, racial imaginary of the othered black body? Moreover, is queer

studies/theory grounded in a provincial ideological system that seemingly
restricts interrogations of sexual discourses, which are always already
raciated?

It seems that within queer studies/theory there remains a problematic

principle, a theoretical presupposition, which creates barriers that prevent
those who need to establish, celebrate, criticize and/or reconstruct
boundaries and senses of identities from doing so. As a result, I reason that
African Americans are wanderers in the queer trajectory because our racial,
ethnic, class, and social locations are, ostensibly, too quickly disregarded. It
is almost as if our racial and other identities are queerantined, that is, it seems
that SGL people of color are often subjected to an unequivocal demand to
“contain” our racial, and other, identities as the result of the enforced
injunction on “identity politics” within the queer project. Thus, one can
reason that some SGL African Americans are resistant to settling down
within queer studies/theory because the present injunction on identity
politics does not facilitate what I will label in this paper “Black struggle.”

And while it is risky to refer to “Black Struggle” because it seemingly

conflates the diverse experiences and essences of identities of African
Americans into a singular label, “Black Struggle” is deployed as a trope in this
paper: a counter-hegemonic tussle against white racist structures,
technologies, and discourses that seek to short-circuit the emancipatory
potential, that is, the daily move towards the full disruption of white power
and white privilege, in the macro and micro spheres of the human experience
of black people. Thus, this paper will attempt to illuminate why some
African-American SGL women and men may be reluctant to participate in
the queer project. In doing so, it will provide a brief overview of the queer
project illuminating its problematic ethos and name the distinctive markers
that characterize “Black struggle,” intending to demonstrate how the ethos of
queer studies/theory violates this struggle.

Traversing the “Queer studies” Project

“Queer studies” is a term that is often used loosely to describe the study of
people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or questioning
(LGBTQ). However, it can also be characterized as a fluid or
interdisciplinary mode of theorizing sexuality that traverses across varied
disciplines. It is an area of study which is still in flux. It has shown up in
literary studies, cultural studies, musicology, art history, law, communication
studies, theology, and elsewhere. Queer studies/theory is grounded in the

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proposition that “sexuality is not restricted to heterosexuality or

homosexuality, a binary system reinforced by hegemonic patriarchal societies,
but is a more complex array of gender and sexual possibilities” and it
interrogates the normalizing “mechanisms of state power” that “name its
sexual subjects: male or female, married or single, heterosexual and
homosexual, natural or perverse” (Eng, Halberstam and Perez, 1). Thus, the
queer project can be characterized as having both academic and political aims
in that it seeks to resist classifications of norms and opposes structures of
social and cultural hegemony. Indeed, the radical spirit of intellectual and
political resistance that energizes queer studies finds its roots in the “queer”
movements that emerged in the early 1990s in America.

William R. Dynes dates the start of today’s “queeritude” to June 1990

when the word “queer” appeared on anonymous “I hate straights” leaflets
distributed at gay pride marches in New York and other cities. 3 The written
invocation began with the words “Listen queers,” an aggressive term –
imbued with rage – that was intended as a sign of resistance to “straights.”
The formation of Queer Nation chapters in America and Canada followed.
However, by the spring of 1995, Queer Nation was disbanded in US cities.
An offshoot of the AIDS activist organization ACT-UP, Queer Nation
functioned as a radical “queer” activist group that has been criticized for
imagining itself to be primarily white and male. Thus, in the early 1990s, it
seems that the term “queer” functioned as an exclusive term en vogue among
queer activists who were white and male.

“Queer activism” would soon develop into “queer theory.” Queer theory
developed as a combination of ideas grounded in poststructuralism,
postmodernism, and Social Construction theory (Dynes). As a result,
foundational texts in the queer studies project emerged beginning with, Fear
of the Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (1993), a collection edited by
Michael Warner that featured essays by Eve Sedgewick, Henry Louis Gates,
and Warner himself. The title carried forth the same political spirit that was
used to galvanize queer activists who were active prior to publication. It is a
play on the title of a popular and politically radical African American rap
group, Public Enemy, whose third album, Fear of a Black Planet was released

3
For a cogent historical perspective on the emergence of queer studies, see Wayne
R. Dynes helpful article, “Queer Studies: In Search of a Discipline,” 34-52.

