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

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Recommended: Present study of prejudice and discrimination

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 …show more content…

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

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