In Defense of Brontez—and the Rest of Us Too Proud or Too Trashy to Go Down Without a Fight
Let me first state that there is no pretense of objectivity or an emotional distance here for several reasons.
One, Brontez Purnell is a very close friend of mine.
Two, this issue cuts at the core of some thoughts and problems I have with existing frameworks of victim, and the demands made on victims of violence to behave (past or present behaviors) in a fashion acceptable to others in order to claim one has been victimized; the role of police and questions of political alignments and authenticity; and the demands on victims to recall and script every fact in exactly the right chronology in order to be seen as credible.
Last week, I received a phone call from Brontez—again, close friend and musician/dancer/writer who lives in Oakland, California. It was the day after he and friend/bandmate Adal had left the Paradiso nightclub when two Black men with some Caribbean accent began harassing them as they left the club. Adal is not queer, but the two men, according to Brontez, assumed that they were a couple, and began calling them “batty boy” and other epithets. Finally, they made the statement, “if we were at home you’d be dead by now.”
Brontez, clearly enraged, went the fuck off. After more words were exchanged, and Brontez says he spit at the car the men were in, and then he was punched in the face. Brontez says he then hit the man’s car with his bicycle lock and they assaulted Brontez and Adal (who’s face was broken in five places). The police were called but no arrests have been made.
After talking to Brontez about the attack—I read an article in the Bay Citizen, followed by a pretty vigorous debate in the comments section. The debate mostly sparked by comments made by Kevin Bynes, who is known for his work in HIV prevention for Black gay men. Bynes, a bay area resident said he witnessed the incident nearby (and I know of Bynes through my own work in HIV prevention), and that Brontez was lying about the details of the incident noting:
I’m sorry I have to tell the truth because I live in this area and saw the entire incident. The so called victim rode around on his bike yelling at the two guys in the black SUV repeatedly and it wasn’t until the so-called victim spit on the driver and tried to break his window with his bike lock that the two accused “gay bashers” reacted by chasing the guy away. This man TOTALLY provoked this situation and initiated the violence. He took the first swing, spit in the man’s face and tried to damage his car. I’m a gay man who lives in this area and the club they were leaving used to be a gay club that was there for 20 + years and the area is VERY safe for gay people. That was NOT a gay bashing and I think it is dangerous for us to suggest that everytime a gay person gets into a fight its a gay bashing. The guy that is being called a victim really harrassed these guys and they did not attack him because he was gay they acted in self defense. In fact the only gay slurs that I heard came from the victim. I’m so sorry that I didn’t speak to the police this morning.
To which Brontez responded:
Yo, this is Brontez. You SADDEN me Mr. Bynes (whoever you are). We we’re unlocking our bikes and these guys stared harassing us. How did you see “everything”? It was only us four outside in the beginning! You act like we just saw these dudes and went in on them and thats a lie. Ive attended the Paradiso since it was Cabel’s Reef and have NEVER had anything like this happen. Me cursing, and yelling at them is true like after someone threatens you with VIOLENCE who wouldn’t? Sorry im NOT the type of girl whos gonna cross her legs and act fucking nice after some jock tells me im “at the wrong club” two blocks from my own fucking house! FUCK YEAH I YELLED BACK AT THEM. If your such a sensible homosexual why didnt you HELP US when these guys were fucking with us? And also my bandmate who was sitting on the sidelines got his face broken and we did NOTHING to warrant that. WE WERE THE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE, verbal and otherwise. I threw my bike lock AFTER they punched me and Adal (who wouldn’t?) I used this tactic to pause them long enough to get their plate number. You call someone a “batty boy” threaten them with violence and then hit someone that didnt provoke you YES THAT IS A HATE CRIME. I was REACTING to being fucked with. How dare you?
My problem here is not that Bynes disagrees with Purnell’s timeline of the events or that he was “disgusted and ashamed” by Brontez’ behavior.
First, Brontez and Adal both say that the men had been saying shit to them from jump, for which Bynes (in my opinion) was likely out of earshot or just didn’t hear. Brontez is just not the type, drunk or not, to start a fight with two other men for no reason, having been out in San Fran, Oakland, and all over NYC with Mr. Purnell over the years of our relationship—even where it is clear that Adal was trying to convince Brontez to let it slide. But as Brontez himself said, and I very much believe, he wasn’t going to just let that shit slide. Brontez actually states in the article what Bynes re-asserts in his comment—he didn’t expect to be threatened with violence at a place he’d frequented for years (both men live in the neighborhood where this incident took place), so I am not sure why Bynes re-states this point in his comment—unless he flat out does not believe anything at all transpired to make Brontez angry in the first place (The Bay Citizen published a second story where Adal corroborates Brontez’s assertion that the men started harassing them first). Bynes’ assertion that the club used to be a queer space but is still frequented by queers seems to ignore the realities many of us know from experience. Many of us have been at “the club” in any city USA that used to be a queer bar, and the straights who then take it over act brand fucking new and further marginalize queers who continue to go there. And since when did neighborhoods or establishments with lots of LGBT people mean they were free from homo/transphobic violence? That doesn’t make any kind of sense.
