I'm Kimberly Crenshaw and this is Intersectionality Matters. The podcast that brings intersectionality to life by exploring the hidden dimensions of today's most pressing issues from say her name and me too to the war on civil rights and the global rise of fascism. This is an idea travelogue. It lifts up the work of leading activist, artists, and scholars and helps listeners understand politics, the law, social movements, and even their own lives in deeper, more nuanced ways. Just as we were finishing up our last podcast on Apologies, the New York City Police Department issued one for their actions that led to the Stonewall uprising 50 years ago. The actions taken by the NYPD were wrong, plain and simple, and for that I apologize. I vowed to the LGBTQ community that this would never happen in NYPD 2019. This comes after decades of the NYPD resisting demands for an apology. In fact, just two years ago, O'Neill himself declined apologizing for the rage, saying that, well, the past was the past. Now, some see this as a step in the right direction, and I have to acknowledge that unlike some of the bystander apologies discussed in the last episode, Joe Biden's non-apology, for example, this one at least acknowledged past wrongdoing on the part of the police. But some see this apology as another step in the depoliticizing and corporatizing of the movement. That's something that Barbara Smith knows all about. On June 19th, she penned an op-ed entitled, Why I Left the Mainstream Queer Rights Movement. In her iconic and no nonsense way, she explains why she, one of the key figures in the history of queer freedom, has become isolated from the current gay rights movement. Barbara Smith has been in the driver's seat of the literary and political vehicles carrying black feminism into the public square for a half century. The title she has edited and the project she's co-founded, Tell It All. All the women are white, all the blacks are men, but some of us are brave, black women studies. Homegirls, a black feminist anthology. This bridge called My Back. I am your sister, black women organizing across sexualities. Kitchen table, women of color press, the Combo He River Collective, conditions five, the black women's issue. Now, these were like stops on the underground railroad for us black feminists who were all coming of age in the late 70s and the early 80s. And let me tell you by the time I was in grad school in the mid 80s, conditions five. Now, that was like, princes, the black album. You'd heard about it, you wanted to get it, but it virtually sold out almost immediately when it was published. So my little study group at the University of Wisconsin had one copy of it. And this is a shout out to you, Julien Ryan. We'd steal it from each other. Every chance we'd get, we were so thirsty for the work that would amplify women. It would amplify what we were seeing, what we were experiencing, and what we were trying to think and write about. And Barbara Smith led the way in quenching that thirst, nurturing an entire generation of black feminists. That's why, in addition to the Stonewall Award for Service to the lesbian and gay community in 1994, and her nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, the African American Policy Forum awarded Barbara the Harriet Tubman Lifetime Achievement Award. We call her the OG of black feminism, Barbara. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Cam. I'm so happy to be with you. So this year is a big anniversary for queer rights, the movement. And it looks like all stops are being pulled out. So, you know, here in New York, the NYPD, as I mentioned, has apologized. The New York Times has published a series reflecting life after Stonewall. And your contribution to that series, why I left the mainstream queer rights movement, pulled no punches about some of the continuing problems of the movement. Walk us back. What do you remember about the first March? Well, it was exhilarating. Everything in those days was exhilarating because we were making it up from scratch. We were making it up as we were going along. One of the members of the Combahee River Collective, Demeter Frazier, said something I've never forgotten and have quoted many, many times. She said, this is not a mix cake. We are making this from scratch. And what you were talking about was building black feminism and the feminism of women of color and a space for out queer people of color to be. So, yes, that was not, you know, there were no givens. As I said, it was exhilarating during those years. It was certainly exhilarating to go to something called on the National March on Washington for Lesbians Gay Rights in 1979 because there had never been anything like that before. One of the things about that period is that there was not the incredible divide or the incredible chasm between establishment gay rights and liberation movements plural. There was not that level of chasm because we were absolutely stigmatized. And that included white gay men, if you see what I'm saying. I don't mean that we all had the same politics or that we as women of color were universally respected and seen as equals in the end the movement. We were not. But at a time when we were absolutely anathema, viewed as anathema to not even polite society, but dissociety, but certainly if it was polite, that would even worse. But as I said at a time when we were so ostracized, so marginalized, so scapegoated, there was not as I said that chasm, there was this feeling of we're all in this together. This is pre the AIDS epidemic, 79. So the difference between the 79 March and the 87 March were world support. And you pointed out when the 87 March came around, you were one of the speakers. So the group was now not 100,000. It was like a million plus people. You were one of eight speakers. Do you remember what your message was? I think