Eight LGBT African-Americans Who Changed The Gay Community
RuPaul Andre Charles
Drag queen, author, singer, host, supermodel of the world
“You know when I started out, they told me I couldn’t make it,” RuPaul said in the 1995 documentary Wigstock: The Movie. “They said, ‘ain’t no big black drag queen in the pop world and you ain’t gonna do it.’ And look at the bitch now!”
Born in San Diego, California, RuPaul Andre Charles developed his drag persona in Atlanta and New York in the 1980s. Since her 1993 breakout single, “Supermodel,” Ru has kicked her size 12 stilettos even further into the mainstream with more pop hits, a cult-favorite talk show, m
ovie roles, dolls, books (including the self-help book RuPaul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style) and even a figure in Madame Tussauds.
And that’s not even including a little show called RuPaul’s Drag Race.
RuPaul, now 51, can also be credited with challenging perceptions of what it means to be gay, black, and for that matter, a drag queen. Her 2004 album, Red Hot, featured appearances by blackface drag personality Shirley Q. Liquor, stirring up dialogue about race and racism. Last year, three teachers at Los Angeles’ Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School were suspended over allowing students to carry photos of “questionable” African-American role models, including RuPaul, at a Black History Month parade.
But to Ru, her drag persona is a means, not an end: “The superficial image I project is a social commentary on the world we live in,” RuPaul said in an interview in the Willamette Week. “I’m saying, ‘Look, I’m beautiful with all this stuff on, but that truth is who I really am has nothing to do with any of this stuff… It’s not real at all. I never said it was.”
Can we get an “amen” up in here?
NEXT: Bill T. Jones steps it up
Photos: David Shankbone, Logo
Frank Ocean has done nothing for the gay community or the music industry. Being gay is not an act of anything. There are far more artists in the last 20 years that have done more than come out of the closet.
As for his talent, he has done nothing Usher or Justin Timberlake have not done. Even the prick Chris Brown did it better.
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@Red Meat: The world disagrees with you:
http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2012/
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@Eric Auerbach: Jazz album that got less than 2000 votes on a website directly about the thing he is in.
Lets not get ahead of ourselves, the world doesn’t give a fuck about Frank Ocean, it’s good that he’s come out and is continuing doing the thing he loves in spite of criticism.
But lets not go assuming he’s up there with MLK, Harvey Milk and countless others.
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@Red Meat: @2eo: Visibility is power. It’s light and truth and transformation. That’s never more true than in black communities that have long been ruled by cultural ignorance, groupthink insecurities and religious intolerance. Ocean’s coming out is significant and potentially huge for young black and minority LGBTQ and their families.
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Did we have a brain fart and just forget James Baldwin? Baldwin had to go off to the safety of Paris to write and publish ‘Giovani;s Room” one of the few gay themed novels around when I came out. He also wrote on the themes of race and sexuality and the intersection of those themes.
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Thank you for including Bayard Rustin on this list! A forgotten hero to the cause is finally getting the recognition he missed out on in life.
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How do Frank Ocean and RuPaul get on this list but not James Baldwin? Speechless.
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I say take Frank Ocean’s name off the list. He played the gay card because it was the only one in his hand. Frank is basically propped by a media who seemed to know what the worst outcome could have been in his coming out, and went out of their way to shield him from it. Behind the forced critical praise, on every blog, message board and real life conversation I’ve been witness to where he’s the topic, I see a stalemate in reaction; he has his defenders, but he also has many callous detractors.
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I’m sure Bayard Rustin would have dreamt that one day all his work would result in being on a list with Don Lemon and Frank “he’s never said he’s gay” Ocean.
I wonder if a similar list is being compiled of white gay people who changed the world. With Harvey Milk, Lance Bass and the Honey Boo Boo dude…
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Very confused, very: how about a column about those who are changing: Don Lemmon, Frank Ocean, Wanda Sykes, et al, and those who have: Bernard Rustin and Mabel Hampton.
Alas, a list of 8 is a list missing too many: No James Baldwin? No Langston Hughes? Where is Alvin Ailey? Long, long before RuPaul — who is making waves for the LGBT community and I applaud that — there was Sylvester.
Barbara Jordan? Alice Walker? Sheryl Swoopes?
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Honorable Mention — Julian Bond, the gay community has no better friend and advocate than the Chairman Emeritus of the NCAAP. An all-out advocate for equality for all; and his advocacy for marriage equality is changing the LGBT community as the walls of resistance from the larger black community crumble.
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Wanda Sykes grew up in suburban Maryland actually. She went to the same High School I did, just about 20 years apart.
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White, gay websites kill me trying to make Frank Ocean into some gay, black hero. He doesn’t even want to be associated with us and the fact that y’all label everything black “hip-hop” is so annoying. Bye.
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When will the click-through photos end???