So the question for me here, and where I vehemently disagree with Bynes, is how one defines “provocation” and who judges what then is the socially acceptable response. I tend to agree with Brontez. Too often people who are targeted for violence have to have their motivations and their recollection of all the “facts” or chronology of all the events hyper-scrutinized beyond recognition if they at all do anything other than lay down and take the abuse (or in the case of sexual assault, you’re accused of lying if you don’t have any physical evidence that you fought back, or you choose to try to still (and steel) yourself to try to avoid further violence, or are simply in a state of shock). And what is more true than not, most of us, in some way, respond verbally or physically fight back.
I think Brontez was enraged by the situation and responded accordingly. But rage, as bell hooks once stated, is an appropriate response to oppression. I actually have never seen Brontez angry to the point of fighting the way he clearly must have been that night. But any of us, caught at the right place at the wrong time, may have responded similarly. People get tired of this bullshit. I am tired of it. I have had people hurl similar epithets and make threats to me. One day I may walk away. Another day, I walk right into that fire. Once, similar to what happened to Brontez—two Black men started with me, but when I didn’t run or back down, they punched my non-black friend instead—who once they engaged, thought was going to be an easier target. So I know what it means to reach that point where you say to yourself, Fuck it. I don’t give a fuck what happens today. I am not going to be disrespected and let you walk away from here thinking that shit is OK to do. Not now.
That’s what happened to Chrishaun McDonald, a Black transwoman in Minneapolis currently on trial for murder. She was outside one evening this past spring when she and some friends were approached by a white man who hurled both racist and transphobic remarks. I don’t know who threw the first blow, but that man was stabbed (many say not by Chrishaun) and is dead. I don’t celebrate his death and yes those trans women could have done a million things to try to get away from him. But maybe they were tired of running, or were so bold as to think they didn’t have a reason to run.
I am reminded of Sakia Gunn, when she told a man to leave her friends alone—they were lesbians. I don’t know if she kicked his car, or flipped him the finger. I don’t know if she told him he had a dick smaller than hers, called him a faggot or some other name to push his buttons. But he did what patriarchal men do—he assumed it was his right and Christian civic duty to accost them, and “check” them for being “out of hand.” He got out of the car. She, or one of her friends, may have punched him first. She may have spit in his face. But he killed her. Was that justified? Was she “at fault” for provoking him? Should she have collected her friends and run back into Newark Penn Station? She could have done any of those things, but maybe, even at 15 years old, she decided she was tired of running, or it never occurred to her to run.
I think of the New Jersey 4—originally the group of seven—young Black lesbians also from Newark who one night in a “gay friendly” part of town, NYC’s West Village, were walking and a man made a disparaging comment about them being lesbians, and a fight ensued, with the man being stabbed, which he later described as “a hate crime against a straight man.” They could have went to the other side of the street. They could have decided to leave the Village and go home. They could have quoted Bible passages at him. But they didn’t. I don’t know if one of them struck him first. Nor do I care.
I respect these young women for, despite the enormous consequences that none of them could forsee, making a choice to not live in a world where they could be denigrated for being lesbians, bisexuals, aggressives (AGs), queers or however they think of their identities. And they, like Brontez, don’t present as “victims” in the way our society constructs, because they didn’t just let that shit go. They didn’t run. They saw the danger, decided to move towards it and do what it was trying to do to them, even if it meant they might not win. The “behavior,” like Brontez’s was not befitting of any victim—most people in the moment are resisting being a passive victim (and this is not to also say that people who choose not to fight back in certain moments are less than heroic, nor am I glorifying violent retribution). But it is to say that I think anyone who tries to condemn someone for not allowing themselves to be intimidated by people, especially in this case who are saying if they were a few thousand miles away they’d just as soon kill you for simply existing. I don’t know how I’d react.
