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In this episode of From Chains to Links, policy expert and social justice warrior Dr. David Johns joins Ify and Kelly to explore the intersection of queer rights and social justice. A family conversation, the squad highlights real dynamics impacting queer leaders, youth and organizers. The conversation also tackles the impact of the “anti-woke” backlash on organizations advocating for the LGBTQIA+ community. Join us for this poignant, timely, and deeply insightful conversation you won’t want to miss.
Welcome back to another episode of the show. I am your co-host, Kelly Burton. I am here with Ifeoma Ike. How are you doing?
I’m doing great.
It’s a beautiful day.
There’s a lot going on in politics. We’ll talk a little bit more about that in a second. In spite of the politics, I’m blessed. How are you doing?
I’m hanging in there. It’s an interesting week. I committed this week to staying present and keeping my head on the swivel spiritually, like, “What’s going on?”
You’re being observant.
I’m being reminded that we are fighting up against powers and principalities out here. Sometimes, I tend to get a little too comfortable. Sometimes, I got to be like, “No.” Stay woke.
With that, we should introduce our guest in this space. It is Mr. Teach-the-babies himself, Dr. David Johns, Long Beach Native all day and triple Columbia grad. Am I saying this correctly?
Inglewood, the cousin, but keep going.
He is the Executive Director of NBJC, National Black Justice Coalition. I know all about NBJC, but I want you to let us know a little bit about it. Welcome.
Thank you both.
The Intersection Of Racial Equity And LGBTQIA+
Introduce yourself in this space. Tell us a little bit about NBJC and especially at this moment why we need to know about who NBJC is.
NBJC is a 21-year-old civil rights organization that has always been intentional and unapologetic and acknowledges the intersections of racial equity and LGBTQIA+ equality. We typically show up in legacy civil rights spaces. Think NAACP, National Urban League, and the greatest fraternity known to man, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Incorporated.
We remind African folks that a symptom of White supremacy is that we forget that African people are queer. In this country, queerness has become a synonym for sexual minorities, but the ontological origins of the word queer simply mean that which is not in a pejorative position of power. If you’re not a White cis heterosexual man, you are queer. If you’re a person with a disability, you are queer. As women in a society based on patriarchy, all of you are queer. We remind folks of the Fannie Lou Hamer of it all. None of us are free unless and until all of us are free.
We then show up in progressive White LGBTQ spaces. Think HRC, Glisten, and organizations like that. It’s interesting. I named those two because, for the first time in the history of those organizations, they are led by Black leaders who love Black people. HRC is slightly different. There was a Black man before Kelley Robinson who is the president, but that’s not the point. The point is that we often show up in those spaces reminding White queer people that they have a privilege that can often be used to harm us in ways that they don’t acknowledge. The goal is to make sure that we can all get free.
The Evolution Of The Black Political Experience
That’s beautiful. There are so many different places we can go in this conversation. It feels like when it comes to the Black political experience, we’re at a bit of an inflection point in light of the fact that Vice President Harris is the candidate for the Democrats. I think about even the Zoom call that Black women initiated, which created a whole new fundraising model.
Shout out to Jotaka Eaddy.
We’re leading in these spaces in a different kind of way. It’s almost like we got a little edge to it. I’m curious if you feel the inflection point or maybe it’s an iteration of something that has always been.
It’s probably C, all of the above. This goes back to the invitation to talk about why NBJC is most relevant. I would argue that it has always been relevant in part because queer folks, sexual minorities, and femme-identified Black women have always lived on the front lines of efforts to get us closer to freedom. Often in June, people engage in pride pimping and rainbow parades without acknowledging a Black woman, Marsha Pay It No Mind Johnson, who resisted righteously both laws that were targeting queer people in New York that said, “If you wore pants like mine, you could go to jail,” and, “If people assumed or knew that I was queer, they could deny me liquor.”
That’s why we were forced to go to Stonewall. It was a Black woman in that space where the police would then offer up additional abuse. They were like, “We know that they’re there. They shouldn’t be there. Let’s go and take advantage of it.” Marsha was like, “We are not going to do it, not tonight.” She then started a whole organization that contributed to what a lot of people talk about as the LGBTQ movement. We typically celebrate the anniversary of the march on Washington without acknowledging that it was a Black queer man, Bayard Rustin. He did that in two months in spite of everybody’s desire to try and tear that down. That was a Black queer man.
