“The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.” — James Baldwin
James Baldwin’s words truly resonate with me as a Black gay man in a world where I am continuously trying to find my place—and to fit in. As a child, I knew I wasn’t like the other kids in school, in my Cub Scout troop, or on the little league team in my neighborhood.
As a child growing up in Cincinnati, OH, I didn’t have the wherewithal, cognition, or language to understand why I felt different. Like many gay, queer, and gender-nonconforming kids, I often felt misunderstood—isolated and alone. As much as I tried to conform to the constructs of gender norms, traditions, and socialization at home, at school, in my community, and at church, I always felt as if I didn’t belong, I didn’t fit.
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So I created my own world—a survival mechanism—in my imagination where I could exist and feel comfortable in my own skin. As early as Kindergarten, I began painting colorful images on canvases and drew artwork in pencil, crayon, or magic markers on any and everything I could get my hands on to express myself. I constructed make-believe characters and stories using my Star Wars, Bionic Man, and Black Falcon action figures. I would pour over books, magazines, and newspapers to find places outside of my suburban neighborhood where I could one day fit in.
This process is similar to what many young people go through growing up, trying to find themselves and their voices as adolescence grows into adulthood. It is more exasperated in Black and LGBTQ+ communities because of white supremacy, structural racism, homophobia, transphobia, and a reluctance for older generations, conservatives, and traditionalists to embrace the new and the now.
It is akin to the misogyny women have had to endure and maneuver for centuries, living in patriarchal systems and constructs. The marginalized in our society have always been forced to reimagine, reinvent, and recreate a reality that gives them agency—a voice, visibility, and viability—in a white male-dominated world. Look at the 2024 Election—and Project 2025–for proof.
Nobody understood this erasure, disenfranchisement, and conflict more than James Arthur Baldwin.
He was a Black man who grew up fighting for his life. From growing up in the Jim Crow Era to braving the atrocities of racism, poverty, police brutality, and discrimination, Baldwin knew all too well what it meant not to fit in. His escape mechanism was his brilliant mind. Baldwin felt isolated and alone growing up, and he used his creative mind to shield and protect himself from a world that didn’t see him and to create a place for himself to exist.
Baldwin was an intellect, a creative genius, and a visionary. This was his superpower. And if all of that wasn’t enough, Jimmy Baldwin was anointed. Baldwin became a preacher at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly from age fourteen to seventeen. He had the gift of The Word—preaching, oratory prowess, speaking truth to power, and captivating audiences with his ideas and ideals.
Baldwin found his voice. As we celebrate the centennial of his birth on August 2, 2024, and highlight his innumerable contributions to literature, social criticism, journalism, plays, protests, and activism, we must remember that this illustrious Black, gender-non-conforming man lived at the intersection of brilliance and not belonging.
Baldwin was a complicated figure whose social justice, equality, and liberation advocacy were not fully embraced or accepted in his heyday. He was too liberal and political. His was too queer for respectability politics and conservatives. Some considered him too Black and white, adjacent to his own community. He and his friend Bayard Rustin were considered a threat to the civil rights movement and mission because of his otherness. He was effeminate and “too smart,” which often left him feeling out of place.
In 2016, when I came up with the idea to create a movement, community, and platform to inspire and empower Black gay and queer men, there was only one person who represented the cultural, political, and historical resonance of this idea: James Baldwin.
One day, while I was workshopping what this organization—this place—could be, do, and solve, I looked on my bookshelf and saw Notes of A Native Son. That was it. Native Son was the name that would encompass the mission to amplify the voice and visibility of Black gay and queer men. Baldwin’s indelible legacy is evidence that men who exist at the intersection of their Blackness and their queerness are relevant, and their lives have meaning. James Baldwin is both our patron saint and icon.
It’s clear that Baldwin has already created the place for us to exist with his indomitable being and cannon of brilliance, which is still inspiring generations to challenge unjust, antiquated, and divisive systems and structures. He is the blueprint for anyone who has felt othered, ignored, overlooked, or insignificant to speak up and speak out so that their existence is seen, heard, and respected.
It is not lost on me how inspiring it is to launch Native Son’s content platform in partnership with Queerty—the popular news and entertainment site—on Baldwin’s 100th Birthday to give Black gay and queer men a place to fit in, exist, and tell their stories.
As the former Editor-in-Chief of Vibe magazine, where we won the National Magazine Award under my leadership, and as the first openly gay editor of a national magazine, I know that giving marginalized communities a megaphone to tell their own stories, shape their narratives, and be the main characters of their own experiences is transformative.
Native Son is keeping Baldwin’s energy, audacity, and verve alive. Like James Baldwin, we must continue to buck the systems and structures that attempt to erase us and continue to be our ancestors’ wildest dreams.
“Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.” — James Baldwin
inbama
A brilliant YAG man who, having gone to glory in 1987, probably would have laughed at seeing his life recast in woke lingo.
chirper
I would urge you to clarify the difference between James Baldwin, Black gay author of Notes of a Native Son (1955), and pioneering straight Black author Richard Wright, author of Native Son (1940). I am not a specialist on Wright, but my father was his lawyer circa 1948-1950 or 1951, and I have a set of his books autographed to my father.
For reference, see (for starters) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Son.
Thank you.