And if we’re going to claim that we don’t want to see more Black men going to prison potentially, I totally agree, but if that’s your position then it means that we have to find ways to help and de-escalate situations, even if you think someone is in the wrong and not wait till after cops are called to raise judgement about whether someone exhibited exemplary model citizen behavior in the midst of being threatened. Also, I think that those of us who think critically about calling the police (because of the nature of policing and the prison industrial complex as an anti-Black project) have to be clear that we do not begin to use this as a reason to excuse violence, or question a person’s Blackness or other racial/political authenticity against a person who, for whatever reason, calls the police in a particular moment. It’s not as though Brontez is someone the police don’t also target, threaten and violate. And while the fact that these men were likely Caribbean immigrants invokes racist narratives about Black criminality and homophobia in the Caribbean, clearly these men were quite willing to try to intimidate Brontez and his friend using those very same narratives when they declared “if we were at home you’d be dead by now.”
I think Bynes is making an assumption that even if Brontez had never responded, he and his friend would have been safe (on their bikes!!!!) from those men once they turned the corner, even if they were supposedly trying to avoid an altercation right then and there—maybe they were initially shocked that a Black gay man would have the audacity to even respond back to them. Maybe they were trying to impress the women they were with, and they clearly got a response they weren’t prepared for. I don’t know their motives, but I don’t believe Brontez decided to just pick a random fight with two dudes leaving a club he frequents regularly (as a musician this fucks with your ability to make money), two blocks from his own house, in a community he has to continue to live in.
I do hope that rather than starting a war of words (and I have to admit I was mad as hell when I first heard there was some backlash calling one of my best friends a liar), this can actually give us pause to think about what standards we’re holding people to who have been threatened, when one day, it might be you, for whatever reason, who decides not to take the high road.
Once again, Kenyon Farrow has the guts to say what needs to be said on SO many levels. As a survivor of violence (street violence, rape & dometic violence), I know too well how one must be “The Perfect Victim” to be taken seriously. (And even being a white woman does NOT give you some sort of automatic crediblity! Not if you’re queer, not if you’re poor, not if the perpetrator is more “important” than you are). Expecting oppressed people to ALWAYS swallow being denigrated & threatened in order to feel safe—& to MAYBE be taken seriously as a victim(& there’s NO GURANTEE AT ALL that being passive in the face of what Kenyon’s friends were subjected to that they would be protected or taken seriously, especially by police & obviously even by some members of the queer community). How much of the undiagonosed depression, high blood pressure & other health problems experienced by the African-American community is a RESULT of being expected to tolerate the intolerable?
And WTF is wrong w/this Kevin Bynes-if he was actually witness to what happened- that he DID NOTHING TO STAND WITH Brontez & Adal? If not at the time,then, NOW? Bynes’ crticizing Brontez unwillingness to just passively accept strangers threatening him and his friend, is like the same old shit directed at women when they report rape or being assaulted by a husband or partner: the PERPETRATORS should be asked about THEIR BEHAVIOR…but, insteaad, it’s the victims of violence who are endlessly interrogated and who’s credibility is in question. In effect, those who practice intimidation based on racism, mysogyny and homophobia GET A PASS from people like Bynes. And of course, Bynes fails to being at all aware of the “contradictons” (what an understatement!) for Black men to call police for help!
Finally, I also want to appreciate Kenyon for also recognizing the COMPLEXITY of victims’ responses to violence: (QUOTE [if one] “lay[s] down and take the abuse (or in the case of sexual assault, you’re accused of lying if you don’t have any physical evidence that you fought back, or you choose to try to still (and steel) yourself to try to avoid further violence, or are simply in a state of shock).” That, Kenyon UNDERSTANDS that one does not always feel one CAN “fight back” ,that sometimes (in desperation), people do call on the police for help (even while knowing the problems w/law enforcement). I really appreicate his NOT judging people if they don’t respond as his friend Brontez did or if they do call police. (I know women of color who have been OSTRACIZED for calling police in domestic violence situations, for example. And one reaction I had from some people when I did NOT fight back when confronted with rape was that “I’d NEVER LET A MAN GET AWAY WITH THAT WITHOUT F***ING HIM UP”). Kenyon’s compassion is MUCH appreciated by this survivor.
In closing, it is way overdue for us to have at the very least be in TOTAL SOLIDARITY with one another around issues of violence-and QUESTION THE PERPETRATORS (& law enforcements’ unwillingess to protect & serve ALL victims of violence.) If we can’t stand with each other against violent attacks, WHAT will we stand with each other for?
I’m so glad you were able to strike the balance between using your rage as fuel to write this essay, and calming down enough to craft the nuanced, layered and powerfully written piece you did. And more of us should be willing (and unashamed) to tap into that visceral emotionality — whether it be in literal/physical self-defense, or the written defense you’ve presented here. Great piece, as usual.
I didn’t finish reading this. Kente, I’m glad you’re friends with Brontez, however, your piece is irresponsible. My hope is that you at least showed it to BRONTEZ and Adal before you blasted it on the internet. You might have really just fucked them up.
