Gay Singer Chris Willis Has Soul

[The video for Guetta and Willis' "Love Is Gone."]
AB: I’d like to talk about an article I wrote last week on the National Black Justice Coalition. They’re the only existing national black gay rights organization and are very much based in the civil rights movement, which causes some tensions, like how do they straddle both movements? Speaking with the group’s leaders, I heard of resistance from gay groups. Now, I’ve always wondered about racism within gay communities – have you experienced any?

CW: I think that the more I thought about and focused on racism, the more I felt it. The less I thought about and focused on it, the less I felt it. I’m curious about that theory – I don’t know if it works for everybody, but I just started playing games with myself, pretending like racism doesn’t exist. I’m not being naive or ignorant, because I do believe it still lives in some people’s hearts. Meditating on that philosophy also helps me not focus so much on racism that comes from other people, but on the racism that exists in my own heart. And once I started challenging that, I realize I can’t get mad at someone if I’m not willing to come to terms with my own racism. And I have had to.

AB: How so?

CW: I’ve been on so many tours where I am the only black artist. For example, I was on tour with an artist and I was reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy and I found that the more I read that book, the more angry, the more black power focused I became, and that’s when I realized I was really coming to terms with my own racism. I also realized that as long as I was focusing on it, I could see it – I felt it. Now I wonder “How can I really celebrate God and believe that judgment-free nature of God, when I’m carrying my own judgment in my own soul?” When I walk into a bar or a room full of white people and I’m expecting them to treat me a certain way… If I walk up to someone, white, black or whatever, if I ask them how their day is, all of a sudden someone cares about me – whatever preconceived idea they may have had about me, or I had about them, it changes. It’s really a matter of love, and we all need love, no matter what color, no matter what sexuality we are. If we really diminish it down to love and start from that place, I think some really amazing, incredible changes will happen.

AB: You kind of answered the second part of the question, but I’m curious, have you felt any homophobia within black communities.

CW: I have the same answer. When I think about it and expect it, I find it, and I’m still in practice of not thinking about it, not expecting it, but looking for the good and seeing the good. I think the thing that I see the most and hear the most, especially in terms of the arts, is a witch hunt from the gay community – “Oh, I know he’s gay” or “He’s got to be gay.” On one hand, I think it’s nobody’s business. It really shouldn’t be an issue. But, that said, I do understand, because I think we’re all looking for role models or somebody that we can believe in – somebody who’s going to tell us the truth. What I try to practice now is “Does it really matter? Does it really change my attitude about who that person is?” I know that when I was younger, I was terrified of admitting it out loud, like this great thumb of God would squash me, but the less power I gave it, the less afraid I felt about it.

AB: Do you still go to church?

CW: I don’t go as much as I used to. I went to church and for so long I felt there was a shaming factor that happens in sermons and churches, and I went through a process where I needed to be in places where I wasn’t experiencing that, because I was still experiencing that condemnation and I would hear it, and I would think to myself, “Well, if it’s really about love and we’re really supposed to share the message of love, why is that not the message that I’m hearing?” And now I just have chosen to go where I hear that message of love – I create that environment in my home, I experience that with my family, and I think that’s the best you can do. The best thing I can do – there’s this song in the church that says, “Brighten the corner where you are,” just share that love and hopefully that sharing will go further and further.