I haven't looked at that speech for quite some time. I actually had to shorten my speech because there were more than eight speakers. We were considered the eight major speakers that were given somewhat more time, but because of how things had unfolded like at most events like that. By the time it got to me, I was in the very difficult position to cut my speech on the biggest stage I've ever been on. That was my biggest audience to date. And I'm up there trying to cut my speech as it happened. But the full speech was published in Gay Community News, which was Boston's fabulous newspaper for our community. And so the complete speech is there. So I'm going to actually, you know, I will go home and read that after the fact. And if I'm wrong about what I thought about, I will let you know. But I suspect that I focus a lot on issues of racism and probably also economic oppression probably also talked about some of the international issues that were happening at the time. I'm just kind of supposing because there was a lot going on in Central and Latin America at that time with the US government doing its usual kinds of negative interventions. So who knows? I'll let you know if I talked about fashion trends. I'll get back to you on that. That will be shocking. Well, it's so interesting that you mentioned that they listed in the 1993 March, a quote from your earlier speech. Because the 1993 March seemed to in some ways be a turning point or at least the recognition that things on the ground had shifted because that one was much more about the military. It's sort of seen it seemed to be at some, you know, distance from where where the earlier two marches had come. At some point, then as we move to 1999, you said you got to the last straw. Do you do you recall like some of the moments when you decided, OK, you know what, I'm done with this. I haven't been to once since 1993, since 1993. At a certain point, I said, no, this is not for me. I need to put my energy elsewhere. And that's really because of the kind of politics and the theoretical understandings that you have brought to the world around intersectionality. That I've always done work that would be defined as intersectional. Absolutely. And at a certain point, it was very clear that that's not what the flourishing and growing LGBTQIA movement was about. We had not just been involved.
involved in one vector of addressing and challenging oppression. We had been in the movement to end the war in Vietnam. We had been involved in black liberation. We were involved in solidarity with Cuba. All kinds of things that really affected and influenced how did we understand freedom? How did we understand organizing? What did we think was liberation? There was a split between people who wanted that multi-issued, intersectional understanding of what gay liberation looked like and people who only wanted to focus on so-called gay issues. This was organizational. There was a gay liberation front that started right out of Stonewall and then there was a gay activist alliance which decided that it only wished to focus on gay issues and not on carnage in Vietnam. Those splits have always existed. This gives us historical trajectory. As you pointed out, there were always these tensions. At some point, the side that says we're only going to focus on gay issues actually is on the ascendancy and then becomes the center of the mainstream movement. It's important for us to think about this since this is the celebration of Stonewall. Stonewall is a multi-racial gender-diverse insurgency. That's what's being celebrated against the police. Now we're in a moment where the broader set of issues that might have been seated by that moment have more or less been marginalized. The police are actually being brought in as partners in ways that were probably unimaginable 50 years ago. People like you don't even go anymore. What is it that allowed this ascendancy to happen? What is it that allows this exclusivity or dare I say, elitism to continue to now be at the center of setting the agenda? One of the hallmarks of homophobia and transphobia and of LGBTQIA oppression is a lack of acceptance. I think because of this push for acceptance, I'm thinking about it in comparison to what black people were fighting for during the civil rights era. We weren't necessarily fighting for acceptance. We were fighting for rights. The right to go to schools, the right to vote, the right to employment. It's kind of like, I don't care if you like us or not. I don't care if you like me or not. I don't like you. So we're even on that. But I would like to be able to, for example, get a mortgage. So if I said it was. Yes. And the thing is that it's not that there was none of those impulses and none of those goals within the LGBTQIA movement. There definitely were. But that thing of acceptance, I think, was a stronger kind of motivator than it was with black people. Because we had no expectations around ever being accepted or accepted ball. At least those of us who were functioning in a reality-based way. And I hope that no one who's listening thinks that what I'm saying is that it's not possible for people of color, including people who are black and of African heritage and people who are European heritage to have genuine and sincere relationships. That's not what I'm saying at all. That's absolutely possible. History bears it out. I'm not talking about that whatsoever. I'm talking about what was the trajectory of the political movement as far as its goals were concerned. So as I said, this push for acceptance quickly and easily turned into a push for assimilation. We're just like you. We have 2.5 children, a picket fence. And we do whatever people do on weekends. We have a lawnmower. And you know what I'm saying? It's just like, but the thing is that had validity because they painted people who were queer