A parent repeated the right wing slur that greater media representation of LGBTQ lifestyles is “turning youth out” and encouraging them to become gay. A South L.A. school employee said she had a problem with the use of the Black Power fist by a Black and Latinx GSA Network campus group during last November’s global Transgender Day of Remembrance. A Black father told his eleven year-old daughter not to display her Pride flag because it will cause conflict within the family. And, at a March LGBTQIA+ Youth of Color Institute with South L.A. students at King-Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science, virtually every young person in attendance expressed anxiety about their family’s religious-based homophobia and non-acceptance.
These exchanges occurred before the pandemic shutdown, the lynchings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Tony McDade, the Black Lives Matter uprisings, SCOTUS’ recent decision on LGBTQ civil rights, and the massive educational upheavals that have forever changed the lives of Black and youth of color. When I completed the article "Black Queer Youth and the Family Divide" in March at the beginning of the pandemic, I had a hard time finding a publisher for it. Some of those rejections were no doubt due to the demand for COVID coverage. But most were undoubtedly due to the usual erasure of Black queer youth and family issues in the dominant culture when it isn’t Pride Month.
As the number of openly-identified Generation Z LGBTQIA+ youth increase, the exchanges that I reflected on above have become more commonplace in African American schools, homes, and families. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, African American youth in L.A. are more likely to identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual than non-black youth. As a result, they comprise a significant portion of all youth who identify as LGBT in L.A. Nationwide, LGBT African Americans are more likely to be raising children than are white LGBT individuals. And over fifty percent of queer families are headed by Black women, bucking mainstream depictions that privilege white gay and lesbian parenthood.
