By Sikivu Hutchinson
The boys walk through the school quad playing the
dozens, verbally slamming another boy in absentia for being a weak “f—g” who
can’t be trusted. It’s part of the
“accepted” ritual of masculine schoolyard talk, a violent dance of bonding and
ostracism that every queer and cisgender boy must navigate; one that is powerfully dissected in Barry Jenkins’ Academy Award-winning film Moonlight. For conscious
educators who mentor and teach black boys, Moonlight’s
searing evocation of the tender, ambivalent arc of black male attraction from
elementary to adulthood was a welcome antidote to caricatures of hip hop
hypermasculinity. As educators attempt
to safeguard students from the latest criminalizing wave of Trumpist homophobia,
transphobia and heterosexism, Moonlight
offers teachable moments for a humanist, culturally responsive education that
centers black queer lives.
At a recent teacher training I conducted on creating
safe spaces for LGBTQI high school students, a teacher asked why it was
necessary to “call attention” to issues of sexuality and difference when LGBTQI
students were already marginalized?
Shouldn’t educators just treat everyone with the same dignity and respect
“regardless” of sexual orientation? Educational justice activists have long
argued that the colorblind ethos of classroom instruction disingenuously
ignores how the values and mores of the dominant culture indoctrinate us into
binary norms. In her book
Other People’s Children, educational
justice writer Lisa Delpit argues that mainstream
classrooms are structured around an implicit “culture of power” which disenfranchises
students of color. Consequently, a “treat
everyone with dignity and respect” approach that isn’t based on a critical
consciousness about how the dominant culture works undermines intersectional
identities. In the classroom, everyday
assumptions about interpersonal and romantic relationships “invisibilize” queer
students. Classroom discussions about traditional
straight families headed by heterosexual parents and caregivers perpetuate the
idea that good, normal family units are straight family units. Assumptions that everyone has been brought up
in a conventional family structure based on a universal nuclear family norm
that is uncritically faith-based, brand queer, foster, homeless and secular
youth as other.
Moonlight
breaks down these assumptions in often conflicting ways. Though the film’s protagonist Chiron lives
with his drug-addicted mother he’s mentored and “fathered” by an older black
man, played by Mahershala Ali, who accepts him as gay. His loving surrogate family supports him in
ways that his brittle, largely absent mother cannot. Ali’s delicately shaded character becomes Chiron’s
first crush and compass, while the women in his life are reduced to caregivers
or scolds. Although its depictions of
black women play
into stereotypical binaries of black womanhood, Moonlight succeeds in foregrounding how black queer youth are often
criminalized
when they attempt to express themselves and/or defend against bullying and
harassment. The film’s evocative
rendering of black male relationships encourages discussions about the ways in
which black boys are socialized to fit into the so-called “Man Box”. These limitations require them to act hard,
emotion-less and aggressive in order to avoid being singled out as different.
During a recent Women's Leadership Project student workshop on rape culture and
sexual violence featuring black feminist lesbian activist and filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons,
young men of color at King-Drew Magnet High School in South L.A. talked about
how they’re forced to conform to these roles or risk ostracism, ridicule or
violence. In Moonlight, Chiron is goaded into fighting his campus tormentor
because of a menacing environment in which he’s constantly taunted and harassed
about being gay/effeminate. This is a
familiar scenario in K-12 schools where a climate of fear and intimidation
among boys (across race/ethnicity and class) is virtually institutionalized,
embodied in sports culture and the often perilous ecosystem of the campus quad. Yet, traditional anti-bullying training which
fixates on “dignity and respect” ignores the way strict messaging about gender
non-conformity shapes the behavior and identities of youth. Writing about a scene in Richard Wright’s Black Boy, in which Wright kills a
kitten in order to best his emotionally unavailable father, students from my
South Los Angeles-based Young
Male Scholars’ program commented that the dominant culture’s failure to
show loving representations of black fatherhood plays a strong role in the
sometimes aggressive relationships they have with each other. In
Black Boy, Wright learns violent
masculinity navigating Jim Crow society, black patriarchy and his family’s “spare
the rod, spoil the child” religiosity. His relationships with other boys
are largely adversarial, based on boasts, one-upping and his peers’ intimidation
by his intellectual curiosity. Early on, Wright’s father becomes the
negative
role model he inadvertently ends up emulating in his struggle for
daily survival. Though Wright was straight, his childhood trajectory as a poor,
skeptical outcast forced to fend for himself and “become a man” within the
context of unrelenting violence, is similar to the young Chiron’s. Faced with constant slights and attacks,
Wright closes himself off emotionally from the world. Similarly, Chiron
withdraws from all but a few of his peers, and his muteness becomes a metaphor
for society’s failure to see or hear him.
Yet, Moonlight’s
concluding scene between Chiron and his nemesis/soulmate gestures toward
healing and reconciliation. Overall, the
film’s timely exploration of trauma, tenderness and caring between men is an
antidote to the heterosexist swagger of the Trump administration.
Re-visioning relationships between boys and men and countering the violence of
homophobic, transphobic and heterosexist trauma is central to fighting sexism
and misogyny. K-12 educators have a
signal role to play in shaping classroom practice, school culture and curricula
that takes up this charge, and supports the intersectional lives our youth
live.