as being somehow from some other species. We were vilified. And then there's also the fact that if you only have one thing that is a problem for you and a society where everything else is a privilege and a plus, then that's really all you need or want. With white cisgendered males who, demographically, have the possibility of having more class privilege and they already have white skin privilege, if the only thing that's like messing up their world is the fact that they are ostracized and discriminated against because they're gay, then there's only one thing that needs to be fixed. Right. And of course, for us as women of color, that's never been the case. So, you know, there's a lot of reasons. Absolutely. And you know, when I thought about this in the context of anti-discrimination law, I thought about it in terms of sort of like a pyramid. And you know, if you have only one thing to complain about or one thing that pushes you, you know, sort of down in the basement, then all you really want is a little escape hatch. Right. So that you can crawl through the basement to get to the upper floor. And for the most part, anti-discrimination law is sort of about that. It's like, if you, you know, if but for, you know, your, you know, sexuality, you'd be heterosexual, then we'll acknowledge that, you know, sort of you get one pass or one way to climb up. But you can't put all this stuff together, right? You just got to be one thing or another. And it seems as though in a number of ways that logic kind of took precedence over the formation and the ideology that you identified as one of the other possibilities that had been opened up by Stonewall. And, and just to encourage readers to read your New York Times op ed, you point out that a quarter of the LGBTQIA community experience food insecurity, 24% of lesbians and bisexual women live in poverty, black men who have sex with men among the highest rates of HIV and transgender women of color in particular experiences, you say, appalling levels of violence. Now here's something that I hear and I wonder, you know, whether you hear it as well. It feels like a contradiction. So, you know, what typically gets said and you've written about this is, well, those aren't our issues, right? Those aren't gay issues, right? Even though these are, you know, people who are claimed to be part of the, you know, queer community, the issues that they face aren't their issues. So, so that gets said. But then here's the other thing that's kind of really interesting. I've been in conversations lately where the argument has been made that because marriage equality was successful. All of the other movements can learn something from it. So racial justice, advocates, you know, advocates for women, the idea is that now we can be tutored by the leaders of the marriage equality movement because they did it and it was successful so we can learn a lesson from them. And I always thought that was interesting because within that movement itself, they're not really that capable of incorporating issues of race and some of the other movements that are currently, you know, in need of sort of, you know, rebooting. So within this space, these populations aren't well served. But outside the space, we're supposed to think that there is, I guess, knowledge that can be shaped around the experience around marriage equality. I mean, what should we make of that? Is this parallelism the lesson that we can learn from or should we be concerned about the fact that the mainstream gay rights movement hasn't figured out how to do race and class and other issues very well? Well, well, we should definitely be concerned, any movement that doesn't do those things well and doesn't have that kind of inclusive perspective is not generally a movement for profound change. I am frankly shaking my head about this concept of other movement should look at the marriage equality successes as a model, a model for what? I mean, I believe that people of all sexual orientations and gender identities should have the right to marry. I think that it is a basic human right. This idea though that we should model other kinds of liberation struggles.
How would you, what would you learn from the fight for marriage equality if you're involved in the fight for 15? For our $15 minimum wage. I just, I don't even, I can't. What would you get from the successful fight for marriage equality around the ongoing egregious exploitation of women and violence against women? What would you get from that? Because that point that I was making, I can always argue with myself. The point I was making about how maybe people could deal with the concept of marriage because they had kids and relatives and cousins and whomever who were gay and they were all right with them and they wanted them to have nice lives, too. But women are embedded in these, all of these networks and families and yet violence against women crosses every single class and race identity. So how would we use the successful fight for marriage equality to eradicate violence against women? I'm waiting. What's the answer to that? We can't let you go without talking about comedy, but before we talk about the differences in the trajectory, like the vision that's reflected in comedy and the neoliberalization of some mainstream dynamics, like in the parade, you know, the corporate sponsorship and as we've been talking about, there's the police presence. I read somewhere that after one city had disinvited the police, the New York pride, invited the police. We want you here. What does that tell you about the people who are making the decisions? Exactly. Exactly. Have you ever heard of Eric Garner? This is the question. So I guess one could say on the other side, well, you're naive to think that a movement can exist without resources, a celebration of this magnitude can actually happen without