My comments in this thread are coming in pretty late, I know.
(Finals'll do that to you, don'tcha know.)

My own feelings about the interactions of race and sexuality have been
shaped primarily by four works I've been exposed to over the last nine
months.  The first, certainly, was TONGUES UNTIED.  The second was
THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY BACK, and the third, Joseph Beam's 1986
collection IN THE LIFE, stories by and about black gay men, both of
which I read this semester for my seminar on the history of
homosexuality.

The most recent was an article published anonymously in PRISM, an
on-campus magazine last semester, and is entitled "Life in the 0.6%
Club":

   I've been at Amherst for awhile, and I've been silent.  Now, I would
   like to tell everyone about a kind of stress that they probably
   haven't given much thought.  I've been told that I appear so calm and
   collected that it's difficult to imagine me stressed out over
   something.  But that's only my outside.  I get occasional facial
   ticks, I grind my teeth in my sleep -- now sometimes when I am awake
   -- and I have a mild ulcer: all symptoms of stress.  I am Black
   (African-American), male, and homosexual.  Hiding what might reveal
   myself as homosexual from my roommates; from the Blacks whose company
   I value and need; glossing over what makes me different (my Blackness)
   when I am with White homosexuals ... all this creates stress, which
   creates problems, which keeps me from doing the things of which I
   might otherwise be capable.  There's not one of those labels I listed
   above that hasn't, at one time or another or continually, created an
   enormous source of stress for me; there's also not one of them that I
   would change, even if I could.  The problem is not with who I am; the
   problem is with how the overriding American social reality has taught
   people (of all colors, of all orientations) to view and treat me:
   destructively.  There are some very scary statistics available on
   suicide among homosexuals and the drug-, death-, crime-, and
   murder-rates among Black males.  Please take another glance at those
   labels listed above -- those are the labels I'll take if I have to
   take labels, and those labels list the world view that I know (and
   know very well).  It is from the confines of those labels that I will
   speak.

   In order for you to understand better what it is that I want to
   relate, it's necessary that I explain a few things basic to my
   experience and alien to most others.  First of all, because of the
   bizarre way this society has shaped me (and this surprises me too), I
   have as much in comon with a White homosexual as I have with a Black
   heterosexual.  My soul is nourished and withered by the company of
   both.  Both groups possess qualities intrinsically fundamental in
   myself and attractive to me that feel necessary.  At the same time, my
   relationships with both have never been nourishing in a balanced sort
   of way -- enough of one thing, not enough of another (like a diet of
   all protein, or a diet of all vitamins).

   So now I often hear people saying, in the on-going dialogue on race
   issues, "Blacks and Whites are just the same.  People should stop
   emphasizing differences that are only skin deep."  I wish that this
   were true.  If one were to lay down a Black newborn beside a White
   newborn, one would be correct in stating that they are fundamentally
   identical except for the color of their skins.  But by the time those
   two infants are, say, 19-year-old men, each has been molded by
   experiences that are so very different from the other's that the Black
   teenager has basic sections of his psyche, general experiences, and
   world view that are similar to those of all other African-American
   males, but no longer similar to the White teenager.  And, obviously,
   the society has equally shaped and differentiated the White teenager.
   Their differences have become much more than skin deep.  So it is also
   with a heterosexual and a homosexual.  As infants (yes, I believe I
   was born that way) there is no great difference, but as young adults
   (or even children) they have both had parallel, non-overlapping sets
   of experiences -- gone down tracks of life that unify them with one
   group and separate them from another.

   Of course a White homosexual is a _White_ homosexual; that is, as
   shaped by race as by sexual orientation.  I have experienced racism
   from White homosexuals, and my experiences make me comfortable
   generalizing that their homosexuality teaches them to be only slightly
   more comfortable with my Blackness than would be a White heterosexual.
   So, while my experiences can connect me in ways (in very deep and
   basic ways) to those who are White and homosexual, I am also separate
   from them -- very different in ways that are equally deep and basic.
   So it also is with me and Black heterosexuals.

   It would be self-destructive for me to try and separate myself from my
   Black identity -- and that identity can only be supported by the
   presence of other Blacks.  However, Black heterosexuals (and again my
   experiences allow me to make this generalization) are generally much
   more homophobic than White heterosexuals (which is not to say that
   White heterosexuals aren't very homophobic!) and Black heterosexual
   society is heterosexist to an extent that still stuns me when I
   immerse myself into the depths of it.

   Because of the powerful likelihood of ostracism, and the virulent
   potential for abuse, Blacks who may be homosexual are much less likely
   to make themselves known as such (within the larger Black community).
   Blacks tend to stay "in the closet" more.  So often, in either a group
   of Blacks or homosexuals, I find myself (to my knowledge) the only
   person with my particular set of variables.  And it wears, it wears,
   it wears.  Being silent about myself among both Blacks and
   homosexuals, it gets me down and makes every day a climb up Mt.
   Everest when some should be a stroll in the park.  I love both halves
   of myself.  Both have given me such deep and precious insigts into
   what it means to be human, that someone who does not possess my set of
   variables cannot even imagine the things I notice from this
   perspective.  I value my Blacknes and homosexuality, but both bring me
   pain.

   In the first paragraph I listed some of the physical symptoms of my
   experience; mentally, emotionally, and spiritually I feel the pressure
   also.  When I work creatively (writing, drawing, etc.) I feel myself
   censoring myself into not revealing more of myself than I think others
   can handle.  My mother is Baptist, I was raised under that religion,
   and I still feel attracted to Baptism.  But the religion (or the way
   it is practiced) is powerfully homophobic.  It would be poisonous for
   me to be a Baptist.  And emotionally?  My emotional body is a giant
   mass of scar tissue.  Because I can trust no one, I have no real
   friends -- no one has yet shown that they could be trusted with the
   controversial whole of me.  I haven't had a lover because a person
   with the right set of variables has not come along -- but that is not
   really so cruel and unusual for someone my age (19).  What is cruel
   and unusual is that my society, the American in which we are all
   presently living, has not trained me to be a good lover, HOW to be a
   good lover, when that gentleman finally comes along.  He and I will
   have to self-create and self-define every aspect of our relationship
   -- a task most heterosexuals cannot even imagine.

   I didn't write this article thinking to change the world, or even of
   changing a few minds.  Note that I did not give my name, a sign that I
   fear the consequences.  I wrote this article because (even
   pseudonymously) I've never read a discussion of my particular dilemma
   before.  Whether you sympathize or are disgusted, it's important that
   you at least be aware that I, and others like me, exist.  A little
   knowledge is the first step toward any solution.

						     -- The Voice
-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "Well, there's homosexuality in all animals
\  / twpierce@amherst.edu      / but one, and that's the pig.  If it weren't
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) / for homosexuals we'd all have to live like
                                 pigs." -- overheard at Sydney Mardi Gras