The New Yorker Radio Hour - Hilton Als’s Homecoming and the March for Queer Liberation

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

In the summer of 1967, a young black boy in Brooklyn was shot in the back by a police officer. The writer Hilton Als recalls the two days of “discord and sadness” that followed, and reflects on the connection between those demonstrations and this summer’s uprising following the killing of George Floyd. Plus, an activist group sees an opportunity to reclaim the mantle of gay pride after New York cancels its official parade.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We grew up in a two-story house in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. The house had a balcony, and in the summer, we were able to sleep out on the balcony in the cooling air. Hilton Ales is a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote about his childhood in his most recent piece for the New Yorker, an essay called Homecoming. The Brownsville summer of 1967 was like every other Brooklyn summer I'd experienced, stultifying. Relief was sought at the nearby Betsyhead pool and at the fire hydrants that reckless boys opened with giant wrenches.

The cold water made the black asphalt blacker in the black nights. Gossip floated down the street from our neighbors' small front porches and from stoops flanked by big concrete planters full of dusty plastic flowers. Nursing or beer or Pepsi, the grown-ups discussed far-off places like Vietnam. So-and-so's son had come back from there all messed up, and now he was on the methadone. Then the conversation would shift to the kids. Every kid in our neighborhood was everyone else's kid. Prying, caring eyes were everywhere. Sometimes the conversation stopped, but just for a moment,

as girls in summer dresses passed. Men and women alike looked longingly at those girls for different reasons, as they amble down the street, pretending to pay no mind to the fine-built boys who called to them from a distance. Hilton, you grew up in Brooklyn with your sisters and brother and your mother who had immigrated from Barbados. Can you tell me about that environment? And your mother, she was politically active, right? Yes.

Even though I don't think that she would ever say that she was an activist, she just kind of was active. She was a person who sort of found the political in the everyday, meaning believed very strongly in the possibility of the black family and doing better and having better. My mother was a proud member of Mary McLeod Bethune's National Council of Negro Women and had attended Martin Luther King Jr's 1963 March on Washington. When she reminisced about that march, it was with a vividness that made her children feel shy. Sometime in the long ago, Ma had been part of history. Nonviolent organization, picket lines, and marches. All these strengthened our mother's conviction that inclusion worked, that civil rights worked,

that the black family could work, especially if welfare officers and other professionally concerned people, journalists and sociologists say, paid attention to what a black mother built rather than to how she failed. Hilton, in 1967, something happened that really changed the neighborhood. There was an uprising or what was then called a riot. And it started in a way that was all too familiar. What happened? There was a, first a demonstration, and then,

a riot when a young boy named Richard Ross was shot in the back by, as it turned down, a black police officer because it had been thought or assumed that he had mugged an older white man. And that event, that murder precipitated a two-day period of discord and sadness. standing by my mother's living room window, I tried tentatively to ask her why our world was burning, burning. She gave me a forbidding look. Boy, be quiet so you can survive, her eyes seem to say. Did I want to be another Richard Ross, one of the hundred or thousand Richard Rosses out there? So many questions I could not ask.

Among them, had our desire for community also been reduced to rubble in ash? The chaos that night, it would last for two days before life went back to normal, was more vivid to my burgeoning writer's mind than what I could not see. Our mother's vivid memories of King's promise of a promised land. Where was that? You write in your essay about the riots and the question of masculinity. You said that to riot was a rejection of maternal silence. Talk to me about that and how you yourself fit into it.

I think that a lot of black men who are raised in matrilineal societies have to figure out not how to be men, but how to enact masculinity. And one of the things that they, and certainly I was taught, was how to be silent in order to save your life, which is don't question or contradict authority to its face because you might get smashed, you might be sent to jail, you might be killed. And I think that one of the things that happened and happens in riots is that boys are given an opportunity to imitate the sort of violence and freedom that they see their white counterparts having. It's a way of not only separating from the mother, but a way of competing with male whiteness. There comes a time in your essay that you or you, You're the adult you. You're Hilton Al's who's a successful, celebrated writer, living a decent life, a creative life. And yet, even from established people in the cultural world, there's one slight after another.

