CHALLENGER: Faux Rainbow

With June being Gay Pride Month, I felt it appropriate to make my CHALLENGER poetry series start getting in people's heads. Because the gay community as a whole needs to be challenged on correcting those things that are making us come off as hypocrites, and now is as good a time as any. So that by the time we do a Gay Pride March in NYC at the end of this month, we may have a reason to not only take pride in being gay, but also in correcting the things that separate us. Thereby strengthening the justification for our demands and the potency of our fight for equal rights. With racism possibly being THE main thing separating the LGBT community from within, it is a must that it becomes undone.

Due to some of the implications made by the poem and/or video, I've included a disclaimer with the video. Mainly because of the lines that imply a desire to burn the rainbow flag and Michael Lucas' face exploding, which was prompted by his constant arrogance in claiming how Blacks are the most homophobic, YET he hires Whites with internalized homophobia calling themselves "gay-for-pay" to be in his movies. I DO NOT condone violence, but these lines and images definitely show how I have grown tired of the excuses by not just the likes of him, but many heads of gay media - from magazines, video, movies, nightlife, etc.

So I hope the poem and video speak to you. 

To those doing the shunning, GET IT TOGETHER!

And to those shunned, STAY STRONG as I LOVE YOU.

A rainbow flag waves in the wind

To be symbolic of gay pride

But I am fearing it waves in vain

When I expose what many of you try to hide

You hear wise words come from the dark skin

But you show how it’s light you favor

For you wait to give him a platform

To praise his light skin as the brand of a savior

To raise up our community

But you are steady keeping it down

Limiting the rainbow of skin

That can add to the power of sound

By treating me like an outsider

You induce dreams of seeing the flag on fire

The fact that I can even think this

Shows how much your actions are dire

For I am proud to be my gay self

So I don’t want to see the flag ablazed

But sometimes it seems the only way

To show ostracizing a man over color pays

For I have tried diplomacy

Yet, you persist on ignoring me

Until you want my body for your cause

But once won, it’s “Be silent! Get lost!”

Accuse my color of homophobia

As to why your numbers fall short

But it is YOU who is sick with a phobia

Exiling my intellect from your court

Over your fear that my shade of skin

Can be found smart, sexy and beautiful

If you tried embracing it in those ways

You’ll find your fight’s progression much more fruitful

And don’t play one of us as a token

A facade to say you have respect

Since us non-whites are equally great

Give us more than a little speck

Face how you’re called out on your hypocrisy

Face how your life is a blight on our community

Face how compared to our oppressors

You are actually worse, and far from better

Face how much you need me

Not just as a number, but as a face of beauty

Face how much you stand to lose

If you never get the clues

So I ask you,

Is that a faux rainbow

Waving in the wind?

For I see mostly the lightest colors

Are ever allowed in

To become crowned “Most Beautiful”,

“ …Congenial”, and “…Likely To Succeed”

Leaving the darker colors to appear

That their being heard is of no need

So take in all I have said

And ask your deepest within

Is that a faux rainbow

Waving in the wind?


©2011 LeNair Xavier