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three years earlier. 4 By naming the book Fear of a Queer Planet, Warner made a
daring move, connecting the radical political plight of “queers” with that of
“blacks” in America. Although Warner’s move seems to indicate that the
inequitable treatment of queers and blacks are analogous, this move too
easily conflates the two struggles and the identities that characterize them.
Nonetheless, Warner offers a politicized view of queer, when he states:

The preference for “queer” represents, among other things, an

aggressive impulse generalization; it rejects a minoritizing logic of
toleration or simple political interest-representation in favor of a
more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal. For academics,
being interested in Queer theory is a way to mess up the
desexualized spaces of the academy, exude some rut, reimagine the
public form and for which academics write, dress, and perform.
(xxvi)

Hence, Warner sets the stage for scholarship and political activism to
intersect as part of a “queer movement”.

Furthermore, Dynes dates the event, “InQueery, InTheory, InDeed,” the

“Sixth North American Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Conference,” held at the
University of Iowa in November 1994, as one of the first moves in
conference planning in which programs centered on lesbian and gay studies
were converted into “queer theory” and “queer studies.” The “queer
movement,” then, shaped by its activist roots, continued to be cultivated
within elite universities on the two coasts and within, what Dynes labels, the
“heartland” of America as well (34). In light of the fact that the “queer
movement” has its roots in America, it can be argued that what has emerged
is an Americanized queer studies project. To be sure, Scott Gunther, writing
on the reception of “queer theory” in France, states that “queer theory” is
essentially considered to be “American queer theory.” Gunther notes that in
1997, an organization in France calling itself Le Zoo “organized a series of
seminars to address the question of how one might go about importing
American queer theory into the French context” (24). Thus, the American
interpretation of the word, “queer,” and its academic appendage, “queer
theory,” can be differentiated from its use in other contexts like France. In
fact, as Gunther suggests, one of the most important criticisms of “queer
theory” stems from the very fact that it originated in the United States.
Indeed, scholars and activists within the French context have noted that

4 It should also be noted that Tricia Rose’s article, “Fear of a Black Planet: Rap
Music and Black Cultural Politics” appeared in the Journal of Negro Education 60.3
(1991) around the same time as Warner’s Fear of a Queer Planet.
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“resistance to ‘queer’ represents for some resistance to American

imperialism” (24).

It is no surprise, then, that some scholars within the “queer studies”

trajectory have moved away from the normalized “queer eye” that focused
specifically on issues pertaining to sexuality vís a vís the experience of the
white American gay male and have turned to other aspects like racialization,
transnationalism, post-colonialism and globalization within their projects. E.
Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson have correctly pointed out that
certain groups can not afford “single-variable politics” (5). As a result, the
queer studies trajectory has been broadened by the emergence of such
projects as queer ethnic studies, queer postcolonial studies, and transgender
studies to name a few. As stated previously, one example of the evolving
projects is Black Queer Studies, which materialized out of the “Black Queer
Studies in the Millennium Conference,” and sees itself as a “critical
intervention in the discourse of Black studies and queer studies” (Johnson
and Henderson 1). Such projects attempt to ameliorate the queer studies
project by correcting the myopic gaze (i.e. white American gay male
bourgeoisie intellectual perspective) that seemingly characterizes this still
growing area of study. Judith Halberstam sees this intrusion of new
perspectives as the most obliging form of correction. She states,

The future of queer studies, I claim, depends absolutely on moving

away from White gay male identity politics and learning from the
radical critiques offered by a younger generation of queer scholars
who draw their intellectual inspiration from feminism and ethnic
studies rather than white queer studies. (“Shame and White Gay
Masculinity” 220)

Halberstam is correct in asserting that the myopic perspective that

characterizes queer studies ought to be corrected if the project is to be
further developed. However, I would contend that there remains within
queer studies principles that impede the activist-laden projects of SGL
African American women and men who seek to counter white racism while
simultaneously combating homophobia and heteronormativity, sexism and
androcentrism, neocolonialism, and neoliberal capitalism. This ethos
specifically obstructs the need of SGL people of color to name identities –
and to un-blur the boundaries – such that the root causes of the
intersectional oppression based on race, gender, class and other identities
experienced by SGL women and men of color can be effectively identified,
interrogated and eventually demolished.

