OP-ED: For Black Queers Who Considered Leaving / When Pride Wasn’t Enough. And Why Florida BlaQ Out Is Different

Written by Jasmen Rogers

Let’s be honest about something obvious: mainstream Pride has a problem. And let’s be clear, we’re not talking about the idea of Pride, which is the defiant, beautiful, necessary space that queer people deserve to live openly and joyfully and without apology. That idea is sacred and will always be. The problem is what happens when you show up to a lot of so-called Pride events as a Black person, as a dark-skinned person, as a trans person, as someone whose queerness doesn’t look like what gets put on the poster, and you find out, again, that the space was not actually built with you in mind.

It’s not your imagination. The mainstream LGBTQ+ movement has a well-known, deeply-experienced history of sidelining Black and brown queer people, of centering whiteness and respectability while treating the most marginalized members of the community as a diversity footnote and a casual afterthought.

Which is exactly why events like Florida BlaQ Out Pride Weekend exist. And exactly why we have a responsibility to protect and grow them.

Florida BlaQ Out Pride is another moment where we’ve built our own table because we were tired of being seated at the back of someone else’s. And now we have to defend it.

Black LGBTQ+ people in South Florida know the feeling of building and sustaining a community (in spite of the obstacles) all too well. We have been building community, creating culture, and fighting for survival without a lot of fanfare or outside investment for a very long time. Florida BlaQ Out Pride Weekend, continuing the work of the late Bishop S.F. Makalani-MaHee, who founded South Florida Black Gay Pride and spent his life creating space for queer and trans liberation in this region, is a direct expression of that tradition.

This is not an event that showed up here from somewhere else. This is ours. It grew from our soil with the love and intention of Black LGBTQ+ natives and long-timers. Florida is home, so we’re digging deep and getting rooted in spaces that affirm all of who we are.

The easy road is a version of this conversation that stays abstract, with all theory, no heat. But we aren’t interested in that conversation anymore. We want to talk about what we actually owe each other as Black people, as queer people, as Floridians.

We owe each other our presence. Not just solidarity tweets. Not just reposting the flyer. Showing up. Buying the ticket. Bringing someone who has never been to an event like this and watching them realize, maybe for the first time, that there is a whole world of people who look like them and love like them and are absolutely thriving.

We owe each other investment. If you own a business, if you run an organization, if you have a platform: put it behind events and spaces that center the people most impacted by the current political moment. Black trans women. Black queer youth. Nonbinary folks navigating a state that refuses to see them. Elders who have been doing this work since before it was popular.

And we owe each other joy. Unapologetic, full-volume, take-up-space joy. Because joy is not a distraction from the struggle. It’s how our minds, our bodies, and our spirits make it through to liberation

Florida BlaQ Out Pride Weekend is where we go to make that real. Don’t miss it.

Tickets and info at www.BackToBlaQFL.com. Follow @BackToBlaQFL on Instagram.

Jasmen Rogers, Co-Lead, Florida BlaQ Out Pride Weekend

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