What I know is two things. I look forward to the day when people are not required to invite in. I don’t use the word coming out. The way that privilege works, straight people stand with their arms folded and wait for queer people to tell a story about when they realized we were different or weird. My reality is I’ve always known I’ve had superpowers. The other thing is that information isn’t owed to anybody, especially in a space where I can be offered up for additional forms of harm. If we can do this and we can build and I trust you, I can invite you in.
The other thing is that the way that stigma works, sexual minorities are seen as the worst pariahs when the reality is that all of us have something that society says we should feel shame around. Let’s normalize that and we can invite people in. I look forward to the day when people are not required to come out because the reality is that who I love and how I identify should not define me in the ways that politics allows it to define people at this moment.
Unpack this in two ways. We exist at a point, to your point about inflection, where people think that cisgender is a slur. It’s a biological term. Cisgender simply means that when a doctor assigns your gender at birth, because that’s how it works and doctors make educated guesses, if you agree with that assignment when you’re old enough to understand who you are in this world that you didn’t ask to be invited into, then you’re cisgender. If you don’t, you’re transgender.
That’s all those terms mean but they have been politicized in a way that has people thinking that it is a slur. People then use that stigma to drive wedge political issues that are all about dividing and conquering so that people in unearned positions of power can maintain them. This is a really long way of saying that I am aware of all of these dynamics.
For me, more Black women like Jotaka getting credit for their work is not new. The reality is that Jotaka had been organizing those calls every Sunday for four years. I’ve been most frustrated by the media attention that suggested that it’s magic that isn’t backed up by consistent labor and organizing. That’s a skill that other people are learning and benefiting from. White dudes are like, “I was on a call with Black men and queer men the day after that.” That was built on the backs of Black women. That’s how this country does.
If I could make a little bit of an arc between what you were raising around this inviting end and what we’re seeing visibly as to what’s happening with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Can I say that I appreciate that every time, you say vice president and put respect on it? You are Black women and you are going to do it, but when people talk, they call her by her first name as if they know her. I’m like, “You don’t know that woman like that.”
The crazy thing is I’ve met her. You’re right. For the purposes of this publication, at least the first time that you mention somebody, shout out to Chicago AP, you give them their title as they’re moving. Vice President Kamala Harris, not to share the depth of who she is and why that informs her politics, is being forced into this harmful political narrative. There’s a fine line between the two.
This show is, in many ways, around the politics of innovation. I’m thinking very much from the margin to the center and bell hooks’ theory about things. I’m thinking about what it means to, out of necessity, create new theories and new philosophies but also, at times, learn how to be even when people are trying to agitate you into jumping into their versions of outing yourself.
I appreciate the way Vice President Harris is holding her own. At least for me, I’m not convinced that any of it is about shame. I’m seeing it as, “You are trying to lure me into a conversation that is ultimately going to have a debate of who I am.” One of the things that are troubling around the politics of this “aftermath” of DE&I and the affirmative action Supreme Court case is that sometimes, I sit and wonder, “Did people even fully buy into this to begin with?”
The DE&I of it all?
Correct. Regardless of what I label it, that’s what the majority of people understand it as. The quickness by which people have turned makes me wonder if people really think about the violence that is inflicted not just with silence, but the violence, even in the most benign way of framing it, that is like, “To be safe, we’re not going to talk anymore about this.” The flip side is, “If you want this funding or if you want this money, tell me all about your journey. Tell me about all the trauma that is presented.”
Oftentimes, when people hear, if I can be very honest, from queer advocates, they like to feel like, “I’m not queer so I can’t relate.” If you listen to the experiences and recognize that, it’s like, “I do know what it’s like when I’m being forced to share something about something I care about and I’m being forced to see if I’m going to jump rope with somebody that doesn’t even share my interest, let alone know what I know or know what I don’t know.”
The Interconnectedness Of Social Justice Struggles
They don’t know how to turn on time. There are three things that I got excited about. One, a part of why I started and declined to use a Latin term but define queer in that way was to make that connection easier for people to make. When you allow yourself to believe that your proximity to privilege or Whiteness is going to protect you, you can then distance yourself from people and convince yourself that your liberation is not bound up there.
NBJC worked in partnership with five other national organizations led by Black queer people who love Black people. HRC, the National LGBTQ Task Force, Glisten, Family Equality, and the NCLR, the National Center for Lesbian Rights. We decided to collect some data. One is because I wanted to turn down White noise. I got so frustrated going into meetings where White people were crying and acting like the sky is falling down for the first time ever.