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Exploring the Ethos in the Queer studies/theory Project

To this end, I offer an interrogation of the utility of the queer project (both
queer studies and theory) and the ways that it may obstruct “Black Struggle”.
Some of the characteristics that are identified hereafter may, indeed, have
constructive uses; however, as illuminated below, such qualities impede that
which is essential to “Black Struggle,” namely: 1. its universalizing impulse, 2.
its appeal to anti-identitarian politics, 3. the failure, on the part of some, to
disavow white privilege, and 4. its focus on theoretical critiques that are
grounded in the discursive.

Patrick Johnson argues that the queer studies project “homogenizes

notions of self-hood, agency, and experience” (“‘Quare’ Studies” 3). The
move to universalize central aspects of one’s identity is seemingly the result
of a debate over essentialism and constructionism that is central to the queer
project. Essentialism moves to name sexuate identities as transhistorical, that
is, it forwards the notion that fixed sexuate identities can be traced back in
history; social constructionism maintains that sexuate identities are the
“product of cultural conditioning, rather than of biological and constitutional
factors” (Dynes 37-38). Queer studies, which Dynes labels the “successor to
Social Constructionism,” is greatly influenced by the revolutionary work of
Michel Foucault (40). As such, queer theory seeks to explore “how power
operates with sexuality in contemporary society” and as a result, it seeks to
defy rigid categorizations associated with sexuate identities (Avilla-Saavedra
3). This inclination is characteristic of the postmodern impulse that drives
Queer studies as well. Dynes, expounding on this notion, states, “…the
strand of postmodernism that is perhaps most applicable is its asserted
capacity to efface limits, whether they apply to gender categories, academic
disciplines, high and low culture, or architectural styles” (49). This
“universalizing impulse,” then can be seen as a move towards anti-
essentialism and inclusivity that is grounded in constructionist and
postmodern theory. It is a move towards the production of queer, a seemingly
amorphous identity construct that seeks to dispose of territorial labels and
the subsequent in- and out-groups that are created around such labels (Puar
64). Yet, the perfunctory move towards the blurring of boundaries between
racial, gender, class, and sexuate identities in queer studies – without
attending to the needs of the self to freely establish or celebrate such
boundaries prior to this move – is detrimental to African American women
and men. In this regard, queer studies seeks, via its universalizing impulse, to

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police agency and the self’s freedom to name and witness rather than to
provide the space needed for such an important move. 5

It is clear, then, why queer studies can be characterized as a project

governed by a politics of anti-identity. If queer theory seeks to efface labels
and constructs that further the hierarchal structuring of subjects, and if it
seeks to unsettle the oppressive knots that are forged by state sanctioned
labels, then one can understand why a move to resist identification may
indeed be useful. Some have suggested that the playfulness and inclusivity of
the term “queer” itself “opens up rather than fixes identity” (Johnson,
“‘Quare’ Studies” 4). Thus, this move towards anti-identity can be seen as a
political and polemical act of resistance that muddles heteronormative
identity constructs; however, it can also pose serious problems for those
people – like African Americans – who seek to isolate and problematize
sexualized and racialized identity constructs and who perceive the insurgent
and liberatory potentiality present in racial and ethnic community and
solidarity. 6