having to incorporate, you know, sort of a corporate face to it. What should we think about that? Like, you need the money in order to make something like pride happen? I don't know if you hear me talking about you, but because I am, reclaimed pride is having a queer liberation march next Sunday, June the 30th in New York City. And I'm delighted that this is a case. They're trying to get back to our roots. They're not trying to entertain people. It's not going to be the biggest party extravaganza that anyone has ever seen. It's going to be about issues. It's going to be about community. It's going to be about solidarity. That's what's happening. And I would suggest that people find out about reclaimed pride and find out about an alternative. They have a wonderful statement about there's like a statement of principles about why they decided to do this. And they grappled with heritage of pride to try to get them to be more open to a different perspective about what this celebration and what this commemoration should look like. They were not successful. So they created their own. And I think that's, you know, I think that's terrific. About the money that you have to have a certain level of money in order to be effective. One of the questions that people have asked me throughout the years about comedy is like, where did you get your funding from? And I just start laughing. Well, it's there. It's like, really? Are you kidding? We had no funding. But of course, it was the 70s and going into the early 1980s. But this idea that you cannot be politically effective unless you have lots and lots of bank, lots and lots of money. That's just, I don't think it's true. I think we live in an age of celebrity. We live in an age of clamor. It's just, it's a different kind of world. But is that liberation? I don't really think that that's liberation. But what you think is important is how you look and how that is how you look on a lavish level, not on a level being presentable. But like, if your whole thing is like, I want to have the most expensive outfit, I have to drive this kind of car. I have to eat in this kind of a restaurant and live in this kind of a place. Then your priorities get shaped by that. And if what you're concerned about is like, I just want to be able to be safe and pay my bills and to make sure that the children at the border who don't have, uh, uh, uh, tamed as a close, who don't have soap, who don't have toothbrushes, that's more important to me than whether I have the last word in, uh, consumer objects. Well, on the, on the note that you mentioned about reclaimed pride, right? How they, you know, tried to, uh, negotiate and try to broaden, um, and refocus. And when they weren't able to, they created their own space, that seems to be, uh, um, I think a powerful modality of articulating what the dominant frame does not allow you to. And in some ways, that's exactly, uh, what seems to have happened in your decision collectively to create comedy. So first of all, tell us, I think a lot of people don't know where the name came from. Well, the, the, the comedy river which I have all recently discovered is actually pronounced Kumbi. Kumbi? Three syllables, but only two. I said, we pronounced it as northeastern, you know, uh, black women of the 1970s would pronounce it. And we were, and we were wrong. We were completely wrong. But me that hasn't made, um, the, uh, the, uh, Kumbi, uh, Kumbi, uh, Kumbi, our Kumbi river was, is a river, an existing river in South Carolina, where Harriet Tubman, who was a scout for the Union Army, organized a, uh, military action, uh, that freed over 750 enslaved Africans. And why did you, why did you all call it that? Well, because it was a, it was a intervention for freeing black people. Mm-hmm. It exemplified courage of black woman's courage toward freedom. And that's what we were trying to build. Uh, we did black feminist organizing in Boston from the mid 70s until around 1980, 81. And we wrote, we're most known for having ridden the Kumbi river collective statement, which people are still dealing with and using to this day. And when people read it, and I read it, reread it every so often, not that often, but when I have had the opportunity to reread it in recent years, it's not old. It is not old. It is, it's right. It could have been ridden last week. And the reason it's not old is because we had this analysis that was applicable to realities of oppression at the time, but also going forward. Uh, I always say that the reason that Kumbah he was as meaningful as it was is because we are part of the left. We identified as socialist and we actually understood that freedom under capitalism was not really feasible. So, and we were democratic socialist, of course. Yes, right. Right. But we had, we had an understanding of material conditions. We knew it was not just about identity. Uh, some people, you know, we use to term identity politics in the statement. So we might be the people at fault for everything that's been laid at the feet of identity politics is being so wrong and so negative. But when we said identity politics, what we meant is that we are allowed as black women, it is legitimate for us to create our own political agendas and to follow them to, uh, to, uh, implement those political agendas. That's what we meant. We didn't mean that we hated other people who didn't have the same identities. It didn't mean that we were dismissing other people's, uh, realities. It did not mean that we thought that just being a certain thing was enough. It was about practice or praxis. It was about getting the work done. And one of the things in, in rereading the statement and I, I agree, it could have been written this morning, that people who engaged this critique of identity politics seem to miss is that the, the statement is thoroughly about structures of disempowerment, structures, uh, of subordination and how those structures shape the lives of people who are caught within them. So no one who reads the statement can come away with an idea of identity politics just being about, hey, recognize my identity and it's all good. I often think it's there's a intentional misreading, of the statement, a, uh, intentional misreading of black feminism, um, and everything that's come out of black feminism, uh, uh, including intersectionality. There's sort of this,
