The comedian, writer, and Daily Show correspondent gets real about family, queerness, and coming out within the diaspora, and calls for black solidarity with queer struggle.
#001
GOLDEN MEAN: ft. Jaboukie Young-White and Oluwakemi Oritsejafor
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LISTEN
Kemi: I feel like for me, being a third culture kid,...I think what it's provided for me is just such a unique and diverse moral compass, through moving through life as an adult, because I've had so many different perspectives, especially here in the US. Being born and raised here in America, and as well as having immigrant parents, and also being Black and queer, I feel like all those things together allow me to emotionally, mentally and spiritually be more decisive."
At the same time, it's also kind of like led to a lot of my own confusion, because I have so many different avenues in which I could think through things. But nonetheless, it's still been a toolkit in terms of whichever given situation I've been in to think about where can I pull from, and my experience, and in my growth to allow myself to still remain authentic as I navigate life."
Jaboukie: "I think I agree with the sentiment that you cross reference a bunch of different things. I think specifically, what I find the most in my experience has been...the idea of Blackness in America that Black immigrant parents pass on to their Black American children, I think sort of forces you to think for yourself at a younger age, and also just become more independent-minded at a younger age, just because there's so much shit that my parents would say just from their interactions with America at large, and specifically white people, where I was like, "Okay, you can say that that's true, but I've experienced so-and-so, so I know you are seeing things way different than how I'm seeing things."
"...I feel like how so many kids who share a cultural upbringing with their parents, I feel like it's easier for them to sort of really go by their parent's word and put their parents up on a pedestal, and really relate to and sort of take their parents' word for things because their parents were once in their position at a certain point. Whereas like, for me it was like we were speaking two different languages."
Kemi:
"...What does being queer and Caribbean mean to you? I guess for myself, what does being queer and West African mean to me? I think for myself, coming out is still ... I'm still on that journey. I feel like you're always on that journey...Most of my family doesn't know that I'm queer and that I'm bisexual. I guess in a way, saying this now is like my coming out.
Jaboukie:
"That's true."
Kemi:
"Which is a really scary thought because that's not how I woke up today."
Jaboukie:
"Right, but I feel like ... The way that I came out to my family was through a public reveal. I think that it makes so much sense to do it that way just because their whole perception of queerness is tied up in what other people will think, and if you attach your queerness to a project that other people are praising and you're literally being praised for your queerness, I feel like for them, it creates such a cognitive dissonance where they don't know how to deal with it because really, the reason why they would be anti-gay, queerphobic, whatever, is because not not only religion, but they're also afraid of the shame and the status loss that's associated with it. If you're gaining status while losing status, to them, I feel like that just breaks their mind."
"...Actually at a young age, I was like, 'If I'm successful, I know that maybe they could accept me if I was successful or if I was very successful, I could be good enough to be accepted." Then once I got to college, I was like, "Honestly, I don't even give a fuck anymore. I'm just going to do my own thing. Whatever they feel, that's what they feel and that's it.
"
KEMI:
"I always feel like you used to bounce between that a lot...Between being like, "Fuck it. However they feel is how they feel," but also I feel like when we first met, our first few conversations about being queer and this idea of coming out, which is also something we talk about as being something that's ridiculous, you just shared the only reason I would come out is if I was doing it on national TV. I remember being 19 years old and you saying it. To fast forward three, four years later and to literally be there in the room and wish you ... It's definitely very trippy."
JABOUKIE:
"Well, it was also just because, A, my family doesn't have any intergenerational wealth. I wasn't really working. I was already in this position just financially, not even factoring in any existential or identitarian crises or whatever, but that was already tipped off that I was like, "I can't layer on stress with my family and all that with no financial support at all," because I'm like, "If they can barely support themselves but I know that at the end of the day, I would have a couch that I could go sleep on, to give that up, I was like, "I don't know if it's worth it." To be like, "Okay. Yes, I could live truthfully and honestly and authentically and everything." 100%, but then the trade-off of that self-actualization at that time versus, "Oh, okay. Now I have no safety net whatsoever." That wouldn't have made me feel more safe or more...I don't know. In touch with myself. It would have added a whole other... I don't know. Crisis, I guess."
...that wouldn't have made me feel more safe"
KEMI: "Just speaking to the conflict between being queer and being Caribbean...What has that felt [like] for you? What has that looked like for you?"
JABOUKIE: "I mean the thing that's made me the most angry, and I feel like this is why I'm so staunchly not Christian anymore, is it all is rooted in Christianity. Christianity is just a leftover from colonization. I think the most frustrating thing is to grow up in America and see ... In Catholic school my entire life and see how lax white people were about religion and how intense religion was not only with my Jamaican family, but with a lot of my black American friends' families. They literally just dropped off this thing that perpetuates so much violence and then just are like, "Oh, we don't need it anymore," because they weren't using it for crusades anymore."
KEMI:
...We turn to Christianity and faith in God because there is so much abuse and honestly terror that we face constantly and [even] still. I feel like there's so much guilt that exists. Guilt that was forced upon us by colonialism; that we are the wretched of the earth because of our dark skin. We are the coming of Satan. There's just a lot of reconciliation that needs to happen there, and that's a long road. That's a very, very, very long road."
JABOUKIE:
Yeah.
KEMI:
Wow. Look at me. Coming out as queer and also criticizing Christianity all in one recording!
JABOUKIE:
Yeah. I feel like that was one thing that my parents were also doubly hurt by is, "Oh, and you're not Christian," but I couldn't reconcile the two because I kept being told that it was either I was broken or the religion was broken. I chose to believe that the religion was broken. There was no way that I was going to be able to hold both of those ideas in my head and remain relatively sane.
JABOUKIE:
I've seen a lot of discussion recently about the one, I think she's South African, Olympic runner.
Kemi:
Yeah. I saw that, too.
JABOUKIE:
She was told that she had to take estrogen supplements or something to block her testosterone because her testosterone was too high.
KEMI:
It was an unfair advantage.
JABOUKIE:
Yeah, it was an unfair advantage. I'm not the first person to say this. There have been so many other queer black people, trans black people who have been saying this, but that's just an example of how it's so wrong-minded and narrow-sighted for black people not to adopt LGBTQ activism into pro-black activism because even the most cis-gendered, straightest black person is still not a man or woman. You are a black man. You are a black woman. There is a modifier that is thrown in front of it that no matter how much you think adhering to a binary gender spectrum thing and buying into all the beliefs that come into that, doing all the behaviors that comes with that, you will never be at the end of the day just a man, just a woman. You will always be a black man, a black woman.
You're already queer in a sense.
KEMI:
Yeah.
JABOUKIE:
If we're just looking at queer in the sense of other, you're immediately othered from birth before you even have this additional homosexual, bisexual, trans identity. Whatever. You from the jump are different. The same mechanics or the same systems...or...there's a huge overlap in how those structures are used to withhold and attack queer people, just in the same breath they can be used to attack black people.
KEMI:
Right.
JABOUKIE:
Not only that athlete, but look at the way that they talk about any black athlete.
KEMI:
Serena Williams.
JABOUKIE:
Serena Williams. Even LeBron. To make someone superhuman is still robbing them of their humanity. They're not just "playing", they're not just a human. You're either above or below. There's no in between.
....Even to talk about the queer phobia or the LGBTQ attitudes that can be held in the black diaspora community. I don't know. It almost feels like the wrong conversation to be having in a way. It's like I wish that we could just get to the point where we're like, "Oh, wait. These things are very similar in a lot of ways."
