Brother to Brother


The movie Brother to Brother was about a young gay black man, who struggles to cope with his new life under the supportive eye of Bruce Nugent, a gay poet from the Harlem Renaissance. Like black women in that time period, black homosexual men have twice the struggle of black heterosexual men. They have to fight a battle for both their equal rights as black, and their rights as gay. They feel as if they have to choose which identifier is more important to them; which one they primarily identify themselves as. Though the man in the movie (Cleaver) believed that they were two separate battles, the goal for which they are fighting for is the same: equality.
According to Cleaver it was James Baldwin’s priority to struggle for his rights as a black man rather than as a gay man. He felt as though it would be disloyal to their race to put his orientation over his race, especially by having sex with a white man. To this Cleaver said he was “Letting the white man F*** him in the ass.” and this was a complete surrender to the white race. He said by doing that it was as if you are submitting to their superiority.
Perry, the young man in the movie was at one point attacked and beat up by several men while walking down the street. As they pushed him down and kicked him violently they yelled “Faggot!”  This attack was within the black community. Clearly the battle for rights as a gay man had to be fought even within Perry’s own race.
When one group of people is in the receiving end of slews of hate and anger that is what they become. A straight black man will have to deal with racism, and he in turn will have to place the blame on something else; the next minority, homosexuals. What it all comes down to is the need to have same rights as the next person. Struggling for both an end to racism and an end to homophobia is really the same thing.