You know, we know what they are about and we can completely dismiss and disregard them without actually having to engage in the thinking and the politicizing that black women have actually produced. Well, I think that people are alarmed when the subject people, that is people who are subjugated and who are considered to be inferior, they get very alarmed when we rise up and speak up. They don't like that. Because it's been my experience, that makes them very nervous when we act as if we're just as empowered as they to determine the conditions of our lives. They don't like that because that makes them think, "Oh, well maybe I'm going to lose something or oh, maybe I'm not a part of the master race." Or whatever their thinking is, that alarms them. So there's a significant segment of white people in the United States at this time who think that white people are undergoing and are being subjected to discrimination and oppression. Where did they get that idea from? My colleague and co-founder of APF, Luke Harris, caused that the diminished overrepresentation of basically white men everywhere is the crises of the moment, diminishment of the overrepresentation. You started kitchen table press as a way of diminishing the overrepresentation of voices that get published. What did you hope to achieve when you resolved to create kitchen table press? We co-founded Kitchen Table Women of Color Press. We started the discussions in 1980. It was really a conversation with Audrey Lorde and I that the kind of the seed was planted. This was at a time when women of color, how people, how the committee and say, "I couldn't get arrested in New York. I couldn't get any kind of attention at all. We can get arrested all the time." That's not exactly the right metaphor, but this was at a time that nobody was interested at all in literary work, political analysis, you name it, poetry, fiction, nonfiction. They weren't interested in anything by or about women of color. We realized that we needed to do that ourselves. Some of the white women's presses at the time were indeed making efforts to be sincerely inclusive, but we just knew, as Virginia Woolfhead said, we needed to have a press of our own. She talked about a room of our own. We knew we needed to have a press of our own. We were very unique. We were both a literary press and a political press. High literary standards and very, very hard-hitting political writing. That's what we did and it still has impact, I believe. Even though it's not active, even though it's not active, as a press and hasn't been for many years, that model, I think, inspires people to this day. So, as someone who's been in the struggle for a long time, what advice do you give to younger queer activists, younger black feminists, younger radicals? I don't know how this is going to sound, but I think it's so important that younger generations who don't necessarily find their information through reading. My major suggestion is that we bring back the study group and that we read, work together and discuss it. As I said, that can be articles and that can be books, but there is a real kind of disconnect with the historical roots of what it even means to be political. People think that being political means that you tell someone very effectively to get lost on Twitter. That's not political work. I mean, not per se. They may be completely wrong. I mean, I'm not saying that they don't need to be made aware, but that's not political work. Political work is day after day, so strategic, so thoughtful. And we need to know, all of us need to know how did people before us get it done? How were people doing it previously? How did these things evolve? What was the civil rights movement like before the Montgomery bus boycott? What were people, black people and other people doing towards black freedom before those iconic years of the mid-20th century, all those stories that we think we know? And then I think also to really understand that we have to treat each other how we would wish to be treated at all contexts. The bottom line of it should be our love for ourselves, for each other and for humanity. And we have to function in that way. It's not about being the most important person in the room. It's not about being able to dictate to others what they're supposed to do or how they're supposed to think. It's about being able to meet people where they are, particularly those who are most affected by oppression and trying to figure out solutions to that. And there we have it from the OG of black feminism, Ms. Barbara Smith. Thank you so much for spending so much time with us. As always, I walk away, re-energize, renewed and with a reading list. So thank you so much for being on intersectionality matters. Thank you so much, Kim. Such a pleasure. The Reclaim Pride Coalition is a coalition of LGBT groups and individuals all committed to restoring the queer liberation movement to its radical, anti-oppressive roots. Joining the ranks of longstanding community held marches like the Dyke March and the Trans Day of Empowerment March, Reclaim Pride aims to repoliticize the movement starting with the march. Reclaiming Pride is about the radical legacy of the Stonewall uprising. It's about remembering that that legacy began in a tradition of anti-state violence, specifically anti-police brutality. Reclaiming Pride means both honoring the