I never would have written this without Brontez’s permission. But thanks for you concern.
Oh, and the name is KENYON. Thanks.
go ‘head kente!
“It’s not as though Brontez is someone the police don’t also target, threaten and violate” - This is really important, a conversation we don’t often have that complicates race and sexuality discussion.
And, this instance parallels the ongoing Lawrence King story: what tactics are we left with to defend ourselves, our sanity, as homo/trans victims?
http://rodonline.typepad.com/rodonline/2011/08/mcinerney-defense-suggests-lawrence-king-taunted-his-killer.html
That was an “auto-correct” typo. Sorry!
I second Lydia. This piece treads difficult ground nimbly, and without judging the different ways people respond to oppression, threats and violence.
Lots of wisdom here. I will pass it on.
I have been thinking about this all week and so appreciate all this wisdom and power and sanity.
Also, I don’t know Bynes, but it also seems like something might be going on under the surface if he works in the non-profit complex, which relies on couching certain people as helpless victims in order to secure funding. People tend to believe the narratives they use to support their work, their bread and butter, and where would the helpers be if those they were trying to help existed as people with full agency? Bynes seems to believe that Brontez’s acting to defend himself-physically and emotionally-was a sort of anti-social act against people like Bynes, who would like to be seen as indispensible to protecting queers from violence and risk. When people defend themselves, Bynes is no longer central to the narrative. When people defend themselves they are no longer helpless symbols on a grant application. When people defend themselves they might just take back power from all sorts of sectors of society in all sorts of ways. So people like Bynes react from a gut level against people they ought to be standing in soldiarity with.
This is all seriously twisted and I really, really appreciated your writing.
this makes a whole lot of sense to me. thank you!
Thanks so much for your thoughts Kenyon. I felt like reading this was triggering in all the right ways. When I first read the critique around what went down, I must admit that I felt a bit (I said a bit…) sympathetic towards Bynes. Most of this was due to the way that I think folks have a tendency to cast out people especially poc/qpoc that may have differing opinions.
I do agree that victimhood, if you will is a slippery slope. Shit ain’t pretty and I know it firsthand. I have had supposed friends lash out after I was assaulted by a good friend and more. Despite this, I didn’t ever want people in our community to “not” be their friend/compa either.
What I fear is this: people policing one another. Just because something goes down, I don’t think people need to attack their own community, attack people that they feel have attacked their own community or anyone that poses a threat. The amount of self-policing that I feel I have witnessed since moving to the Bay is vicious in my opinion. I am willing to admit it might be coincidental and it may not be a geographical area at all but nonetheless…
So part of my thank you extends to breaking through some of that in the most general sense even if you don’t reside here.
To Lydia, the only thing I would add is that of course ( I think), people that are oppressed also police or pass intimidation. I didn’t read Bynes comments as him giving a “pass” to the attackers directly, but yes indirectly it was there.
To me, that is a result of the nature of oppression.
My best wishes to a healing process that is suitable for all parties involved including the attackers, where ever the fuck they might be.
And thanks again Kenyon for articulating these interior and exterior struggles with such badass fierceness and love.
this is a brilliant analysis. i’m sharing it with everyone i know.
thank you.
Like I said from the start, we need to get rid of all this violence-violent talk, violent reactions, and the sublime violence against ourselves to think that we are set up for attack because of all the violence that exists out there “against us”: Against people of color, against LGTB folks, against women, against children…And in the bigger picture: against indigenous people, against the earth itself. Let’s see, who does that leave out? no one. We either engage with it or we don’t. If you engage or not is the true bottom line of where all judgement lies-in ourselves. And our “selves” is an ever shifting context…
It’s so easy to hate all men in general because that is where just about all the violence in the world originates if we are going to point fingers and try to find blame. But that doesn’t make sense either and it is engaging in more violent thought of hating. It is the fundamental flaw in our judicial system-to just find guilt. As proud of and beholden to the Black Panthers for their courage and brilliance within a context of being under complete attack of their lives on a daily basis, that logic does not hold in today’s world…Unless we’re talking a major coup d’etat. Which is definitely in order. And I am working on it. Every day, in every choice and interaction that I have. And if a coup happens my original point still stands: You better have your model society all worked out BEFORE the coup so you know where to go from there if successful. Otherwise we all will just repeat the same old bullshit patterns of violence.
