#blackboy

No doubt, if you’re here reading this, then you’ve already seen the video by Derrick Gordon (sorry to this man) featuring openly gay WWE super star Darren Young. 

In case you have not seen that video, I will summarize it for you here:

Two Gay Black Men spend half an hour talking about how they don’t find Black men attractive while simultaneously claiming that the qualities they find attractive in White and Asian men are universal qualities that can be found in all men, including Black men, but somehow arrive at the conclusion that they like what they like and that just happens to be non Black men, period… Don’t question it. 

The video starts off innocently enough. You have your “it’s ya boi” introduction, we get a bit of history about the guest; we get some touching stories about how being a Black gay man in the WWE can be a heroic position with regard to helping other gay men accepting who they are etc. 

Then, at right before 8 minutes, the subject comes up: Darren only dates Asians. Darren takes that opening to talk about his past relationship and how he is still able to work with his ex, a Puerto Rican/ Filipino person named Nikki, for a few minutes. 

Unrelenting and determined to get to the part where we talk about dating non Black folks, Derrick wrangles Darren back in at about 10:30 with: 

“what made you want to date only Asians? Why not white? Why not Black as well?… Why specifically only Asians?”

Darren responds that he dates anybody, but it wasn’t until he dated nikki that he came out. 

“He was my first Asian Experience… Filipino and Puerto Rican”

Now, earlier in the video, Darren says he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and because of that, I’m questioning whether he believes that Puerto Ricans are Asian, but that’s beside the point. 

He goes on to say that he learned and continues to learn a lot about himself from his ex boyfriend on all sorts of issues ranging from transgender people to fashion to having patience with bringing issues up and talking about what he’s feeling… because it’s part of the culture… The Asian culture…. To talk about your feelings and not bottle it all up….. Side note, which asian culture is he talking about because just about every Asian I know, Filipinos included, my own family included, the families of my friends and loved ones included have issues with talking to each other. I digress… He says that this is part of the culture and why he is attracted to his Filipino (and by this time he’s just left out the Puerto Rican) boyfriend.

he cheers for couples that are interacial gay couples because that’s how it should be in our community. Then he says something weird about how they’re public figures and having their backs against the wall and having to share their own story and explain themselves; I’m assuming that’s the story of why they don’t date black men…. as public figures. Ok. 

The only problem is… They never really end up explaining themselves. By this point, we’re 13 minutes into the video and we still have a good 14 minutes to go. 

So after Darren talks about himself, Derrick is given the opportunity to “explain” himself. Out the gate he lists the names of famous Black gay men who are dating, have dated, or are married to White men, topping the list of with “Bobby Porter” who he really looks up to (He meant Billy Porter). I’ll let you decipher those tea leaves… 

He then goes on to name three white actors that he finds hot, Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman and Robert Downey Junior.

Look, I’m all for the different strokes for different folks methodology of living your life. I too can be attracted to white men. That’s not the issue here. But just for the record, those three white men wouldn’t be the white men I’D be attracted to.  

Derrick cites the reason why he likes those three white men as “because they have a physically mature and masculine look…” Ok… “By all means I can look at someone black and say he’s handsome, but he does nothing for me sexually” to which Darren channels his inner Jada and Will Smith at the red table “likewise yes yes” as if what this man is saying is hitting on anything other than blatant self hate and antiblackness. 

I’ve spent too much time on this. Watch the video yourself and realize that you can like what you like without putting any other group down, but least of all the group that you represent. 

I had Tumblr before.

It used to be a collection of things that interested me.

Anime, art, photography, porn, music, you naaaame it. 

My Tumblr interests were just as jumbled up as I am. And while there’s a uniqueness to that kind of mixed upness, I have come to learn that when it comes to digital marketing, or the selling of oneself as a “brand” on social media, the world seems to like flattened experiences. 

You see, I have been on social media since the beginning. I call myself a vintage millennial. No, I didn’t think of that myself. It’s actually the work of Jaboukie (Young-White (my future husband, but not really because he doesn’t fulfill the “half my age plus 9″ rule)). I have been on social media for a long time, and I have marketed myself as a mixed up person comprised of a whole bunch of different experiences. 

