Racing the closet. (Symposium: Media, Justice, and the Law)

 
INTRODUCTION 
 
  I. "DOWN LOW" DISCOURSE: THE DOMINANT STORY 
 
 II. BLURRING THE PERPETRATOR/VICTIM DIVIDE 
     A. Not All Black Women Are Victims 
        1. Some women know; some don't care; some prefer bisexual men 
        2. Women can live "down low" 
     B. Black Men Can Be Victims Too 
        1. Bisexuality is not an intelligible option 
        2. The down low harms out black men 
 
III. STRUCTURAL CONNECTIONS: WHAT BLACK WOMEN AND BLACK MSM 
     HAVE IN COMMON 
     A. Governmental Policies Reduce the Number of Eligible Black Male 
        Romantic Partners 
     B. Romantic Segregation Limits Romantic Possibilities for Black 
        Women and Black MSM 
     C. The Branding of HIV as a Gay White Disease Disserved Black MSM 
        and Black Women 
 
 IV. THE FAILURE OF HIV TRANSMISSION LAWS 
     A. Positive Perpetrators and Negative Victims 
     B. Complexity and Culpability 
     C. A Structural Approach to HIV Risk 
 
CONCLUSION 

INTRODUCTION

Recently, the media have brought to light examples of ordinary black men who are said to live on the "down low" (or DL) in that they have primary romantic relationships with women while engaging in secret sex with men. (1) A central theme of this media coverage, which I will call "DL discourse," is that DL men expose their unwitting female partners to HIV, which stems from their secret sex with men. (2) DL discourse warrants examination because it sits at the intersection of three important civil rights movements: (1) the gay rights movement, (2) the black anti-racist movement, and (3) AIDS activism. In this Article, I critique DL discourse in order to reveal important lessons about media framing, gender schemas, and victimization, and the relationship of all three to law. DL discourse tends to conceal several relevant and interconnected groups, including nonblack men who engage in similar practices, down low women, and women whose sexual relationships are not monogamous or "respectable." These erasures permit the media to boil the underlying issues down to a battle between two caricatures--dangerous black men and their innocent wives and girlfriends. However, a close analysis of this framing provides the opportunity to recognize complicating nuances and draw structural connections between black men who have sex with men, or "MSM," (3) and black women. I argue that both of these groups confront structural constraints that push them to the fringes of the black community and the broader society while limiting their romantic possibilities.

The media and the public have applied an insidious racialized double standard to black and white men who engage in similar conduct. The black men who are depicted as having secret sex behind their wives' backs in DL discourse horrify us, yet we see Ennis and Jack, the star-crossed lovers in the Oscar-nominated, box office hit Brokeback Mountain, as victims of the closet. (4) When Governor Jim McGreevey came out as a "gay American," the empathy that the public felt for his wife Dina did not require casting Jim as a villain. Thus, an important point of this Article is that we attend to our tendency to frame black and white men through radically disparate lenses even when they engage in the same underlying conduct. Juxtaposing what I call "white men on the down low" (5) against the stories of all-black depravity featured in DL discourse makes apparent that these media stories race the closet.

To say that the media race the closet is not to say that black and white MSM are identically situated vis-a-vis the closet. But the major differences may not be the ones suggested by the media, such as the association of DL with promiscuity. (6) First, black men face not just homophobia but also racism, and these two oppressive forces intertwine in vexing ways. For instance, black men who identify as gay may face accusations that they have let down the black community, which often views "good black men" as an endangered species. (7) Jim McGreevey can come out without anyone fretting about the white community lacking strong male leaders or linking such a problem to his sexual identity. To the extent that black men do not "come out" as frequently as white men, one explanation is that they face greater pressure to shun an additional stigmatizing identity. Importantly, this pressure arises not just from the black community and its purported greater homophobia, (8) but also from white people.

The very white gay men who bemoan the internalized homophobia of black men and suggest that coming out is a cure-all often contribute to the closet that confines black men by excluding and marginalizing black MSM in gay spaces and public representations. (9) As I describe below, (10) white gay men have dominated public images of gay men, which makes it hard for many men of color contemplating coming out to understand where they would fit in. To the extent that black men see black gay images in the media, such representations are likely to be caricatures--like the DL--that fail to reflect how black men see themselves.

Although DL discourse has convinced many readers that the DL is a real and significant phenomenon in the black community, no one has ever proved the prevalence of this practice in black communities or elsewhere. Indeed, it may be impossible to do so since the very conception of the practice entails secrecy. Asking a man whether he is down low may not produce a reliable answer since DL men, by definition, are perceived as hiding their sexual relationships with men and denying the relevance of their involvement in such sex. Many media stories on the DL fail to quote any actual men on the DL beyond J.L. King, the one man who has built a career on acting as a media spokesperson for the group. (11) Thus, the media set up the DL as a "phenomenon" whose existence can neither be proved nor refuted. In my view, the blossoming of the DL story in major media outlets, despite the lack of identifiable DL men and minimal empirical evidence, speaks to the background stereotypes about black pathology that enable the story to bypass normal expectations of verification.