Having an intimate relationship over a couple years with a Black revolutionary; The QAZ on REVOLUTION and the writings of Hannah Arendt (a great dissection of the whole concept by looking at the history of revolutions); the book The 5th Sacred Thing among others that attempt ideal societies in the wake of revolution; Maryann Brooks’ work asking what does freedom mean to you?; working as a public school teacher at McClymmonds High where another student was shot and killed every tow to six weeks; and dealing with the violence in my own life and body; I continue to look deeply on a consistent basis at what all this means: the violence, ending it, what peace means and how to achieve it. It is my assertion that in order to answer those questions from an informed place requires practicing the values you want to have AFTER THE REVOLUTION or coup, RIGHT NOW.
Navigating this insanity that we were all born into takes work, and before looking at anyone else we have to look at how what is inside expresses itself outwardly in our every exchange, and-most importantly-to find and give voice to all that we are that has been oppressed. Not as a reaction but as a practice and as a responsibility.
I am dealing with a neighbor right now who provokes and makes queer slurs at me on a regular basis (i can only assume she’s been Internet stalking me!) The white woman has asthma and is in such poor health and is so big I could probably just sneak up on her while she’s unloading her never ending groceries from the back of her BMW and cause her to have a heart attack if I wanted to. But I refuse to engage that way. I just paint my tarps and hang them outside her kitchen window (on my side of the property line): “WE LOVE QUEER PEOPLE!” throwing exemplary love-in her face (if you will.) I’ve been date raped, punched in the face by a Black man, had my vehicle assaulted by men on two different occasions, molested by different men as a child, negligently not-raised by a white man who when he did engage did everything in his power to keep my budding spirit as crushed down and small as he could in order to empower himself. My hate grew to proportions of not backing down to ANYTHING — E V E R. My daily rage was off the hook for YEARS, so much so that the violence turned inward: I miscarried at 5 month pregnancy at 38 and the health of my internal reproductive (creative, generative) ogans became impaired. I am no stranger to violence. In order to save my own life-literally from myself-I have had to make some changes. I’ve had to look at how my reaction to the violence in the world (that seemed to come at me from all directions and mostly by men) was stored in my heart-literally in my own body. How much imposed violence are you carrying around from being a victim? And has that violence infected you to perpetuate it? Or are you going to heal from its infection (we cannot avoid being infected by violence) and overcome?
I truly believe that each of us is born into the condition we were born into because our very unique soul has some greater ability to take on those challenges and make a shift toward evolution in this one little life time. It is profound, sublime, and it is a responsibility. We are each doing the best we can from where we are at. bell hooks’ clear mindedness says that rage is a healthy response to oppression. But it is imperative to recognize the rage as a necessary step in a process of ridding the oppression inwardly and outwardly, not a place to stay because we don’t know where else to go. None of us know where to go next, that is why we have to find our deeper selves through it all and stay on track with something none of us have had any model for. TRUST you are at exactly where you need to be and LEARN. The right decision has only to do with you and your heart and your context. Period. If we stay aware of these concepts as we stumble, fly, fight and make love through it all, the world will be a better place.
Thanks for the insight Kenyon! It’s sad to see how we internalize our oppression and project it on others. I really hope through this kind of dialogue we can move beyond a culture that has learned to continuously blame victims for whatever situation they are in while simultaneously punishing them when they attempt to step outside the vicitm pathology and assert themselves and their right to be. The other day after a party a white gay guy started reciting a rap song, using n**ga without flinching. I told him not to use that word in front of me, or ever, and his response was “Yknow there’s no need for anyone to get angry ever, we don’t have to resort to being angry.” It’s easy for someone to condemn anger when they aren’t experiencing the hostility which sparks it, in the moment or ever. Violence is very much a part of life right now, especially for queer/trans poc. It’s good to keep in mind how ideas of civility and criminal justice have socialized us into accepting all the ways society doesn’t provide for us. We can’t reserve standing against violence for the police or the courts and I don’t think I need to explain why.
I agree with you 100%. It is extremely saddening that victims of violence are at risk of having the validity in their victimization questioned based on how they reacted to an initial threat. It is even more saddening that this risk increases due to the biased misinterpretation of bystanders, rather than gauging the situation based on the status (both physical and emotional) of the victim. It’s pretty much blaming the victimization on the victim (wtf?).
What Kevin Bynes did was also very irresponsible. I don’t believe he was a full witness to what happened. Not only is his timeline off, causing him to miss what caused the altercation in the first place, but as he explains, he was also a spectator from across the street. “Their was a small crowd that gathered across the street in front of the meditation center (I was among them).” Now, I may not know a thing about the street layout in Oakland (I live in New York City), but my logic tells me that for a street to be considered a commercial spot and have a club on it, it would have to be a pretty damn wide street. So, I’m almost certain Bynes didn’t really see what he claims he did (I also commented about this on the thread Kenyon describes).