And I wish you would talk about experiencing that, how often it comes. And is it totally expected by you? It's very interesting, David. that it's the writer's ego and egotism that believes that once you write something like this, that all racism will disappear and people will behave decently. But I came to visit some friends in Connecticut, and I got out of the car to go to the grocery store, and I had my mask on like everyone else. And there were two elderly white women.

And I was sort of coming up the rear and the woman, one of the women sort of flinched. She was startled by my presence. And she was making an effort not to be afraid. But still, in that effort, I felt great sadness because I wouldn't be afraid if she came up to me or my mother wouldn't be afraid. What is it in the white body that I really want to ask the question? What is it in the white body that produces that response? It is very curious to me. I've never understood it.

It has nothing to do with, you know, if you want to talk about the relationship of black violence and white violence, I think white people, you know, have us beat by a mile. I don't understand why. It sort of feels like I have to ask the question back to you. I don't know why it's in that culture. and in that body. It's sort of like that wonderful exchange

with Tony Morrison had with Charlie Rose where he says, well, you're celebrated and do you still experience racism? And you can see her face turn into granite. And she says, that's not the right question. The right question is, why does it exist in you? So I'm sort of in that school. I feel it when it happens.

I don't expect it. I don't go looking for it. for it. And I think that that's partly what's assaulted is my relative innocence. My belief that as human beings we're going to, you know, go to the supermarket together or sit down together or have a meeting or lunch together and no one leaves the table feeling slimed. It's really, there's that wonderful public enemy album, Fear of a Black Planet, but I don't know what the fear is. Why wouldn't you want a Black Planet? I'm talking with the New Yorkers Hilton Halls.

Now, we're at a moment when so many white people are out marching for racial justice and seem to be recognizing the damage of systemic racism on our entire society. Hilton concludes his essay Homecoming by thinking about just why this is happening. What changes in America have led to it. You get it only when the shit happens to you, too. We all know that. And now the effects of our segregated democracy are happening to you. And now you can see or understand that all along.

I've been trying to get along just like you, the way Ma taught me to be independent and help my chosen family. I've tried to make a living at something I love and to explore the intricacies of love just like you. I've lost friends and forgotten to pay a credit card bill just like you. but I wasn't allowed to be like you and now my other is happening to you now degradation and moral compromise

and your body breaking down are happening to you because Donald Trump has happened to you Oxycontin has happened to you broken families have happened to you gun violence in schools and supermarkets and movie theaters at concerts has happened to you along with riot and frustration and cops who can't pass up an opportunity to flash their guns and their batons

in your presence, even as you search for home, even as the dream comes tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling down. Hilton All's reading from his essay, Homecoming. It's a wonderful essay. I can't urge you strongly enough to read it. It's at new yorker.com. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This Sunday should have been the 50th annual New York City Pride celebration. Last year, five million people turned up. This year, and it's no surprise, the parade was canceled because of the pandemic. But there is a pride event on the streets of New York on Sunday of a very different sort. It's called the Queer Liberation March. Its organizers who were called Reclaim Pride formed their own march last year, and they rejected the way the official Pride parade had evolved over time and gone, in their view, mainstream, with all the corporate floats, a contingent of uniform police marching, and what they saw as excessive control by the police department at every turn. There was a lot of pent-up demand for something like this. A lot of longtime activists had just stopped

going to Pride. They just did not want to be a part of it. They were kind of sickened by it. Reclaimed Pride ultimately decided to go ahead with the Queer Liberation March. No corporate floats, no barricades, no announced route. And now with the big pride parade canceled, it's the only game in town. Michael Shulman talked to four of the Reclaimed Pride organizers. So Michael, thank you so much for reaching out to us. Well, thank you guys. Sorry that I missed it last year, but I'm glad you're still glad you're doing it again.

