This chapter will explore the often-unspoken world of a Black men in higher education administration who identify as GBQQ (gay, bisexual, queer, or questioning) from the autoethnographic reflections of one Black gay man's personal and leadership experiences. This chapter will benefit an audience who seeks to dismantle or disrupt preexisting higher education social constructs that result in Black men who are GBQQ hiding from embodying their authentic selves in professional educational settings. It is written openly and honestly to encourage Black GBQQ men who hold professional roles in higher education spaces to resist the seduction of acceptance in order to un-learn and detach unrealistic patriarchic, heteronormative expectations of Black straightness and inclusion-based professional politics tethered to the higher education roles occupied by Black GBQQ men.
“What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have” -(Winfrey, 2018).
TopIntroduction
From the Corners of My Childhood & Guyhood
Circa. 1995 - 2002
Location: Birmingham, AL
You raised me in the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, Birmingham, Alabama, a city with neighborhoods still tainted with racial disparities. It is from your hometown that I absorbed the values that guide me to this day. Birmingham taught me to be persistent, it showed me how to endure, to work with integrity, and to have courage in my decisions. Unfortunately, it was the pain of this city that seemed to bleed into our lives.
Throughout elementary and middle school did you know that I was teased? You would have thought “Sissy” my first name and “Faggot” was my last.
Dad, you didn't have to live as me. It's not just one reason why I, as a Black Gay man hesitate about sharing my identity as an adult professional; it is a layering of whys...
Dad did you know in high school I was a people pleaser?
Did you know, no one really knew “me,” not even you.
At school, they knew “Mr. Popular”.
At home, you knew me as “your son”.
Being “your son” meant –being a straight southern gentleman who dated girls, had a job at a fast-food restaurant, not a retail store, a tough Black young man who played sports, mostly football or baseball like my older brothers– not being myself.
Dad, because of you I never kissed a boy in high school, but I always wondered what it might feel like; I even thought about who it might be.
You noticed, you threatened me frequently.
For as long as I can remember, I have been infatuated with belonging, consumed with why I was different, yearning to know why I wasn't the same; I just wanted to feel like everyone else.
I never wanted to be another race.
I never wanted to be another gender.
I wanted to be accepted.
I wanted to be accepted as a Black man who happens to be Gay.
It's not just one reason why I'm lending my lived experiences to research in the form of this epistolary autoethnography…It's a layering of why(s)...
They [you, them–straight people–you them –white people– you them– women] “don't have to live as me” (Mock, 2014, p. 117)
I was always Black, born that way.
I was always male, born that way.
I was always Gay, born that way.
For Black Gay professional men working in higher education, we have an innate intuition to make everyone else comfortable with the uncomfortable. It's funny how I've been conditioned to creating spaces of belonging for undergraduate men of color to reach the fullness of their potential, for white colleagues to feel comfortable around their Black work friends, and for cisgender straight Black men to not have their masculinity jeopardized by public proximity to an effeminate Black queer man.
My true-self continues to slowly be seduced –pulled by the seduction of institutional approval, driven by the seduction of presidential acknowledgment, directed by the seduction of my students and teams' perspectives of my leadership capabilities. Too often does the seduction consume me. Melting my bold unapologetic Black gay man's flare, diluting my intellectually flamboyant phrases, like “Yassss scholars…” into “Good Job brothers…” insidiously my personality fades away into resembling the dismissive, racist, ingenious values of the institution. Assimilating, into the perfect example of manhood shaped by a system of management who always in all ways allows its Black Gay professional men to work ourselves to the bone for the approval of those in leadership who are void of color, void of life's historical bruises, void of the persistence of approval.