It’s one thing for Bynes to explain his witness accounts to the the police where everything (accuracy and fallacy) will be sorted out by law enforcement, but to then go and make a public statement on the internet? He recklessly put his opinionated misinterpretation on blast (for lack of a better term). And to top it off, he also told his story to his organization. I simply can’t fathom the uproar and confusion Bynes potentially caused by doing this.People may think that simple things like blogs and comment threads on the internet aren’t valid when it comes to law practice, but in many cases they are. And what’s worse is that now this may hinder Brontez and Adal receiving support from other gay rights organizations. Bynes may have overall impeded Adal and Brontez’s chances at finding justice.
I just hope that Kevin Bynes didn’t fuck this up for everyone.
I hate for this to turn into everyone support their friend’s against each other week, when the real culprits get to walk away with considerably less drama around their names than an eyewitness, I can’t help but defend my friend and long-time activist ally. No more than the Brontez that Bynes describes is not the man you know, the Kevin you describe is not the man I know. As I stated in the actual newspaper thread, Bynes is not some attention thirsty homo out for a headline or some armchair activist on anti-violence within our community. We are talking about a frontline activist who fought Morehouse on their anti-gay violence directly after that boy got beat in the showers. He’s a man who fought for and organize disenfranchised black LGBT youth after Youth Pride ATL began to strategically and systematically displace them from accessing services-both working outside of the “non-profit complex.” He is a man who traveled throughout the Deep South at great risk to himself to organize gay activists and straight anti-oppression allies against homophobia and racist police violence. That this man has been reduced to some kat without any analysis who would risk his good name without motivation because he trusts his eyes is sad, and I hope it never happens to you. His narrative of the events don’t coincide with your friend’s narrative. PERIOD. Bynes doesn’t believe that it’s fair to call something a gay bashing if you throw the first spit, the first punch, the first whatever following some name calling. Being gay and called names doesn’t give the receiver the right to physically attack the caller. Now maybe culturally it does in some POC communities, out of respect, but not legally and depending on which aisle you sit on (i.e., non-violence, etc.), not morally. And look who took the brunt? An innocent bystander. Now, you can disagree with Byne’s perspective on this matter, but to make a whole commentary to go after Bynes in response to an act neither of us were present for seems overkill. And, when I look at the list you craft, all I see is the tragically unnecessary loss of life. These weren’t moments born out of activist strategy for some greater gains or risks like those of the Mississippi Three. These acts of defiance, and we don’t know that this is what happened in many of the cases you cite, ended with people unable to fight another day, for themselves and others. Each moment cited ended in the destruction of these black peoples lives. The fight for respect is one hard to judge when you’re not present, true, and the cost one is willing to take for intracultural respect can be high. But, when I think of all the hundreds of thousands of young black bodies lain in waste out of a need to feel justice born from the fleeting respect of a person, generally a stranger, otherwise unworthy of their time or interest, I can’t help wonder what really was won? And, what in the world do you think Bynes has to win by daring to speak the truth according to his eyes against one who, in Bynes legacy of commitment to all of Brontez’s identities, he’s demonstrated is his brother?
Hey Michael -
I am not trying to attack Kevin here-I don’t know him well enough to make any pronouncements about who he is as a person. Nor am I trying to take away from other kinds of work in the community Kevin has done, past or present. None of that, for me, has lost any of it’s shine. But I read his comments really carefully-more than once, and I just disagree with him on this. As mad as I was when I read his comments initially, I tried to be very careful to present my argument very directly but without attacking him, and I’m not even mad about it any more. But I strongly disagree. And maybe for you it feels like overkill for me to write about this, but perhaps it is only so because we know the people involved. If you go through my blog over the last 6 years-this is the kind of stuff I write about. If I didn’t know either party I probably would have written about this anyhow. I may have had less emotionally invested if I didn’t know Brontez, but my politics remain the same. And writing and disagreeing with people you know is a part of what it means to be engaged in politics as an activist, leader, organizer, or if I just make a public statement about an issue on a blog, newsite or my own blog-not everybody likes what I do or say and I don’t expect all my other work, past or present, to keep people from critiquing me. They do all the time-and sometimes they’re right about certain things, and I take it seriously and sometimes adjust accordingly. And you’re right-there is a lot of tragedy and loss in the names I mentioned-years in prison and/or death. But I don’t think that you have to be an activist or be a part of strategic civil disobedience to have your act of defiance have political meaning or value. I feel like many young Black and Latino LGBT folks at the margins-I see this all the time in NYC, are increasingly not taking this shit. They’re fighting people back-the West Village feels very much like a powder keg waiting to explode these days-similar conditions to what made Stonewall possible. And I don’t think that walking away all the time, or trying to avoid a situation, always ends in one’s safety or survival. Many people fight and live to see another day. Lastly, as I state towards the end of the piece, none of us know how we’re going to respond when confronted or threatened. Even if sometimes I feel like it might have been better to try and walk away, sometimes people don’t make that decision, me included, and I also respect that decision just as much.