The queer studies project seems to be guided by a particular standard

that fosters, as opposed to countering, white privilege. Thus, if “part of the
privilege of whiteness is the freedom not to think about race,” then the
resistance to engage in a dialogue on racial identities – including whiteness –
only reinforces one of the primary privileges maintained by whites, that is,
the privilege to discount race (Grillo and Wildman 653). Perez argues that
queer theory’s own stake in anti-identitarian politics does not preclude an
injunction on whiteness (174). He goes on to contend that “Queer
theorizing, as it has been institutionalized, is proper to – and property to –
white bodies” (Perez 174). Similarly, Johnson asserts, “most white queer
theorists fail to acknowledge and address racial privilege” (5). Thus, the ethos
of queer theory perpetuates an injunction on identity politics. As a result,
barriers that prevent SGL people of color from naming and witnessing
against white racism or skin privilege and exploring racial identities are
fortified. As such, it is clear why Avilla-Saavedra, quoting Nikki Sullivan, has
characterized the queer studies project as a “white, privileged, collective

5
I wish to thank Larry D. Lyons for challenging me to carefully distinguish between
“naming” and “witnessing.” In this regard, naming is to be construed as the act of
the self to verbally delineate one’s identit(ies); whereas witnessing can be understood
as the process of the self to testify freely, to bear witness, or to narrativize the self’s
experience in the world, shaped by identit(ies).

6 I wish to thank LaMarr Jurelle Bruce for drawing my attention to this very
important detail.
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intellectual effort that, because of its circumstance, could see race or class as
secondary to sexuality” (6). Such blindness to white privilege and racism
within Black Struggle is anathema and therefore problematic for SGL women
and men of color if it informs the theoretical interventions of queer
studies/theory.

Finally, Johnson has noted that queer theorists tend to ground critiques
in the realm of discourse (7). As stated previously, queer studies is influenced
by the work of Foucault; therefore, it is governed by the imperative to
counter the power relations that seek to construct discourses. The discursive
realm, then, takes center stage in queer studies/theory for it is within the
realm of discourse where power is transmitted, produced, and reinforced
(Foucault 101). As such, it seems that this Foucauldian notion drives the
queer studies project. Gunther has argued that the goal to defy the “social
and historical construction of categories of sexuality and gender” is central to
the project of American queers specifically (23). Thus, the ethos of queer
studies is one that is characterized by its attention to discourse, theorizing,
and intellectualizing, and not to the material, on-the-ground activism that
once propelled the queer movement. Historian Allan Berube made a similar
charge when he stated that some queer scholarship is “so abstract, text-
based, career-oriented, concerned with developing insider jargon that it just
doesn’t hold my attention.” As a result, Berube goes on to assert that he feels
like an “outsider” because of this seeming disconnect between theory and
practice (qtd. in Maynard 58).

Johnson also questions the effectiveness of queer theory if, in fact, it is

limited to the realm of discourse. He asks:

What, for example, are the ethical and material implications of

queer theory if its project is to dismantle all notions of identity and
agency? The deconstructive turn in queer theory highlights the
ways in which ideology functions to oppress and to proscribe ways
of knowing, but what is the utility of queer theory on the front
lines, in the trenches, on the street, or anyplace where the racialized
and sexualized body is beaten, starved, fired, cursed-indeed, where
the body is the site of trauma? (5)

Johnson’s query illuminates an aspect of the queer project that is problematic

within; namely, its tendency to focus on the dismantling of power through
discourse. Simply, what is dismissed is the attentiveness to materiality and the
body, as well as, the radical modes of resistance that formally characterized
the queer movement in the past. If the present ethos of queer studies/theory

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is that which is characterized by intellectualizing and theorizing alone as

opposed to the propagation of an “in-your-face” praxis, then it will limit the
potentiality of liberation for those SGL women and men engaged in “Black
Struggle.”