That doesn’t work. Especially not on my social media platform of choice: Youtube. 

My Youtube channel started off as a way for me to upload video that I had taken for my Sinfonia chapter’s Mills Music Missions; groups of guys going around to nursing homes and hospitals, singing songs for the bed ridden and down trodden. From there, I started using Youtube to watch Happyslip, a Filipinx comedian who got her break acting like her parents online. Then I started following LoveBScott; a gay androgynous man who told stories and gave advice from his apartment in West Hollywood. From there, I began doing my own vlogs about my experiences as a Black/ Asian person. 

I saw a lot of growth in the beginning. I was popular most among Filipinx people and Black Gay Queer men, a lot of whom were out online, but not in real life, a subset of the queer community which wasn’t uncommon in 2008, as a matter of fact. It was a prime time to use Youtube as a way to “escape” and I was an escape for a lot of people at first. 

But then, I started talking about being Gay; being part of the LGBTQ community, and instantly many of my Filipinx subscribers turned on me. I received comments from the same people, over and over again telling me that I could still turn back and “return to God” and that they were praying for me, and hoped that I would get right because they had watched my videos for so long. 

And I dug in further. I transformed my youtube channel into a place where Black Queer (Gay) men gathered on a weekly basis to talk about the issues of the day. Mind you, this was 4 months before The Read podcast by Kid Fury and Crissle. I was so into this idea that I even changed the name of the Youtube channel from “blasianFMA” to “Edugaytion.” A complete rebranding and including of my friends. 

Edugaytion had a good run and was the jumping off point for some really interesting things. Garrett McQueen, the host of Edugaytion, went on to work for radio stations around the South, and ended up making his way to American Public Media where he currently works as a host of not only a show, but also a podcast listened to millions of people, and I currently work on a Queer podcast called “This QPOC Life.” 

But what of those people from the Youtube days? The ones I haven’t mentioned? The ones who were my contemporaries, the ones who started around the same time I did, and we might not know each other (or maybe we do…)? 

Plenty of people who started Youtube at the same time that I did stuck to a path. They stuck to one point. They stayed in a lane. Some of those people are now Youtube celebrities; with millions of followers, or household names in certain communities. 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I’m trying to figure out what happened with me. Why didn’t I make it big? What did I do wrong? Why don’t people latch on to me at as fast a rate as the people who were around me during the beginning? 

I think I know. 

I think it’s because I didn’t stay in a single lane. I changed the name of my channel. I changed the subject material. People who subscribed to me because I made a particular type of video would come back and then I’d be talking about or doing something completely different. One moment I’m reviewing the latest anime to live action adaptation, the next I’m talking about the struggles of being a Queer Person of Color in a largely White performing arts institution. One minute I’m talking about video games the next, I’m talking about HIV awareness. 

I get it. 

At this point it just seems like it’s far too late to even try to get things on one track. I’ve stepped away from Youtube. I’ve stepped back into it. I’ve taken breaks. I’ve done a video a day for a week. I can see the topics that gain the subscribers and the comments: They’re videos about mixed race people - but I don’t want to devote my channel to talking about one experience. I want  to review videos games, movies, talk about queerness, and a whole host of other things. I want to vlog, get things off my chest, ramble, share stories… But the diversity thing isn’t something that audiences want. 

This carries over into real life as well and is the reason why I’m able to arrive at the conclusion that I have regarding just youtube. 

All blasians know the feeling of not being enough of one or the other. I guess this whole youtube thing is just another byproduct of that. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of blasians who have made it by solely devoting their channels to talking about being Black and Korean, with emphasis on anything Korean, and there are youtubers who are blasian who have devoted their channels to just compiling grammatical errors and talking shit about how people can’t spell… and these people rack up millions of views and subscribers. 

I can’t do that. Not because I don’t have the ability, but because I don’t want to. I’m always evolving. I’m always learning something new, and I’m always trying a different thing.

The current thing is Film Making, which I will probably get into more in my next post because I’ve been typing too much already, and I’m behind on this script I’m writing. 

Anyway, I doubt anybody is reading this, but I’m glad I thought it through and put it out into the universe. 

xx blasianFMA 

kingshell187:

darkskinboy:

really enjoyed myself in Atlanta