thank you. seriously, so right on.
fuck everyone. im so over useless liberals and this kind of shaming and general judgement of people’s righteous rage in response to oppressive bullshit/violence.
also i appreciate you adding the examples of the experiences of trans women.
word.
sorry you all are dealing with this bullshit.
take care y’all
Well said. I have a lot of respect for people who draw a line in the sand and say “enough’s enough.” Basta. I had a close trans friend who was verbally assaulted at a gas station while she was waiting in line to get a cup of coffee. She knocked on my door at 3 in the morning, shaking, and could not understand how someone could be so hateful. I’ll never forget the way she looked that night and the look in her face. I don’t normally quote Cypress Hill, but do you know that song “How I could Just Kill a Man.” “Just to stay alive, yo I gotta say ‘Fuck it!’” bell hooks is right: rage is the appropriate response to oppression. Nonetheless, I’m sorry to hear that all of this happened in the first place (that’s an understatement).
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This is a very good and timely essay. You captured some of what those of us who are openly and/or obviously (“clockable”) gay/lesbian. This is one of your best articles yet. Keep striving to perfect your writing skills as I know you will.
Brilliant piece. Thanks for composing it.
I have no idea why this has become such a cause for Kevin, Kenyon. But I hear him more clearly than the other voices. I don’t know if I’m saying anything new, but it maybe comes down to two or three things.
One is who punched first. I think only your account clearly says the “Jamaicans”; Adal and Brontez’s on the Bay Citizen site remain a bit fuzzy. A second part of the same question is whether saying “you’d be dead” is a punch. When are words violence, or enough of a threat of them to be as good as violence? And then, does the violence against Adal, even if it was defensive, trump any amount of lock throwing and spitting and swiping? Or are these hierarchies of violence just silly?
The second issue, and your central point, hinges on that question: whether violence is ever a legitimate tool of resistance. I’m not willing to say it never is, but in that situation and in most of the ones you cite, I’d say no, even when I admire its use. It’s a sort of “master’s tools” thing; but it’s also about the kind of society we want to build and the ways we want to transform how we manage conflict, including deescalating violence. Violence is everywhere: the swap of racial for sexual violence in postApartheid South Africa, bombs falling on Iraq, flying into the World Trade Centre, demonstrating rimming in Ugandan churches, the rotting bodies in the streets of West Kingston last year. When we legitimate it as our currency, can we resist it in its other forms?
The third point, which seems to be Kevin’s key one, which he articualtes at the start and end of the Bay Citizen blog but everyone seems to miss, is about racial justice, and how enhanced penalties for hate crimes contribute to the hypercrminalization of Black men. And his intervention was to prevent someone who, although verbally threatened (which he never seeks to deny), he saw as more responsible for the physical violence in the incident than the verbal attacker, and who then resorts to the victim’s weapons of hate crime to deepen the criminalization of the African-Caribbean men who threatened him. And I think he just saw that tactic as abusively unjust.
Hey Colin,
Thanks for your input!
One, I don’t remember if my knowing they were Jamaican came from that article or my conversations with Brontez-in either case, either that night or in their dealings with the police, it has been said to me or I read it somewhere that they were Jamaicans-I was careful when I wrote that to make sure I wasn’t labeling them as such based on my own bias. And Brontez and Adal assert that those men not only verbally but physically attacked them first-they say that the men hit Brontez after he said “this is the Bay we do whatever the fuck we want”, or something to that tune. It was after being hit that Brontez spit at them, according to him. and that part is just in dispute between Kevin, Brotnez and Adal. To my knowledge no one else has come forward saying Brontez and Adal are lying. Either way, I guess I disagree-the first time you call me a faggot or threaten me, you’ve thrown the first punch. So I guess if you believe Brontez and Adal’s account, the question becomes, what is an appropriate amount of self defense.
