West Indian & LGBTQ+ in New York City: The Colliding of Identities
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Written by: Milan Dupuy
New York is home to the largest population of West Indian people outside of the Caribbean. Neighborhoods like Little Guyana in Richmond hill Queens, Little Caribbean in East Flatbush Brooklyn, and Little Dominican Republic in Washington Heights are just a few of the ethnic enclaves in New York City. The Caribbean spirit is alive and well in the big apple. With such a large population, LGBTQ+ identifying persons struggle to find a safe space to explore their identity and meet others from their culture. Caribbean queer people often are overshadowed by the culture itself and by the larger LGBTQ+ community as a whole, they are the minority in both worlds.
Street vendor on Church Avenue and Utica Avenue in Little Caribbean selling Caribbean merchandise
Hate towards the LGBTQ community in the Caribbean can be traced back to British colonialism. Great Britain controlled all the Western Caribbean Islands, including Guyana and Belize. Buggery laws implemented by the British empire made sexual relations between men a crime, the punishment for anyone caught or suspected of this was death. Centuries later such laws still stand, in Antigua and Barbuda there is a maximum 15-year imprisonment and a maximum lifetime sentence in St. Lucia for having same sex relations.
Some say colonialism has a great influence on how West Indian parents view their children who are queer. Due to the normality of the discourse around queer people, when one comes out as identifying as part of the community it is a common event that they get kicked out of their home. Being an immigrant in a new country, the people that one knows may be limited, leaving them with no place to go. One may ask, how can a parent kick out their child knowing these circumstances? Humiliation, Karl O’Brian Williams, Deputy Chair and Theatre Coordinator of Speech Communication and Theatre Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College suggests. “Shame is big, we get that from the British side of our culture…with that sort of pump and pageantry…” Keeping up appearances is substantial part in West Indian culture. “The face is painted with that awful makeup but underneath the makeup is rotting the face, but you have to apply more because it’s all about appearances,” says Williams. The appearance that business is continuing as normal, and everything is perfect is what leads many Caribbean parents to banishing their LGBTQ children.
Karl O'Brian Williams at New York City Pride parade in 2015. Photo taken by Williams
LGBTQ people are not accepted in the Caribbean, it is ingrained in their laws and society. When Caribbean people migrate out of their home countries, their opinions migrate with them. West Indian culture is known worldwide, including Caribbean hate speech. “When it comes to migration, Caribbean people we bring our culture, our food, our music, but we also bring our homophobia with us.”, says Mohamed Q. Amin, founder and executive director of The Caribbean Equality Project in New York City.
Caribbean music like the genres of dancehall and reggae are notorious for its anti-LGBTQ lyrics, promoting harmful and violent acts like “bashing" gay men’s heads and encouraging ostracizing of queer people. In recent times, with the rise of cancel culture, this type of music has become unacceptable amongst the LGBTQ+ community. Williams does not support cancel culture; he believes in the good of humanity and that people can change for the better. “It is how I feel, otherwise, I wouldn’t teach.” “I didn’t think that on the first week of school, that there’s a possibility of an entire group of students being able to change…. then I wouldn’t bother.”, says Williams. He takes his approach to educating over into his personal life and opinions. In Williams’ younger days, he too was enjoying hits like the 1992 Buju Banton song “Boom Bye Bye”. Roberts shares a similar experience; she enjoyed the song through her youthhood and didn’t know the song was perpetrating violence against gay men until she got older. She recalled a memory of a queer co-worker at her previous job who was singing “Boom Bye Bye” his justification for it was the beat was catchy. This song, along with others including TOK’s Chi Chi Man and Elephant Man Log On has incited violence in the Caribbean and in New York City against the LGBTQ community.
Outside of the music, West Indian people don’t have much representation in mainstream media, especially queer people. The most recent West Indian LGBTQ character in a mainstream context was in the Netflix drama series Manifest, flight attendant Bethany Collins assisted her cousin’s boyfriend, Thomas with escaping out of Jamacia because he was a gay man. He made appearances in 3 episodes with very few lines. Amin thinks Caribbean representation in media is underrepresented. “This representation in media is a very Western representation…a very global North representation, “says Amin. Amin explains places like the Middle East, the Caribbean and Africa don’t have visibility of LGBTQ culture. Erasure, gatekeeping, violence and discrimination are still happening to the community, in New York, and in the Caribbean diaspora. Amin believes representation has made tremendous strides but there is still much work to be done.
Ereka Roberts feared to give her real name due to fear of being ostracized by her family. Roberts migrated to the United States in 2018 and from then she has noticed extensive difference between queer life in the city and back in her home country of Guyana. “I like that I can be queer here, I like that it’s okay and no one is going to jump me because it, I’m less afraid of people’s bad reactions because of it.” Since she has been in New York, Roberts hasn’t seen any West-Indian queer representation here. She explains it’s a very specific scene and it’s not easily identifiable just by looking.
Ereka Roberts on March 21st, 2022 at Hunter College
Mohamed Q. Amin with Caribbean Equality Project voulnteers, Flatbush Mixtape, New York Community for Change & Council Member Rita Joesph at Food & Essentials Distribution on Parkside Avenue in Brooklyn
Fresh produce waiting to be distributed
LGBTQ life in the West Caribbean islands is very different from New York City. Access, freedom, and resources are what Williams describes the difference between queer life in Jamacia in comparison to New York. Being out and proud is concept is normalized in New York City, but it is a privilege. Places around the world, including most countries in the Caribbean this is a taboo. “No, no, absolutely not, that doesn’t exist…it’s not like that at all back home.” says Roberts. Some might say an organization that amplify diversity and offers support like the Caribbean Equality project is a needed organization in the city due to the discourse of being LGBT and West Indian.
The Caribbean Equality project was founded in 2015 in the wake of an anti-LGBTQ hate crime that had occurred in 2013 to Amin’s brother, a few friends and his partner at a local Caribbean owned bar, which left his brother hospitalized. After a 2 year long legal battle, justice did not prevail. Their attackers were not charged, this horrific event trailblazed Amin into constructing the framework of the Caribbean Equality Project. He saw the need for a safe space for LGBTQ Caribbean people, a space where culturally competent resources were available. Services like mental health resources, lawyers, shelters, medical care and food distribution in Little Guyana and Little Caribbean. Unchained is a program under the Caribbean Equality Project peer to peer immigrant support group that creates an empowering space for Caribbean LGBTQ immigrants, survivors of family rejection, discrimination, HIV impacted people and more. Unchained is the only Caribbean support group for LGBT+ persons in the New York area.
A common thread between the interviewees was the fear of making others uncomfortable with their identity. Roberts has a friend who she goes to the gym with, and she is fearful of coming out to her due to her provocative quick-witted commentary and jokes. “When I tell her I’m bi, will she suddenly start to feel uncomfortable?” Roberts fears making other women non-queer uncomfortable due to her understanding of how the world sees queer people, as deranged sexual beings. Williams sometimes feels awkward in speaking up at work when anti-queer comments are made, especially as an educator. The negative stereotype against gay men being unhinged sexual predators who cannot be trusted around children, is re-occurring thought in his mind when such matters come up. “Wait a second, if I’m found out to be gay, and I have all of these male students talking to me, it’s the look of the thing as well.” Stereotypes and stigmas carry a great weight on those whom they are targeted toward.