Black and gay – intersectional challenges for leaders

Growing up different

It was a challenge growing up and living in the southern America where Christian values and masculine culture is quite strong. I found this culture difficult as it felt oppressive and against people who showed any difference, particularly those who are LGBT+. As a black person, I was encouraged to fit within the stereotype of a black man; strong, rugged and not effeminate in any way. I was actively encouraged to get into physical fights, discouraged from playing with dolls and was reprimanded for crying. When interacting with my peers, I had to fit in but being me, I couldn’t. I was often made fun of me because of my voice or the way that I carried myself. It was difficult and challenging to be able to deal with my emotions and feelings when I didn’t even realise that I was gay. Like many people like me, I dealt with negative emotions which included suicide and deep levels of depression.

First job, and early career

You can imagine that this would have an impact on my career and future. When I was first starting working, this had a negative impact on looking for work, partially because I was very afraid to be myself and be gay. I’ve worked since 1994 and my first job was bussing tables in an all you can eat restaurant. It was amazing receiving my first paycheque, as it was the most money I had ever received, and I had earned it all by myself; it felt like an achievement. At work, I was shy and had an amicable relationship with my colleagues. However, things took a turn when they started teasing me for ‘acting’ gay. The teasing became so bad that I left and decided to find something else and to slink back into the shadows.

The importance of role models

I really believe that it’s important for people who identify as LGBT+ to be able to have role models so that way they can see the impact that their work can have and the benefit towards society. I didn’t feel like I had very many role models who were people of colour and LGBT+ when I was growing up. It was difficult being in a very Christian dominated society where most black people stayed in the closet when I was at university; I only knew two other black people who were out of a university out of a campus of 20,000! It would have been invaluable to me to know others who were also intersectional in this way and who had built successful careers. This would have shown me and others the importance of being who you are and also the ability to find happiness.

Overcoming barriers

I’ve found that in work environments it’s natural for people to see you in different lights, that’s just human nature. When I started professional work, I perceived that I only had two unique aspects to me: being gay and being black. When I first started my career, I always thought of the stigma attached of being gay and the negative perception that this can have in a workplace but also the negative perception of being black. Being a person of colour is riddled with lots of complexities in the workplace and it continues to be a challenge for me because I feel that I have to I have to be better than the rest. It’s a part of my experience of growing up, that you must put yourself out there to be able to show your capabilities.

Nearly 30 years later, I now work in the charity sector which is a far more inclusive environment in terms of sexuality and ethnicity. As the years have gone by and my confidence has grown, I feel that it’s very much easier for me to come out to colleagues; it’s something that I don’t really think about.

However, there is always that niggling feeling in the back of my head that people were going to look down on me because of my sexual orientation. On the other side, I still have to overcome microaggressions and negative connotations to do with my race. Times are changing, and people are starting to talk about ethnicity and inequalities but there is still a great deal of work to be done.

What next?

As a society, we have a long way to go. There is a lot of evidence of great improvement when compared to the 90s and early 2000s but there are still challenges to be had for the LGBT+ community as well as wider society; racism and discrimination still happen in both.

I think to address these we need to start having more discussions and safe spaces to talk about commonalities and aim to find what we share in common versus how we differ. I would like to see more in terms of the leadership that is out there and the joining up LGBT+ leaders with other minority groups and leaders regardless of their sexuality, religious status or disability.

We, as a society, need to really think about intersectionality and start to look at the whole person and not just a small part of them. At the end of the day, we are all human, we all bleed, we have emotions, we all have happiness and will have sadness in our lives and that’s what makes us special and human.