on the matters of pride in june
By Craig Washington
June 2025 has set off another long hot summer, a season already rolling with resistance to white supremacist tyranny in these United States. How ironic then that June carries observance dates recognizing several groups fixed in this administration’s bullseye. LGBTQIA Pride was first celebrated as Gay Pride through the 1970 protest march (not a parade) on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Inn Riots of June 1969. Juneteenth (June 19th), now a national holiday, commemorates Black people’s legal release from slavery and the continued path toward liberation. HIV Long Term Survivors Day celebrates those who beat formidable odds and marks the June 5th anniversary of the first CDC report on AIDS. National HIV Testing Day (June 27th) encourages folks to get tested and know their status. June is also Men’s Mental Health month stemming from the initial broader Men’s Health month.
Through a Black queer lens, I see this convergence as a constellation representing my own formation. I am a Black gay men living with HIV for over 40 years, a writer, and a therapist. I define My Blackness my queerness and my maleness as primary dimensions who I am. They are not separate slices stacked in order of significance. Only Black women and Black gay/trans folks are asked “which are you first?”. No one interrogates white queer folk or cisgender hetero Black men on their race or gender loyalty. However Black men gay, trans and hetero alike are constantly interrogated about their manhood as synonymous with their masculinity. I long for more discussions with my hetero brothers where we can share our experiences with varied gender cages. Our mental and emotional wellness has much to gain from us connecting across our differences.
In 2025, how does the Black queer individual embrace the cultural pride symbolized by Juneteenth as they absorb pervasive anti-LGBTQIA hostilities from their own people? How do we consider the calls for unity from men and women who assess gay and trans folks as mortal threats to Black survival? How hypocritical then is anti-gay anti-trans hatred as practiced by the very people who defined the terms of their nation’s moral redemption?
The standards by which Black folks qualify themselves as woke or progressive need more rigorous assessment. Having a sound analysis of the oppression that targets your class while disputing the validity of others’ oppression does not qualify one as woke. It means that your empathy extends only to those who are most like you, and that you see freedom as a finite resource, so other freedom movements compete with yours. This is the mindset of those who refute LGBTQ advocacy or immigration rights as illegitimate appropriations of Black liberation work.
To be woke is to respect intersectionality as a core value by which we can recognize each other’s battles and imagine new coalitions. Fifty-five years ago, Huey Newton co-founder of the Black Panther Party delivered a speech in which he encouraged the members to unite with homosexuals and women “in a revolutionary fashion”. Thirty years ago, I joined AID Atlanta’s African American outreach program, a volunteer brigade of hetero sisters and gay men that engaged all kinds of Black folk in barber shops, gay clubs, churches, high schools and prisons. We have glorious models of Black centered movements that worked at the intersections. It is our duty to protect our history and learn from it. It is our duty to counter the antirevolutionary thought polluting our media and our minds.
As we find ourselves under unvarnished siege, we know that the writers will record this moment in chapters and acts and episodes. I'm eagerly waiting for the part of the story when Black people recognize that the anti-trans, anti-queer, misogynist venom they lace into their half-baked racism analysis posed as pro-Black is neither woke, nor progressive. How does one decry the dismantling of DEI efforts yet treat trans people as less than human? How is it that LGBTQIA visibility and women's autonomy perceived as threats to Black manhood? I'm waiting for the part where we do more than assail the oppression imposed by white men. I'm waiting for the part when straight allies call out, add a line, play a chord, extrapolate scripture challenging the trans/queer hatred in their next anti-racism poem/book/performance/sermon. I'm not really waiting, because I am old and don't have time for that. I am wondering though.
