1 - Interactions of BIPOC and Queer / Forced Assimilation and Trauma

    I do not know how to discuss whether racial trauma and being BIPOC has an inherent effect on a person's queerness, but watching Big Freedia's mini doc on bounce music I am certain the two experiences interact in a notable and powerful way. Bounce shows historically have been safe spaces for women and gay men to express themselves and not be afraid of assault or sexual predation. After hearing Big Freedia speak on bounce music and their experiences growing up gay and black, I started to feel the genre (or at least as by gay artists) as in part an intense interaction between these two experiences. The amount of energy brought to and put out by bounce shows is ridiculous and I can't help but think that that release of energy is a combined result. 

    

    Art and music is often pushed forward into new places by queer and BIPOC artists and communities, and I believe that both not only add to each other but interact in an inherently unique way, due to the similar form of trauma from oppression and discrimination that growing up BIPOC and queer have on someone. I don't think I can speak much on racial trauma's influence over queerness, but the similarity between both experiences and the art it can produce makes me think they interact in an important and unique way. 

    

   

     Forced oppression and/or assimilation of any aspect of a person's identity is (more or less) equivalent to violent assault and torture. For indigenous people and students' experience with a white curriculum shown in the film Savage and the article "Why Navajo Hair Matters", the attack on their culturally significant hairstyles was not just by result of wanting the school uniforms to match - it was a direct attack on their identity and humanity. A person's identity is not malleable by force, but it will retain the scars inflicted upon them. The attitude of the oppressing majority group--considering both racial and queer subjects of oppression--is equal in that it is of wanting the othered groups to not exist. This was explored in the Sedgwick paper on post-declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, where even the "liberal" psychologists' opinions and findings were of this same attitude of wanting the phenomenon of queerness and homosexuality to be eradicated. This applies to forced assimilation of BIPOC individuals and communities, in that it is the white-written system's goal to see people homogenized enough into the majority's cookie shape that maybe they'll cease to be different. Any form of othering is considering them alienated and therefore of the same attitude. 

It doesn't work that way, and it's called torture. 

(To prof Ongiri: I just remembered I am two hours behind WI timezone, so I am posting this at 11pm my time)