Pride Month Spotlight: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Celebrating the Bostock Decision
In honor of Pride Month, BR Pride, Blank Rome’s LGBTQ+ affinity group, will be highlighting the contributions and achievements of Black LGBTQ individuals of the past and present.
This week, we are shining our spotlight on James Baldwin (1924–1987) and Audre Lorde (1934–1992). In addition, we are celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision handed down earlier this month protecting LGBTQ employees from workplace discrimination.
One of the great writers of the twentieth century, James Baldwin was a novelist, playwright, and essayist who was especially known for his essays on sexuality and the Black experience in America. As a young Black gay man in America in the 1940s, Baldwin frequently encountered discrimination. In order to escape frequent harassment and discrimination, in 1948 Baldwin moved to Paris where he found himself free to write about his race and sexuality. In 1956, Baldwin released his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, which was groundbreaking for its complex depiction of masculinity and homosexuality. In November 2019, BBC News listed Giovanni’s Room on its list of the 100 most inspiring and influential novels that “shaped our world.” In 1963, Baldwin released The Fire Next Time, a collection of essays meant to educate white Americans on what it meant to be Black in America. The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation in 1963 and gave a passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today.
“The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”
Baldwin’s identity as both a gay and Black man was questioned by both Black and white people and he was often considered to be “not Black enough” because of his sexuality. Baldwin’s life illuminates not just the intersection between LGBTQ rights and civil rights, but perhaps more importantly, the connections among self-identification, artistic expression, and political activism. Baldwin saw his personal mission as bearing “witness to the truth”; Baldwin and his work have gone on to have a profound influence on generations of Black and LGBTQ writers.
Audre Lorde, a self-described “black, lesbian, feminist, mother, warrior, poet,” was a leading poet and essayist who gave voice to the issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Throughout her career, Lorde published 18 books of both poetry and prose. Lorde’s poetry became more open and personal as she grew older and became more confident in her sexuality and identity. In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), Lorde asserted the necessity of communicating the experience of marginalized groups to make their struggles visible in a repressive society.
She emphasized the need for different groups of people to find common ground in their lived experience, but also to face difference directly, and use it as a source of strength rather than alienation. She repeatedly emphasized the need for community in the struggle to build a better world.
“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us, but it won’t.”
Lorde received the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit in 1991, which recognized her as poet laureate of New York State. The Audre Lorde Project, founded in 1994, is a Brooklyn-based organization for LGBTQ people of color that focuses on community organizing and is a testament to Lorde’s long-standing legacy.
Originally published in Essence Magazine in 1984, an interview between Baldwin and Lorde about the shared and divergent racial history between Black men and women can be read here: Revolutionary Hope: A Conversation Between James Baldwin and Audre Lorde.
Celebrating Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Bostock v. Clayton County
On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its landmark opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, holding 6-3 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ individuals from workplace discrimination. Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch reasoned that “[a]n employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” Bostock v. Clayton Cty., 2020 U.S. LEXIS 3252, at *9.
While same-sex couples won the right to marry in 2015, a majority of states did not provide workplace protections for LGBTQ+ individuals. Prior to Bostock, LGBTQ+ individuals in those states without workplace protections could get married one day and fired the next because of their LGBTQ+ status without any legal repercussion.
The opinion is even more poignant for trans people, who disproportionately face discrimination and harassment in and out of the workplace. Just last week, two trans women of color were killed within the span of 24 hours, sparking tens of thousands of people to gather across the United States to march for the rights of the Black trans community. Moreover, several days prior to the Bostock opinion, the executive branch finalized a regulation intended to remove protections for transgender Americans against discrimination in healthcare.
Bostock is a monumental victory for LGBTQ+ rights and a powerful reminder of our profession’s role in the fight for justice and equity for all communities.