I was at a conference and I was like, “Can I play a video of Fannie Lou Hamer reminding us that we are equipped to win at this moment?” She did that after all kinds of trauma at the hands of the state. I started asking, “How different could we manage these moments in meetings if White people would shut up for a second?” That’s one part.
The other part was what I know is that there’s often no daylight between Black people who are sexual minorities or who have a disability and people who are not. Sometimes, you hear me say trans, queer, and gender expansive. I use gender expansive in the place where people typically use gender non-conforming or non-binary. Gender expansive gets us away from the binary that we’re trying to get away from. That’s why that language is there.
What we know is that the policy priorities are the same. Number one is healthcare. Number two is cost and inflation. The cost of everything is too damn high, including drugs and rent. Number three is safety, police reform, justice, and equity. Those are the things that we’re all fighting for. The other part, and this is why I did it backward, is that Black people also understand shared faith, our linked faith. It’s the idea that what happens to one of us affects all of us.
It might take me helping somebody appreciate that by highlighting how stereotypes of migrant communities affect job opportunities, housing options, and the like to then make the parallel for folks who are like, “I don’t understand that queer stuff.” You do know the sting of stigma and the damage of discrimination. If we need to find a new language in order to appreciate these commonalities, let’s do that. We have data to back it up to remind folks again that some of this is about us engaging in what my friend Cici Battle calls White supremacy rehab.
We had her.
Some of this is also about claiming African ways of being so that we don’t have to be mired in all of this bullshit. We can move in a different way so that we don’t have to even entertain these questions about joining double dutch with people that don’t know how to turn.
How Black Communities Can Better Embrace Queer Black Individuals
You said something about how you’re bringing together Black queer organizations who love Black people.
I knew Kelly was going to harp on that.
I’m going in a different direction.
Are you?
I am. What quickened my spirit is how do Black people love queer Black people? It sounds obvious, but as a person who acknowledges that I have my own gaps in understanding and knowledge, sometimes, I don’t even want to get to the understanding. I want to love on you, create space, and be present. As a leader and as an individual, I’m curious as to your thoughts about how Black folks love on queer Black folks and create space for queer Black folks in ways that are intentional. In light of what you shared, what we want is largely the same. I’m sure that there’s some nuance. In my growth and my development, I would like to move into my own leadership being more thoughtful about how I love on folks who may have a different experience.
I’m somebody who doesn’t talk necessarily in the space of my queerness but identifies and understands that. It’s almost like the minority of the minority. Some are like, “I’m demisexual.” It’s like, “What is that?” Nobody knows what that is. At the same token, when you say that, this is what sometimes it sounds like to me. It’s like, “I love you, so why do we have to talk about that?” I’m not that’s you. I’m saying that I feel like there’s a space, to your point, where it’s like, “I don’t want anybody killed. I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
Also, what I always question is whether there is a spaciousness to also say that there are areas of Black that we don’t know about. Sometimes, the story we inherit is that we are all Black the same. What I like to say when I’m teaching my students is that Black History Month is often Black Male History Month, but we don’t say it like that. Even as fem folk, we can’t rattle off the top 10 Black women that were law breakers or the last 10 Black women that were killed by police. We also normalize certain things.
I’m not saying it’s you, but I am curious though. Is it the feeling that is like, “This is too much for me. I don’t want to talk about it,” or is it the feeling of, “What space needs to be created for me to understand another layer of Blackness?” I know you personally, so I can answer that. If I can be honest with the civil rights organizations that we’ve worked with, a lot of them do happen to be led by Black male leaders. When fem issues get brought up, the response often is, “You’re Black first.” When you get put in the corner, it’s almost like you get sunned in the corner to be like, “That’s the most important.”
I appreciate the follow-up question. Personally, I’m very cerebral, so I’ll lead with, “I want to understand. Explain it to me,” but then I get reminded that sometimes, you have to lead with your heart. I love you first. I’m open to understanding as much as you want to tell me. I want to hear. The starting point for me is I love you. What does that look like for you? How do you need to be loved?