legacies of movement work that have come before us and understanding that there's still so much more work to be done. Intersectionality is fundamental to queer liberation. People come from such differing backgrounds from different races, classes. And we separate out our politics into single issue politics we fail. We need to consider the ways in which a black trans woman is affected in ways that a white cis gay man will never be affected. Love is love and America is beautiful. It's a wonderful day. As the mainstream movement would like to have you think marriage equality was the final destination, this was and is still not the primary concern for many queers. Black matter, black matter. When we understand an issue like police brutality from an intersectional view, we are allowed to see how housing precarious black trans and queer youth face issues of continual forms of stop and frisk, racial profiling and the over policing of sex work. Access to resources like housing, steady income, medical care and food are queer issues. Reclining from a place of intersectionality shows us how interrelated systems of power are. Our upcoming queer liberation march rejects alliances with oppressive institutions such as police and corporations as a way to repoliticize queer struggles. Reclaming pride is about rebuilding an intersectional and a coalition movement. And we hope to see you on June 30th. That was Colin Ashley, Robert Baez and Francesca Bargian. Talking about what it means for them to reclaim pride and recenter intersectional multi-issue organizing in the fight for liberation. You can learn more about all these events in our episode notes. I met London-based LGBT activist Lady Phil last year. We were both interviewed for a conversation in them magazine. This is Barbara Smith's work served as a kind of compass for me. Lady Phil is an increasingly visible load star for LGBT people of color in the UK. The first black woman to head a major LGBT organization worldwide. Lady Phil is also the co-founder and director of UK Black Pride. Phil is also the editor of Sista, an anthology of writings by LGBT women of African Caribbean descent with a connection to the UK. This Sunday, June 30th, Lady Phil will serve as a grand marshal of the world pride parade in New York City alongside Billy Porter and the cast of Pose. As an admirer of Lady Phil and her exploits from afar, I had to ask her about a story of how she became a lady by defying the empire.
(soft music) - First of all, I have a confession to make in describing how blown away I was by something that you did. So I'm gonna confess as an American. I'm kind of like fascinated with all this royal stuff, right? So clickbait for me. If I am, you know, doing my work and something pops up about Meghan Markle, I'll try to ignore it. I was like, oh, I gotta read it real fast. So when I saw that you were being given the MBE award, the medal of the most excellent order of the British Empire. Mm-hmm. And you turned it down. You said, thanks, but no thanks. I'm not gonna be meeting the queen. I'm not gonna go get this award. That was huge. You start in trouble again. You know, you're giving me hell for this. So why'd you do it, Phil? Why'd you do it? I think the title alone, British Empire says in awful lot, we have countries around the Commonwealth that the queen is still responsible for that continue to practice, penalize, criminalize, LGBT people around the world. I don't wanna accept anything that elevates itself over the people I set out to some of. And you're reading about that prompted me to look and 71 countries around the world in which same sex, sexual relations are illegal of 71 more than half or former British colonies or protectorates. Now, the British went everywhere. There's this frame that there's the West. It's enlightened. And then there's the African continent and other places in the South. And we have to go and rescue them from their backwards homophobia. - Right. - So we placed it there. - Yes, that's completely missing from the political discourse. I mean, there's this mentality that we from the global north parachutes into the global south and tell them that this is bad. It's an oppressive regime. You're criminalizing torture and persecuting even in some countries, death sentence for being LGBTQ. But let's unpack that a bit more. Where and who left that there? The British went in and they took the Bible in one hand, and they were talking about all different sorts of things and saying that actually, you know, the relationship between a man and a man and a woman and a woman was wrong in the eyes of the laws. Being gay, being queer is not un-African. We have to do something about claiming back our narrative. And I think that part of that work is all very much intersectional. It is very much about looking at the real barriers of oppression that have a steeped in what colonialism did. Was it hard for you to do to take this stand, this principle to stand? - No. - No. - As a black queer woman, there is no other response to that than thank you, but no thank you, Queen. So I guess with that as one of the stories about Ladyphil, it can't be a surprise to anyone that you are the moving force behind UK Black Pride. Now I think what is interesting about the story of origin is the initial reaction. So I asked you about this at an event that we did on May 28th called Myth Busting Intersectionality. And here's what you said. - In 2005, well, 2004 I was running an organisation with some sisters called Block. And Black Lesbians in the UK went out on a trip. We were sharing space, we were eating jerk chicken, playing dominoes, we were playing volleyball, I wasn't, but I was watching. (audience laughing) I don't wanna lose too much weight, you know? So it was just beautiful, but we've come back, and it's 2005, and we're like, how do we create this safe space for us as