Personal Post

I'm going to make this post a personal one. I want to talk about my experience as a homosexual black male in a majority white institution in a heterosexual society. Growing up I never faced much adversity because of this. One reason may be that I was not out and therefore there was never an opportunity to face any adversity. I lived through my high school years functioning just like any one of my heterosexual peers. When I came to Mizzou as a freshman I was surprised at the lack of African American students. Even coming from Lee's Summit which is predominately white I was surprised that we were so under represented on this campus. The second thing that I was encountered with was the lack of organizations for the LGBTQ community. Before I came out I was looking for different organizations that I felt I could find support from. There were not many around. From the very beginning I felt that there wasn't much support for me at this University. Black, gay, and especially not black AND gay. Throughout the 4 years that I have been at this University I have found out why things seem this way. The homosexual black community is not large at all at Mizzou because of gender and race in my opinion. It seems that most of the people that can pass as heterosexual do not come out therefore taking away from the community. I have met and know several black men that are gay but do not come out because they are afraid of how people will look at them. Black men are expected to be strong, masculine, and all around manly. This makes coming out difficult. I faced this as a freshman. I eventually decided that I wanted to come out even though the culture has not changed. Black men face pressure from heterosexual counterparts and from homosexual whites to behave a certain way. And even if you are accepted as being gay you are only fully accepted if you are masculine. I wish that the culture of universities would change to be much more accepting of a group of people that is much larger than most people believe.