I love that. Let me try and weave this together. When I worked for still my president, Barack Hussein Obama, his established wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, Sasha, Malia, Grandma Robinson, rest in peace, and the dogs Sunny and Bo, who were gifted to them by my previous boss, Ted Kennedy, one of the things that I was most proud of and having led an initiative focused on educational excellence for African Americans established by Barack Hussein Obama was that we disrupted this habit that adults have of talking about students solving problems for students without ever engaging students in conversations about what they’re doing, what they want, and what they need support with.
We partnered with Ebony Magazine by the Johnson Publishing Company and produced this AFAM ed summits around the country at colleges and universities and then with communities. Some of the organizations that we’re naming, we worked in partnership with. We asked every student that we met, hundreds of thousands of students across the country from kindergarten and all the way through college age, non-traditional included, “What is the one thing you need in order to thrive?”
Typically, when I do keynotes, I’ll ask, “What do you think was offered up most frequently?” The answer was love. The beautiful thing about that is that when people would offer up other words, I’m like, “Whatever you offer up is anchored by love.” What I do know is that that is a powerful anecdote to White supremacy and all of its cousins. That’s one.
The second thing is your naming of hierarchies. This is why I appreciated you bringing into the room bell hooks earlier because it’s Black feminist to help us appreciate how all of this stuff works. They give us terms like the matrix of domination, the science systems, and symbols that allow White supremacy, homophobia, trans misogynoir, and all of these things to be omnipresent and hyper-invisible at the same damn time. When somebody rolls up on you with some White supremacy, we don’t even have the language or space to unpack it. We’re often forced to make these kinds of decisions or default to these kinds of behaviors in ways that are all about preserving White supremacy.
Specific to a part of the question I heard about what to do, I’ll give you the answer that my babies gave me. When the previous occupant of the Oval Office made it impossible for me to stay in public service, I went back to school, my third tour of duty at Columbia University. I wanted to focus my dissertation on the experiences of Black LGBTQIA+ middle and high school students throughout this country.
That was important for me because of the decade-long career that I had on Capitol Hill, often as the only and one of the highest-ranking policy advisors. I worked on the HELP committee, Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for Ted Kennedy until he died, God rest his soul, and then Tom Harken thereafter. In all of the time that I was in that space, whenever organizations like NAACP, Urban League, and the like advocated for the needs of Black students, there was an assumption that everybody was cisgender and heterosexual, which is a lie from the pit of White supremacy. Conversely, when Glisten, HRC, and those organizations led by White folks came to advocate, all of the materials and the people they brought with them were White or as adjacent as they could be.
When those dynamics exist, it’s easy for people to lie to themselves and say, “We don’t have you here.” It’s even easier for people to do that and feel righteous when they don’t have access to African ways of knowing. Sobonfu Some writes a book, The Spirit of Intimacy. In chapter thirteen, which is titled Homosexuality, the gatekeeper says, “In my village in West Africa, the words lesbian and gay didn’t exist but the word gatekeeper did.” When I’m talking to folks who are caught up in the White supremacy of it all, Black folks hold space for native and Indigenous folks who celebrate two-spirited individuals. If everything began in Africa, that shit did not skip us. Let’s spend a little bit more time unpacking that.
In school, I am using the master’s tools to dismantle all of the houses that we built for free. I am engaged in conversation with babies who policy and research suggest don’t even exist. The five largest national data sets that fund our support, the funding of education, don’t ask kids questions about their sexual identity, gender, orientation, or expression. When that comes up, it’s usually in a health context and around risks like HIV.
I’m creating data because if you don’t have it, they often say it’s not real or doesn’t exist. It’s a mixed method study because I got to use quantitative data and add a little bit of qualitative flavor. Here are the three findings that are most significant from this study, and I want to say thank you to all of my babies. One is that age is significant. Too often, we are trained to hold important conversations until we think people are ready. This is in part why Moms for Liberty, an organization, many of whom don’t have kids in public schools anyway, has been attacking democracy by attacking schools. They are suggesting that we ban books that feature our stories and this language and remind folks that the beautiful diversity that exists is how we will continue to strive as a democracy.
My babies’ age is significant. We say, “Wait until they get to high school and then we’ll talk to them about it.” One of my babies said, “I got called a faggot in the third grade. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I understood what that meant but I knew that it hurt.” What I know as somebody who taught kindergarten is that children are often able to have thoughtful, complex conversations in ways that adults can’t. Why is it that adults can’t? It’s because we get caught up in the politics of it all and the bullshit. Age is significant. We have to appreciate that. As Tom Harkin would say, learning begins at birth and the preparation for learning starts well before birth. It’s about holding space for appreciating development and having more meaningful conversations with babies before we think they’re ready. That’s one.