On “Black Struggle”

“Black struggle” scrutinizes the particularities – the mundane and

extraordinary – that shape the experiences of African American peoples. It
interrogates America’s past, and contemporary, racial and sexual imaginary as
destructive constructions that must be named, protested, and reconstructed.
Moreover, Black Struggle takes serious the place of the black body, in
historical and social contexts, as a site of abjection and offense as well as
triumph and beauty. Indeed, Black Struggle is characterized by the following
qualities: 1. the space provided for agency and the self to name and perform
identities despite specific boundaries (i.e. race, class, gender, and sexuate
identities), 2. its appeal to the centrality of race, 3. its insistence on the
naming and disavowal of white privilege, and 4. its focus on a liberative
praxis grounded in radical action.

First, Black Struggle seeks to provide the space for agency and the self-
naming of identities despite specific boundaries (i.e. race, class, gender, and
sexuate identities). In fact, Black Struggle, by the very nature of its
designation, requires specificity. Thus, it exposes and interrogates boundaries,
and, in some instances seeks to celebrate boundaries and provide witness to
lived experiences within these boundaries. Francisco Valdes rightly argues
that:

Neither sex, race, nor sexual orientation can “come first” in the
configuration of human identities, politics, and communities. I
reject this notion of fixed or unitary identity politics because the
sense of primacy that it protects belies human experience…In fact,
this notion of fixed identity primacies is not only conceptually
unsound, but politically naïve. Imputed primacies regarding these
(and other) identity constructs are, and ought to be, at most a very
situation-specific calculation. (336)

Incorporated in Black Struggle then, is an interrogation of the specific; those

who participate in this project refuse, to use Fanon’s descriptive phrasing, to
amputate their identities (Fanon 140). Even more, Black Struggle is a
performance that allows the subject to name his or her own identity as he or
she sees fit. Valdes states in this regard, “When I am asked which ‘comes
first’ for me, color or sexuality, I respond ‘it depends.’” Thus, in order for
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Black Struggle to be furthered, the project must be driven by a charge which

acknowledges that identities cannot be ignored or universalized, considering
that such moves stifle the creative expression of narratives which are formed
via the experiences of identities or of the subject. Patricia J. Williams asserts
that one can find “freedom through the establishment of identity, the form-
ation of an autonomous social self” (84).

Moreover, Black Struggle can be characterized as a move in which all

identities that are affected by white racism – namely, class, gender, sexuate,
and class identities – are interrogated. For example, the naming of one’s class
identity, a specific site of interrogation, is an important characteristic of Black
Struggle. As a result of the effects of white racism on the establishment and
perpetuation of class, one of the goals of Black Struggle is to bring about the
end of classism. Richard Delgado argues that:

Racism injures the career prospects, social mobility, and interracial

contracts of minority group members. This, in turn, impedes
assimilation into the economic, social, and political mainstream of
society and ensures that victims of racism are seen and see
themselves as outsiders. Indeed, racism can be seen as a force used
by the majority to preserve an economically advantageous position
for themselves. (134)

Accordingly, class distinctions and class divisions are particularities that Black
Struggle focuses on in order to name the white racist roots of such class
constructions and to exonerate, subsequently, such harmful distinctions and
divisions.

Furthermore, Black Struggle seeks to identify the effects of what Ian F.

Haney Lopez, labels “gender racialization” (170). For example, Lopez
describes the identification of Native Americans in the Southwest during the
era of frontier expansion as “indolent, slothful, cruel, cowardly Mexicans,”
while the women were described as “fair, virtuous, and lonely Spanish
maidens” (170). Similarly, Michael Eric Dyson, commenting on the imaging
of black bodies under the racist gaze of white people, states, “black women
were thought to be hot and ready to be bothered. Black men were believed
to have big sexual desires and even bigger organs to realize their lust” (84).
Roderick Ferguson contends that African Americans were viewed in the
1940s as “culturally pathological because African-American culture did not
conform to the gender and sexual ideals of whites” (420). Moreover, Joane
Nagel contends that “In the twentieth century black sexuality remained a
preoccupation of white America with lynchings and castrations of black men

