Coming Out: Don Lemon & Will Sheridan

Today brought the news that CNN anchor Don Lemon has come out as a gay man.  In some eyes, given that this is 2011, a handful of states have or recognize same-sex marriage, and the Congress and president repealed the odious Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) law, Lemon's step might seem passé, but Lemon is nevertheless a pioneer: he becomes the first major national African-American anchor, and only the third newsperson employed by a major broadcast or cable channel, to have come out in recent years. (Thomas Roberts and Rachel Maddow are the others.) He chose as his venue his first book, a memoir entitled Transparent (Farrah Gray Foundation Press, 2011), in which he discusses his trajectory as a journalist, as well as some of the personal struggles he has faced over his 45 years. These include his having grown up without a father, and having survived childhood sexual abuse, which he had previously spoken out about. Lemon has CNN's full support and apparently was out to his peers and, but according to news reports, he particularly feared the repercussions he might face from the black community, citing cultural expectations of black men and religious attitudes. I personally would not deny either of these, though I would say, from personal experience, that black people are no more homophobic than any other group, despite the general caricatures, and that it depends upon whom your dealing with, your class background, and so on. From the little I've seen online, most of the commentary on black websites or from black commenters has been very to at least fairly positive, matching the postings of non-black posters on sites like Huffington Post, or Yahoo!, whose boards can be particularly vitriolic and puerile at times.  I would venture that in general, Lemon will be as heartily embraced by black people as by anyone else, particularly among younger people, who have far fewer issues around sexuality than their elders, and that his courageous step, like those of many others in the spotlight who have come out, particular men and women of color, will have a salutary effect on and for many people, of whatever age and race, but especially for the young and for African Americans, who are struggling with their sexual orientations and identifications, social rejection from peers and family members, and related crises. It's a net plus, for Lemon and everyone else.

Also today came news of another public self-outing (h/t Bejata.com), that of Will Sheridan, a former Division 1 basketball player for Villanova.  According to Outsports, Sheridan is only the second Division 1 male basketball player (and interestingly enough, the second African American) after John Amaechi, to have come out. (Ex-Division 1 player Travon Free, also African American, came out as bisexual earlier this year, and is now a comedian in Los Angeles.)  Outsports cites an ESPN article stating that Sheridan was out to teammates--as more than few gay athletes probably are these days--and was "privately dat[ing] a man from another Philadelphia school"--and also was involved in various artistic activities while at Villanova, including "spoken-word performances." The piece also mentions that he ran on his "tip-toes," which is to say, that he ran "funny," which provided "ammunition" for opposing fans. (Excuse me, but this verges on the stereotypical and homophobic....) While the usual discussion about queer male athletes coming out centers on the fear teammates may have (and have expressed) about being in the locker room with a gay man, what seems to be more at issue is the brouhaha the coming out may provoke from others not on the team--fans, boosters, the media. In fact, the coming and being out may come to overshadow everything else. Even taking that into account, I think doing so is a good thing, even in light of the complexities and politics of queer visibility and outness, especially for people of color, and I believe we'll soon see the day when more gay male athletes, including men of color, on team sports, will come out while still playing, and it won't be a big deal, at least to most of the people around them. Sheridan, now out, is a budding musician, and tweets here.

Santorum Stupidity Over: Poem: Langston Hughes

This weekend brought news of a brouhaha involving the extreme right-wing, homophobic Republican former US Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, he whose last name has, through the deft work of columnist and author Dan Savage, become a particularly vivid eponym. But our concern here isn't with the eponym and its figurative associations, apt as they are for Santorum, but with a bit of foolishness on his part. (C can probably already hear me pronouncing this word in the Deep South-fashion as "foolnish.") For Santorum selected a phrase that to him sounded just right for his potential Presidential campaign, Quixotic though we all know it will be--or Quayline, since he lacks even an iota of Don Quixote's sense and all of Dan Quayle's limitations; a phrase that, to his, or his campaign staff's ears, sounded just right: "Let America Be America Again."

As it turns out, the progressive website Think Progress saw this slogan and grasped that it came from Langston Hughes's (1902-1967) "Let America Be America Again," a pro-union, pro-immigrant, pro-equality--progressive!--poem he published in 1935, during the era of the Great Depression.  Hughes, as I need not tell anyone, was black, and gay, and a committed leftist. He was a cosmpolitan and an internationalist, a strong advocate of black consciousness and of Diasporism. He was the grandson of the abolitionist Charles Langston and a nephew of abolitionist and educator John Mercer Langston. He was even a correspondent for and member of Communist organizations, etc. All of this is searchable on Google, as is the slogan Santorum selected, which was, for those of us with even the slightest memory, already in the political air as Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry had not just sampled, but recited a selection of it in 2004. (How could anyone forget a Presidential candidate being able to quote a poem, especially one by Hughes?)

Nevertheless, Santorum went with the slogan. Until a Think Progress reporter, Lee Fang, asked him about the words and their background. This is how Gawker reported it:

"No I had nothing to do with that," he said. "I didn't know that. And the folks who worked on that slogan for me didn't inform me that it came from that, if it in fact came from that."

When he was later asked what it means to him, Santorum replied: "Well, I'm not too sure that's my campaign slogan, I think it's on a web site."

But he also used it in the official press release announcing his exploratory committee earlier this week....

Et cetera. Santorum isn't getting anywhere the White House, the Senate, or the Pennsylvania State House for that matter, but the flap did provoke the following question: can he read? Because if or his minions did even pass a cursory eye over the following poem, it would be evident what Hughes was arguing here. Some poems are admittedly difficult to grasp. I have written a few of those myself. Hughes has as well. But some do not, as Wallace Stevens wrote in his poem "Man Carrying Thing," "resist the intelligence / Almost successfully." Some are quite straightforward and evident even to the dullest of minds. A category that, as his past record would attest, includes Santorum.

Here is Hughes's poem in full, easy to grasp, and quite beautiful and moving, in my humble opinion. It shakes me up a bit every time I read it. More of our politicians need to read it, and recite it to themselves as they cut deals with plutocrats and carve what remains of our government and society up, what remains of our threadbare social safety net, for their friends and patrons.

LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used with permission.