The second is that mental health support is critically important. To that point, what do you do when you’re carrying trauma but you don’t have the language to name it or the tools to deal with it? You’re forced to go to schools that have policies that make it such that for every 1 White boy suspended or expelled in K through 12 grade, the rate is 3 times higher for Black boys and the rate is 6 times higher for Black girls. The suicide rate for Black youth has doubled in the last few decades.
Based on the limited data that we have, some of which I collected, we know that students who are often assumed to be trans, queer, and gender expansive because they don’t perform gender in the way in which they’re expected to face additional challenges and threats. Often, those who need it the most are the furthest away from the likelihood of getting it.
Related to that, what I appreciated about the mixed methods approach, otherwise I wouldn’t have funded it, is that for trans students in particular, Aretha was right. Respect matters. It’s also not surprising to anybody who’s thoughtful, like, “I don’t care what you know until I know that you care about me.” This is important in a moment when you have people like the failed history teacher turned Governor of Florida creating police departments to arrest teachers who might have a sticker from an organization like NBJC or HRC in the room to signal a show of support. That’s the space that we’re in.
The most surprising finding for me was colorism, as was named by my participants, is incredibly toxic. Too often, we don’t talk about it. I’m blaming Bravo for being problematic in this regard at this moment. They named Black women as a significant resource. All of those babies were also aware of the attacks that Black women have to face in order to hold space, show up, and be supportive.
The last thing is around one’s ability to name their own experience. It’s the Toni Morrison of it all. Here’s what I think about oftentimes. 30% of trans youth, 13 through 17, live in a state where they are prohibited from using a bathroom of their choice. As long as those kids weren’t peeing on my rug, I didn’t give a fuck. I remember my mother got caught up in all of this manufactured bullshit some time ago and I said to her, “Your bathroom is an inclusive bathroom.” People make these decisions that create space for politicians to pass laws that are solutions in search of a problem. Similarly, if a kid wanted me to call them Batman on Tuesday, I’d call them Batman.
I’m so grateful for this conversation for so many reasons, and I’m so sad that we’re having to wrap it up. We’ve got one last question to close this out.
I feel like we need to continue to do the deep dive on this, especially since before we started the show, we found out that Fearless Fund had to officially close their program. That means that the discrimination lawsuit is officially done. Shout out to Arian and all of them for daring to fight that fight because it is an expensive fight.
Literally and figuratively. My prayer is that they also have a solid mental health team.
Owning The Concept Of “Innovation As A Birthright”
Exactly. Where does that leave so many other spaces? Black people have always had challenges but we’ve stopped innovating. Owning the concept of innovation is our birthright. The shortened version of that is that we have the right to innovate. When you hear right to innovate, what does that bring to your mind? What are your thoughts on that? What does that mean for you?
When I hear you frame it in that way, the right to innovate for me is tantamount to the right to live. I am obligated to hack solutions to seemingly intractable problems. The biggest problem in America, as Du Bois said centuries ago, is the color line. For me, it is a reminder, a declaration, and a besiegement for us to live and thrive in spite of.
Thank you, David.
That’s beautiful. Thank you, David.
Thank you. This was good.
Thank you for all you do, all you mean, and all you model. We have deep gratitude.
It is my duty and my honor. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us for another episode of the show. We’re so excited to continue these conversations. In some ways, I feel we’re scratching the surface. These are conversations that need to be had and we’re going to keep having them. Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time.
Important Links
About David Johns
David Johns is the executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), a civil rights organization dedicated to the empowerment of Black LGBTQ+/SGL people, including people living with HIV/AIDS.
Johns was appointed the first executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans by President Barack Obama and served from 2013-2017.
Johns was a senior education policy advisor to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions under the leadership of U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and has served under the leadership of the late U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA).
Johns was a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Fellow in the office of Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY). David is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in sociology and education policy at Columbia University.
Johns obtained a master’s degree in sociology and education policy at Teachers College, Columbia University, graduating summa cum laude. He graduated with honors from Columbia University in 2004 with a triple major in English, creative writing, and African American studies.
Johns was named to the Out100 list in 2021, the Root100 in both 2013 and 2014, Ebony’s Power 100 in 2015, and received an early career award from Columbia University, Teachers College in 2016.