Black and Brown queer people to not just celebrate ourselves, but talk about our little experience, have that shared commonality with one another. So I went to what was the then London Pride. Everyone in that room was white, and there were two women apart from the three of us. And I said, well, this is what we want to do, and we wanna set up a Black Pride, because we recognise that we are often on the sidelines, or the peripherals, when it comes to Pride's, the wider mainstream LGBT activities. You know what we've got told? How dare you? Why don't you, am I allowed to? Oh yes, why don't you fuck off and go back to where you came from? (audience cheering) And excuse the language, but I kid you not. So these are people who are supposed to be, and this is a long time ago, but these are people who are supposed to understand, yeah, marginalisation, discrimination to a greater or lesser degree, right? Because they're LGBT plus people. They're supposed to be the ones who will stand at the forefront, alongside us, because they were the ones marching around section 28. They're supposed to be the same ones that stand in solidarity because they understand the need for equality. They understand the need for justice. They understand the need for safe spaces. But when it came to three Black women, standing in front of them, they told us to f off and go back to where we came from. I'm from his licence, they could have topped up my licence. But you know, that was Lady Phil, brought down the house, a story that, you know, was a direct, clear eyed illustration of one of the main problems that intersectionality is trying to draw attention to, how a narrow conception of what our social justice politics actually looks at in response to. So these were leaders of the LGBTQ movement here, basically telling you to f*ck off. Yeah, so it was. So first of all, I mean, what was your reaction to it? What did you do? And how do you analyse it? Like, what did you tell yourself? This was about were you surprised when they did that? Firstly, yeah, absolutely surprised. I don't think that the leaders in the community, the LGBTQ community could fathom or grapple with the fact that black people, people of colour who are queer, required space, required a place which felt safe. They felt, why can't you just join the regular pride, the normal pride? The regular, the normal. White and white pride. Yeah, you're going to get me into trouble, you know? But yeah, I got to stay in trouble. Yeah. But that's what's been said is, the white pride, you know, white pride comes with that white supremacy feel to it. But actually, when you are disregarding us and not understanding that as queer people, we are also black and POC and our issues around fighting homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, we're also fighting against racism. Xenophobia, Islamophobia. They didn't see it as important. They felt we've already got a pride that talks about being LGBT and the issues we face. Why on earth do you want to come and muddy up the waters and try and bring race dimension into this? There's a natural distrust whenever we're talking about race or black matters. People start losing their shit when you talk about black lives not matter in. We've seen it in America. Why is it so difficult for you to understand that our black lives don't matter when we cannot have a black pride in this country? It cuts so deep, you question, are they really your tribe? Are they your people? While projecting you as the ones that are actually cutting yourselves off from the tribe. Why didn't it stop you? You know, my ancestors didn't come this far and I know they live through me. They speak through me. Speak around me. They orbit around me. So no is not an option. Staying silent, that's not an option because it's not about us just in the here and now. It's what happens in the future when
that next generation of young queer people who are people of color starts to say, "Where's our space? Where are we? We don't see ourselves as leaders in the LGBTQ movement." So, no, is not an option when it's about our lives and our lived experience. And when you talk about our lives and our lived experience, one has to wonder where that sentiment that was expressed to you finds expression when the issue is, so what are the political priorities of this political formation? Who gets to set the agenda? Whose interests are being served? So, over the last decade, marriage equality has been a centerpiece of the LGBTQ agenda. I'll just say the LGBTQ agenda. Let's put it that way. Is it your sense that if black and brown queer people, trans people, non-binary people, had a full seat at the table, would marriage equality have come out at the top of the list, the number one priority? Having been a trustee of Stonewall, Stonewall was set up in the hope of fighting for justice, but also equal marriage. We have equal marriage, but has that changed the issues around racism, even within our own LGBTQI community? It hasn't. Marriage equality is important, and I get it, and I'm glad that, you know, in most places, people have the right to get married. But if we don't have the right to be seen, to be heard, to be understood, to have the same rights as anybody else, there is no equality in marriage, there is no equality in anything that we're doing. And the upshot seems to be, okay, black queer people. You can get married if you can get yourself to the chapel now. You might not be able to make it there because you could be pulled over and killed by the police on the way, or you might be incarcerated for some BS, or any number of the other things that will be deprived of, you will be deprived of on the basis of race. But if you manage to jump all those obstacles, if you can hurt all of those things then at the end of the day, you get to be married. Now whether you can find a place to