We got back together early fall to start planning this year's event, and then COVID hit. And the mayor announced there would be no public events in New York through the end of June. And so, you know, we did the only thing we could do at that time, which was to assume that we were not going to be able to have this march. So we shifted to a virtual idea. You know, all of this work was happening. And then we had the onslaught, first Amad Arbery, then Briona, and then when the nation saw George Floyd be murdered. Right. And the protests began in Minneapolis, in New York, and then all across the country.

After that first weekend of protest, we had our meetings. still scheduled for working on our virtual content. And there was unanimity that we needed to have a march and we needed to have it centered on the movement for Black Lives. And we had to be for abolishing the police, dismantling the police, defunding the police. There was literally not a single voice of dissension. And so here we are. It's as if the COVID-19 meteor killed off the $12 million dinosaur parade and a smaller, more resourceful organism survived to fill the void. We're able to pivot in a way that a more complex plan wouldn't allow us to float and stops for posing and being announced by a TV broadcast and all of these trappings that are part of a

polished spectacle, get in the way of having an effective community gathering. I live in Greenwich Village, and last year, June came and it was like every Bank of America and Shake Shack had just rainbows coming out of the windows. Chipotle had a rainbow burrito. And I think there are some people who would look at that and say, that's fantastic. Like acceptance has become so mainstream. And what would you guys say to that to people who just feel, why complain? Part of it is the sullying of our movement by association with,

corporate bad actors, these mainstream pride organizations, pinkwash this very, very dirty money that's coming from these corporations that are doing enormous damage to our country and to the world. You know, Wells Fargo, for instance, had a huge marching contingent last year, and they're the banker of the NRA, and they're welcomed into Pride and, oh, yes, you can have your Wells Fargo float in our Pride march. To be clear, Chipotle did have a Rainbow Burrito, but, it was on a tank top and it was for a good cause. Anyway, the Reclaimed Pride Coalition feels that their version of the march is the more authentic expression of the Pride tradition, one that pulls on the history of the Pride movement

from 50 years ago when the very first marches were organized by a group called the Gay Liberation Front. They were a leftist group that was very intersectional. So they were anti-war, they were in solidarity with the civil rights movements, the feminist movements. They also had an alliance with the Black Panthers around the particular issue of police brutality. So, you know, this history has been lost to many in decades of assimilationism, as the focus has turned on things like marriage and serving in the military and so forth. But the roots of this event are actually quite politically radical.

Marsha B. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, they were political revolutionaries. They really had a completely transformative view of society. We also know Stonewall was a riot started by black and brown trans people. Pride wouldn't exist without Stonewall, which was a riot. If you know your history, you would know you only have rights because people rioted and people spoke up and people did things that were dangerous for them. And we need to fight for people in that way. This is Sylvia Rivera at the fourth ever Pride March in 1973.

As revolutionary as they come. But listen to how she addresses her audience. She's not talking to a group of fellow radicals. She's yelling at them for being bourgeois conformists. Do you do anything for them? No. I will not put up with this shit. I have been beaten.

I have lost my job for gay liberation. And you all treat me this way? What the fuck wrong with you all? The tension between assimilation and radicalism was part of the movement from the beginning. It's always been there. And not men and... women that belong to a white middle class, white club.

And that's what they mean again. The organizers of the Queer Liberation March see themselves in the tradition of Sylvia Rivera and other radical activists. But with only a few weeks to plan, some of their concerns were more practical than philosophical. We have voted on a start time, 1 p.m. So for the queers that took umbrage at our 9.30 start time last year, we'll have a 1 p.m. start time, and it will happen in Manhattan.

Their timing is apt. Outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, there's now a giant sign that says, Pride is a riot. The New Yorker's Michael Shulme. He spoke with Natalie James, Francesca Barjean, J.W. Walker, and John Carter of the Reclaimed Pride Coalition. I'm David Remnick, and that's The New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo,

Riannon-Corbi, Calli Leah, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Mung Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Truina Endowment Fund.