In 1851 the anthropological gallery of the National History Museum in Paris commissioned casts of this work and the likeness of Abdullah. Cordier’s ethnographic busts reflect mid-19th-century discourse on aesthetics and colonization as well as pseudoscientific theories of race.

Early 20th century African-American Harlem Renaissance writer and poet Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “Black women are the mules of the world” politically, theologically, and historically. If Hurston’s statement is grounded in an analysis of truth, then Black trans women are situated somewhere between the late great African-American theologian and civil rights icon Howard Thurman’s notion of “the disinherited” and the radical Black French philosopher Frantz Fanon’s notion of “the wretched of the earth.” Persistent marginalization over centuries—not only of trans and cis women, but also of Black gay, lesbian and bisexual people—has led to entrenched stigmatization, violence, and instability. Yet, in the face of complex challenges, such as housing insecurity and some of the highest HIV infection rates in the United States, Black/Latino LGBT people have formed powerfully robust, self-sustaining social networks and cultural groups. One such network is the House | Ballroom community, a Black/Latino LGBT artistic collective and intentional kinship system that has its roots in 1920s Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a distinctly black LGBTQ culture took shape in Harlem. [...] Over the years, Harlem continued to be a vibrant site of LGBTQ art, activism and culture. So it should come as no surprise that Harlem was the birthplace of “vogue”, a highly stylized form of dance created by black and Latino LGBTQ communities.

The documentary Paris is Burning captures a snapshot of the history of vogue in the mid-late 1980’s. This iconic film by Jennie Livingston was a portrait of some of the most prominent voguers in New York’s ballroom scene and the challenges they faced along the lines of race, gender, class and sexuality. Although it is widely celebrated as an invaluable piece of documentary history on LGBTQ communities of color, the film remains controversial. The voguers in the film were working-class, poor and/or sex working. Some were even battling homelessness and HIV/AIDS. Yet they had to sue to be paid next to nothing for their participation in the film.

Feminists like bell hooks believe that Livingston was not critical of her position as a white filmmaker. hooks goes on to argue that without references to any subversive process that might be taking place, voguers seem to imitate the very structures that marginalize them. Other scholars maintain that the imitation used in vogue creates a black imaginative space where aesthetics and LGBTQ life can be explored in all its complexity.

BUtoday: News, Opinion, Commentary (Nov. 21, 2024)

"In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, contemporary American artist Kara Walker (b. 1969)—widely recognized for her explorations of issues of race, gender, and sexuality through the eighteenth-century medium of cut-paper silhouettes—has selected a variety of objects from the Museum's collection that she juxtaposes with her own work in order to explore the banality of everyday life, water, and its impact. Taking her cue from J. M. W. Turner's Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On) (1840) and Winslow Homer's sensitive depictions of black life in nineteenth-century America, Walker's aim is to simultaneously address "the transformative effect and psychological meaning of the sea" and the role of the black figure as they are represented in art. The narrative created through the combination of these disparate images gives rise to a foreboding sense of doom." Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006

my head about this poem about why I can’t

go out without changing my clothes my shoes

my body posture my gender identity my age

my status as a woman alone in the evening/

alone on the streets/alone not being the point/

the point being that I can’t do what I want

to do with my own body because I am the wrong

sex the wrong age the wrong skin and

suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/

or far into the woods and I wanted to go

there by myself thinking about God/or thinking

about children or thinking about the world/all of it

disclosed by the stars and the silence:

I could not go and I could not think and I could not

stay there

alone

as I need to be

alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own

body and

who in the hell set things up

like this

and in France they say if the guy penetrates

but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me

and if after stabbing him if after screams if

after begging the bastard and if even after smashing

a hammer to his head if even after that if he

and his buddies fuck me after that

then I consented and there was

no rape because finally you understand finally

they fucked me over because I was wrong I was

wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong

to be who I am

which is exactly like South Africa

penetrating into Namibia penetrating into

Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if

Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the

proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland

and if

after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe

and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to

self-immolation of the villages and if after that

we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they

claim my consent:

Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of

the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what

in the hell is everybody being reasonable about

and according to the Times this week

back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem

and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they

killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba

and before that it was my father on the campus

of my Ivy League school and my father afraid

to walk into the cafeteria because he said he

was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong

gender identity and he was paying my tuition and

before that

it was my father saying I was wrong saying that

I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a

boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and

that I should have had straighter hair and that

I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should

just be one/a boy and before that         

it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for

my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me

to let the books loose to let them loose in other

words

I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.

and the problems of South Africa and the problems

of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white

America in general and the problems of the teachers

and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social

workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very

familiar with the problems because the problems

turn out to be

me

I am the history of rape

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of

myself

I am the history of battery assault and limitless

armies against whatever I want to do with my mind

and my body and my soul and

whether it’s about walking out at night

or whether it’s about the love that I feel or

whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or

the sanctity of my national boundaries

or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity

of each and every desire

that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic

and indisputably single and singular heart

I have been raped

be-

cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age

the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the

wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic

the wrong sartorial I

I have been the meaning of rape

I have been the problem everyone seeks to

eliminate by forced

penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/

but let this be unmistakable this poem

is not consent I do not consent

to my mother to my father to the teachers to

the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy

to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon

idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in

cars

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life

A Double Standard

By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Do you blame me that I loved him?

If when standing all alone

I cried for bread a careless world

Pressed to my lips a stone.

Do you blame me that I loved him,

That my heart beat glad and free,

When he told me in the sweetest tones

He loved but only me?

Can you blame me that I did not see

Beneath his burning kiss

The serpent’s wiles, nor even hear

The deadly adder hiss?

Can you blame me that my heart grew cold

That the tempted, tempter turned;

When he was feted and caressed

And I was coldly spurned?

Would you blame him, when you draw from me

Your dainty robes aside,

If he with gilded baits should claim

Your fairest as his bride?

Would you blame the world if it should press

On him a civic crown;

And see me struggling in the depth

Then harshly press me down?

Crime has no sex and yet to-day

I wear the brand of shame;

Whilst he amid the gay and proud

Still bears an honored name.

Can you blame me if I’ve learned to think

Your hate of vice a sham,

When you so coldly crushed me down

And then excused the man?

Would you blame me if to-morrow

The coroner should say,

A wretched girl, outcast, forlorn,

Has thrown her life away?

Yes, blame me for my downward course,

But oh! remember well,

Within your homes you press the hand

That led me down to hell.

I’m glad God’s ways are not our ways,

He does not see as man,

Within His love I know there’s room

For those whom others ban.

I think before His great white throne,

His throne of spotless light,

That whited sepulchres shall wear

The hue of endless night.

That I who fell, and he who sinned,

Shall reap as we have sown;

That each the burden of his loss

Must bear and bear alone.

No golden weights can turn the scale

Of justice in His sight;

And what is wrong in woman’s life

In man’s cannot be right.

'cause sleep ain't gonna pay the rent/
Ohh day to day /

they got you working like a slave/
Taking credit for the work you gave/
And stealing your raise but I.../

… I know you're down/

but when you gon get up/
I see you're down/

but when you gon get up"

On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of LGBTQ+ employees and ruled that workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender is unconstitutional. The opinion hinged on the word “sex” in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. By advocating for gender equality, Murray laid the foundation for further legal protection of LGBTQ+ communities."