live, work, survive, that's not our issue. And that's what I mean by do black lives really matter? Do they? And if you were to look at the mainstream LGBTQ agenda, in the way that, for example, right now there are debates about the police presence in pride parades. That's a big issue. I suspect it will be a significant issue in this 50th anniversary of Stonewall. So what are you seeing in anticipating and hoping might come out of this very important year? I mean the Stonewall appraisings are significant and huge for us. That story is not often told in the right context. You know, for those that have watched Stonewall the film, it wasn't little Danny, the lovely white guy that threw the brick brick. It was our queer people of colour, gender non-conforming, trans siblings who were at the forefront of the appraising. Because of all the persecution faced. So if our sisters, queer trans sisters of colour were at the forefront and now we're 50 years later, would we say that there is a huge gap between the leadership what made this possible and how it's how the it is now being defined. The disconnects from a UK perspective is about the power dynamics that play out. You mentioned earlier about that seat around the table. Often our queer people of colour who are leaders within their own rights are not recognised or afforded the rights to be in those same spaces. I will boot down every single door. I will attend meetings that I haven't been invited to because if we're not present then we don't get heard. When you don't get heard you're dismissed, erased, not thought about. So we have to occupy spaces. Let's talk a little bit about the controversy about the flag, number Hikes. I think brilliantly added a brown and black stripe to the rainbow flag. A controversy erupted. You supported her. What was the objective of the new stripes and what was the objection to the new stripes? So I had the pleasure of meeting Amber Hikes when she came to the UK and she brought the flag to me. I'm like absolutely we'll be using this for UK black pride. I think not I think I know the objective to having the flag is about inclusion. When you've got so many flags that represent trans people that represent bears that represent you know a sexual pansexual that represent bisexual people what is wrong in having a flag that represents black and brown bodies. What was wrong with it? We're talking about race again remember. It's always going to be so controversial for some but why should it be when all we're trying to do is give voice and agency to who we are as queer people of color. I absolutely support her and I said did you speak to the family of the I think it was Gilbert who originated the original flag and she said yes I spoke to the family and they were absolutely in awe of the additional stripes. So let's look beyond the stripes but let's think about how black and brown bodies are in the space of LGBT narratives that are shaped for us but not by us. Right. Right. And just to make it clear that the critique is also a critique of black spaces that haven't been hospitable to queer bodies we recognize that there's a huge controversy that went on under the rubric of black lives matter. A lot of people questioning whether it was legitimate that women queer women queer black women had a leadership role in that. So it's sort of like where can you be where one's inclusion in leadership is actually wholly held by everyone in the respective movements that seems to be a challenge. It is but I take great responsibility in making sure that I show solidarity. Yes. I look at the collective action and hold Amber up when she needs holding because as a black woman a black queer woman she took some real shit for just talking about real meaning for inclusion. Yes. So the good news is Lady Phil is going to be a grand martial act well-pride in New York. So I'm so excited. That's it. So not only is that important as part of the globalization of pride but putting black bodies in the center of that. Right. So that is that's how it's time. 50 years. 50 years. So it's it's a big deal. It's an important an important moment. I also the next week after that will be finalizing the plans for UK black pride which talks now when the 7th of July where at Haggeston Park. All right. And where can people find information about it? UK black pride.org.uk. Yeah. And it's going to be brilliant because we're always talking about centering who we are, putting the politics back in pride, ensuring that it's about people over profit and not profit before people. Right. But I will be front and centre of world pride and excited to be there but many don't feel that the politics are in the pride and feel that it's lost the essence and the roots of
and the origins of where it's come from. But what I would say to any pride is never ever forget the reason why you set up the pride in the first place. And if you lose center in the people it's supposed to serve and supports, then you haven't got a pride. - And with you in the next, there's no way we lose sight of that, lady Phil. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. It's always such a pleasure to talk to you. (upbeat music) Keep listening and support us on our Patreon page for bonus content from all of our interviews. You can find us at intersectionality matters on
[email protected] and everywhere podcasts are available. Intersectionality matters is produced and edited by Julia Sharp-Levin. This episode was recorded by Elizabeth Press and the sanctuary for independent media and by Michael Kramer. Additional support was provided by Chiara Assim, Naima Hakim, Peter Gaper, Ezra Young, and Madeline Cameron Walderworth. Special thanks to guests, lady Phil, Barbara Smith, and the Reclaim Pride Coalition. I'm your host, Kimberly Crenshaw, and this is intersectionality matters.
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