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and the arrests of both black men and women for sexual misdeeds” (123). As
such, it is imperative to note that in order for gender racialization to be
thwarted, the self must be free to interrogate, name, and witness against the
skewed conceptualizations of gender that dehumanize women – especially
women of color – and African American men as well. Self-naming is
important because it allows one to exercise control over the production of
images such that one is empowered. In that regard, the liberative project of
Black Struggle takes seriously its commitment to allow the self to name
freely. Indeed, Black Struggle is grounded in the understanding that in the
lives of “the disenfranchised, the recognition, construction and maintenance
of self-image…functions to sustain, even when social systems fail to do so”
(Johnson 11). As such, rather than attempting to police the self so as to
propagate universalism, Black Struggle seeks to foster agency so that the self
can freely name specific identities and boundaries.

Second, the Black Struggle for liberation also highlights the centrality of
race. As Dyson contends, African Americans should be able to “acknowledge
the centrality of race while denying the exclusivity of race” (190). Because of this
appeal to the centralization of race, it is important that I make a few
clarifications about race so as to expel any detrimental assertions that could
be made regarding Black Struggle. First, race is a social construction and not
a biological (genetic) characteristic. In this regard, the black struggle for
liberation resists historical claims by white racists that rely on counterfeit
“scientific” claims of the intellectual, moral, and physiological inferiority of
black people. It is also important to highlight the social functioning of racial
constructions as they are “constructed relationally, against one another,
rather than in isolation” (Lopez 168). Races can be seen as constructions
developed by humans; as such, this evidences the ways in which power can
be leveraged when one group decides to oppress another.

Because of this, it is necessary that we ask, why then, would the Black
Struggle centralize the project of race? Is not that move counterproductive?
If we understand racial constructions (i.e. black/white) to function not as
essentializations, but as what Edward Said calls “contrapuntal ensembles,”
then the case can be made for centralizing racial identity (52). Said argues that
“no identity can ever exist by itself without an array of opposites, negatives,
oppositions” as in the ensembles black/white, female/male, or East/West
(52). Thus, a careful analysis of such contrapuntal ensembles can illuminate
one’s understanding of the particular knowledges and attitudes that are
entrenched within. When looking at the dependent relationships of these
ensembles, one can clearly distinguish how one identity (i.e. black) can be
used to define another (i.e. white) and vice versa. Entangled within the
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ensembles are powerful assumptions that must be brought to the fore. For
example, Nagel, when speaking of the contrapuntal ensemble women/men,
states:

[Judith] Butler and others ask what danger might lie in assuming
women’s existence? They conclude that women bring men into
being by their “otherness,” and that women’s abject (marginal,
invisible) status affirms men’s dominance and normalcy. The
view of women as ‘not men’ leads to a focus on women’s lack of
rights, women’s troubles, women’s marginality, and thus can be
seen to be an affirmation, a reinforcement and even a constitution
of hegemonic manhood-men’s dominance, men’s privilege, men’s
centrality. (115)

In the same way, the “attempt to racially define the conquered, subjugated, or
enslaved is at the same time an attempt to racially define the conqueror, the
subjugator, or the enslaver” (Lopez 171). Thus, the black struggle for
liberation works to name “blackness” so as to illuminate the problematics of
“whiteness.” Because of this move, it is avidly identitarian in nature.

Third, Black Struggle is insistent upon the naming and disavowal of

whiteness and White privilege. Mason Stokes, author of The Color of Sex:
Whiteness, Heterosexuality, and the Fiction of White Supremacy (2001), contends that
central to the project of women of color feminists in the 1970s was the
naming of whiteness as the site “of narcissistic and exclusionary privilege”
(181). Thus, women of color feminists criticized their white feminist
counterparts for engendering projects that made them – and their particular
experiences and identities – invisible. For example, Audre Lorde posed the
following critique to White feminist Mary Daly: “Beyond sisterhood is still
racism” (70). Black Struggle insists on the naming and interrogation of white
racism and the disavowal of white privilege. White privilege must be
jettisoned because it furthers systems of social and economic oppression.
Derrick A. Bell, Jr. contends, “the continuing resistance to affirmative action
plans, set-asides, and other meaningful relief for discrimination-caused harm
is based on substantial part on the perception that black gains threaten the
main component of status for many whites: the sense that, as whites, they are
entitled to priority and preference over blacks” (77). Even though some have
called for African Americans to have “white freedom,” I contend that the
black struggle for liberation seeks to deconstruct whiteness as the norm par