Two, my point is actually not as much questioning whether violence is a legitimate tool of resistance, I am not interested really in the question of legitimacy. I am interested in unpacking unrealistic and idealistic notions of what is appropriate behavior for a person who’s been accosted or threatened. As I state in the article, I’d like to believe I can keep myself together enough to try to avoid a confrontation, but I know from my own experience, sometimes I am emotionally able to do that, and there are times when I have gone the fuck off, and been prepared to deal with that one way or another. it’s really that there comes a time when a person just decides they’re not going to walk away from it. Period. And I don’t want to get into a debate every time someone queer person is attacked (and this happens more to Black LGBTQ folks) is that it becomes hyper scrutinized as to whether their behavior or response was sufficiently nonviolent enough to even claim one was in fact the victim of violence. None of our young LGBTQ kids in these various cities stand a chance if that’s the case, because most of them are not going to behave in ways that make them legible as being victimized.
Third, as you know am a prison abolitionist and I take that shit seriously. I don’t believe in hate crimes laws as well-I am sympathetic to the argument. But if that is your position, and you were present when something went down, why then, as Brontez first also asked when he responded to Kevin in the Bay Citizen, didn’t you intervene to try to de-escalate the situation to begin with, even if you perceived Brontez to be in the wrong? Then you wanna roast him publicly after the fact and basically assert that he’s part of some grand plan to criminalize Black Caribbean men further when you didn’t do anything to help the situation when you were there? If you don’t want people to call the police, then you have to be prepared to get in there and HELP, because people will call the cops. I am not bragging, but I understand that these are my politics, and as much as I can, have intervened in a number of situations, one involving a Pakistani store owner who eventually pulled a gun on a Black man from Sierra Leone in 2006. Had I just walked out of the store like most people were doing when the situation was escalating (after buying whatever crap they were), I would have likely heard the gunshots from my living room window. I thought both of these dudes were assholes and in some stupid pissing contest. WHATEVER! I didn’t want somebody locked up or shot, so I stayed until I could get that brother to leave the store-and I literally had to grab him by the collar and force him out when the store owner reached under the counter and pulled his gun. And as I said before, it’s not like poor Black queer men like Brontez aren’t also criminalized (people seem to forget this when they want to defend the actions of Black male homophobes.) And if you want to refer to the “hierarchy of oppression” bit, all parties are Black, the state is not hyper sympathetic to the claims of Black Gay, Bi, SGL, Queer, Trans men either, hate crimes laws or not. B: Again those men when saying to Brontez and Adal “if we were at home you’d be dead” were clearly invested in their own capacity of extra-legal means of violence/murder by invoking the hyper-violent Caribbean man of their imagination, and they hoped to invoke terror. That is somehow better than calling the cops? That shit is disgusting to me and I see as abusively unjust, I am not feeling any sympathy for your violent behavior because you’re an immigrant (and yes, I see that as violence. It was even beyond calling someone a batty boy or a faggot). And whereas I would not have likely called the police myself, I don’t really have a lot of sympathy for them in this instance. Even if you, Kevin, or whomever thought Brontez was acting more out of line than they were, they had a vehicle. They could have driven off. Brontez was on a bike.
And I guess my last response is that if you are present when some shit goes down, you for whatever reason decide not to try to de-escalate it or intervene in some way, but then make a public statement about the event, the decision or logic for calling the the police, and who’s telling the truth, then I am going to wonder what you were doing when all this was happening. If you’re a noninterventionist, just stay all the way out of it, and don’t roast from the sidelines after the fact. Because if you have some politic around not using the police to solve dispute or problems, but you don’t try to, or don’t care to help prevent violence or further violence from occurring, then don’t intervene. At all. To do so afterwards seems unfair. And as much as I share a no-police when possible politic, I am sick of “racial justice” being thrown in the face of Black women, queer and trans folks when they make that choice for whatever reason. How about leaving black women and/or queer people the fuck alone as a form of racial justice?
Your points are clear. And I want to acknowledge your friend and his partner’s hurt in all of this. But a lot of Kevin’s anger seemed to me to revolve around the invocation of (what I assume are) enhanced penalty hate crime laws in Oakland or CA. I didn’t think it was a non-interventionist thing broadly. I think Kevin thought he was being brave and principled, and has taken a licking for it. As boys, our sense of being right often gets in the way of being heard or being sensitive. Bless!
Yes! I actually read the undercurrent of the racial politics of the Bay Area in Kevin’s response to this incident-and that I can totally understand the implications of what all this means in an atmosphere that pretends to be so goddam liberal, but is so anti-black it’s maddening. I don’t think Brontez would dispute that either. And I really tried to not make this piece a personal attack of Kevin, I don’t know him well and from what I know of him he’s done a lot of great work in the community-none of that is up for questioning as far as I am concerned. And I do think he was trying to act out of principle from his perspective, but I disagree with his actions, that’s all. I tried to take it to the issues as much as possible, while also not pretending total objectivity because Brontez is a dear friend of mine.