Analysis Of Prejudice In Regulated Service Of Simon, By Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde once wrote, “I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.” Through this one sentence, Lorde expresses the fullness of the Black LGBTQ+ experience. Lorde captures the delicate balance of acceptance and prejudice between the African American LGBTQ+ community and the broader African American community. This dynamic within the marginalized community of the African American experience finds itself best embodied with the person of Simon of Cyrene. In the “pressed service” of Simon, Black LGBTQ+ people find their relationship within the African American community and the broader American culture. As Simon was forced to bear the cross, Black LGBTQ+ people are bearing the crosses dehumanization and prejudice. These duel crosses are imposed upon them by American culture and the African American community.
The first cross is the one of dehumanization. Racism, homophobia, and White heterosexual male

dominant norms create this cross. These elements perceive the lives and bodies of Black LGBT+ people as entities innately against “Christian” values. This cross is the tool in which the ethos of White supremacy creates the marginalized “other.” This category of “other” results from an ill formed system that designates Black LGBTQ+ people as “opposition” or “threat” to a bigoted sense of “normality.” This sense of “normality” seeks to impose understandings of gender, love, and family that are deeply rooted White supremacy upon the African American community. These are the misconstrued ideas of “normality” that the Black LGBTQ+ community challenges. The essence of the Black LGBTQ+ experience asserts that love (particularly within the Black context) is not limited to the traditional heterosexual understands of this human experience. The essence of the Black LGBTQ+ experiences asserts that the norms concerning gender and family are not concreate—the notions of gender diversity and family existing beyond the realm of the nuclear understanding. Fundamentally, at the core of the Black LGBTQ+ experience is the calling for the broader African American community to divest itself of norms and understandings that have historical roots within colonial Christianity. This call is a rejection of White supremacy, the practices that proceed from it, and the norms it has imbedded within the conscious of the African American community—seeking empower the structures of Blackness with individualism and non-conventionalism
The cross of dehumanization is the response to the essence of the Black LGBTQ+ person. In dehumanizing of this marginalized “other,” oppressive forces can precede with the normalization of devaluing and disregarding of their (Black LGBTQ+) lives. This is seen primarily in the case of Black Transgender murders. The fact that every year a higher trend in homicide rates is set within this community, but most main stream media outlets rarely report it—2016 setting the current record with 2017 projecting to break that record. This is the cross of dehumanization at work with American culture. The assertion based on the absent response from main stream American social institutions is that Black LGBTQ+ lives do not matter. That Black LGBTQ+ lives are expendable, and do not hold a position of stature within the hierarchy of American life—because they challenge the norms and structures of the culture. Indeed, the Black LGBTQ+ person is the best embodiment of Simon of Cyrene. In their struggle to liberate the broader African American community from the metaphysical shackles of White supremacy, they become Simon being pressed to bear the cross for Jesus. Black LGBTQ+ people bear the cross in which their own humanity will suffer upon (in the person of Jesus).
The second cross is the one of (adopted) prejudice. This cross is White supremacy and White heterosexual male dominance in their most potent forms. The cross of prejudice is the acceptance of these ideals into the African American community. White supremacy and White heterosexual male dominance lives through adhering to traditional understandings of love, gender, and family. In denying the Black LGBTQ+ personhood the opportunity to exist holistically within the African American community, one allows standards set by White supremacy and heterosexual dominance to thrive and govern the African American experience. The cross of prejudice seeks to solidify divisions and a create a hierarchy of “authentic” experiences within the African American community. This cross assert the notion that LGBTQ+ systemic inequality and Black systemic inequality cannot co-exist together.
The cross of prejudice asserts that the Black LGBTQ+ existence does not exist because one cannot be both Black and LGBTQ+.

One must choose between being a member of one or the other community. Within this false choice is the limitation and control of the Black identity, body, and existence sought by White Supremacy and White heterosexual male dominance. This notion is achieved through utilizing a combination of all the crosses previously stated. By perpetuating White supremacy, patriarchy, prejudice, toxic masculinity, and dehumanization the denial of the intersectionality of the Black LGBTQ+ person becomes the norm among the African American community. And in this denial of the holistic Black and LGBTQ+ self, there exist the person of Simon. As Black LGBTQ+ people confront this adopted prejudice, they bear the cross of division (designed by White Supremacy) in which their (Wholly) Black and LGBTQ+ personhood will suffer upon (in the person of

Jesus).
Simon of Cyrene is a symbol for the Black marginalized and oppressed element within the African American culture. This image of a Black body being forced to submit to the hands of an oppressive entity, resonates deeply in the historical context of an African American spirituality. This act represents not only the oppression given at the hands foreign oppressors, but also the oppressive forces adopted within Black culture. In Simon of Cyrene, Black people find in him a reflection of themselves in the context of American culture. Black women, Black men, and Black LGBTQ+ people can find their struggles in the person of Simon.