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excellence and names and counters white privilege such that it no longer
operates oppressively. 7

Fourth, Black Struggle is characterized by a liberative praxis that is action

oriented. It is quickened by a spirit of radical action and resistance that
mobilizes the oppressed to correct the many societal ills that affect African
Americans and other peoples of color. Simply put, Black Struggle cannot
exist as a theoretical concept only, but it must be performed so that social
change can be actualized. When examining the social realities that are
plaguing the black community, it is clear to see why revolutionary action is a
necessity. For example, according to the United States Census Bureau report
(2005), the median income of households rose by 1.1 percent between 2004
and 2005 from $45,817 USD to $46,326 USD. Yet non-Hispanic black
households had the lowest median income of all racial groups in 2005
averaging $30,858 USD. In addition, while the poverty rate for “non-
Hispanic whites” decreased from 8.7 percent in 2004 to 8.3 percent in 2005,
the poverty rate for non-Hispanic blacks alarmingly remained at 24.9 percent
and Hispanics at 21.8 percent in 2005. These statistics signal the need for a
theorizing that engenders action. This call to action is one that the theorist –
who is responsible for mapping out a “topological and geological survey of
the battlefield” – and the activist – who relies on the battle plan of the
intellectual to perform – can both answer so as to bring about social
transformation (Foucault 62). With this in mind, the “Black struggle” for
liberation functions by way of the acknowledgment that “queer theory and its
focus on sexual identity are not sufficient to explain how individuals
experience their everyday lives” and that “liberation from sexual oppression
alone does not promote significant social change” (Avilla-Savedra 17).

Conclusion

This paper intended to illustrate how the ethos of queer studies/theory

violates the Black Struggle for liberation. In this regard, attempts were made
to draw attention to the discontinuities that frustrate the move towards
integration of the two projects. First, queer studies/theory is characterized by
a universalizing impulse that blurs boundaries and polices agency and the
ability of the self to name identities, while Black Struggle seeks to open up
space for agency, self-naming of specific identities and boundaries, and
witnessing. Second, queer studies/theory appeals to anti-identitarian politics,
while Black Struggle specifically highlights the centrality of identity,

7
Richard Rodriguez comments, “What I want for African Americans is white
freedom. The same as I want for myself…” in Brown (142).
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Darnell L. Moore

particularly of race. Third, the queer studies/theory project fails to disavow

white privilege, while the black struggle for liberation is insistent on the
naming and disavowal of white privilege. Lastly, queer studies/theory
ostensibly focuses on theoretical critiques that are grounded in the discursive,
while Black Struggle focuses on materiality and a liberative praxis that spurs
action. Because of this discontinuity, I contend that some African American
SGL women and men do not embrace – and cannot embrace – queer
studies/theory.

Yet, while I have attempted to critically interrogate and reject certain

aspects of the queer project throughout this paper, I would also like to
acknowledge that some participants in Black Struggle similarly apply
boundaried norms that adjy the absolutizing, liberative features of this crucial
project. It is not uncommon for the experiences of SGL people, women, and
the working class (or, alternately, the middle and upper classes) to be ignored
or effaced by some contingencies within Black Struggle. Thus, present in the
queer project and Black Struggle is the potential to contravene, by way of a
skewed theoretical grounding, the radical political aims of obliterating state
sanctioned norms and actuating the agential emancipation of the abjectified
other. Nonetheless, Black Struggle seems to take into account the need to
survey the social/racial/gender/class scenes of the subject and attend to the
needs of the self to name his or her identities and bear witness from these
varied subjective locations. These vital preliminary steps, I argue, must occur
before such boundaries are queerantined completely.

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