Pride Cannot—And Must Not—Exist Without Anti-Racist Work

“Pride is a riot!” proclaimed a banner hung outside the Stonewall Inn in the West Village on Tuesday, capped off by a Black Lives Matter hashtag. That was the sentiment protestors were greeted with as they filed into the narrow square outside the historic gay bar to protest the killing of Tony McDade, Nina Pop, and other black trans victims of violent crimes.

The scene outside Stonewall early on Tuesday evening was calm and quiet at first, akin to the vigil held there the previous night for LGBTQ+ people of color who had been killed. Many of the protestors in attendance had been at other rallies around the city earlier in the week, but the air outside Stonewall was imbued with a specific kind of grief for a population that is too frequently harmed and too rarely mourned on a national scale. “I identify as queer, so I feel like I need to be here to support black trans people. Their death rate is so high, it’s terrifying,” said Leila, 27.

The names of black trans lives lost were chanted with increasing fervor by the crowd, with the words “Tony McDade” and “Nina Pop” echoing all the way down to where a small clutch of NYPD officers was standing on 5th Avenue. While the crowd included people of color, many attendees presented as white, in a hopeful sign that the white LGBTQ+ community—or, at least, its New York subset—could be beginning to reckon with its own foundational racism.

Things got heated around 6 p.m. on the intersection of 6th Avenue and Washington Place, a few blocks from Stonewall, when protestors began blocking traffic. What began with a few people sitting in the intersection quickly grew to a crowd of at least 100, with one protestor leading the charge from the front and reminding the assembled crowd, “Our trans brothers and sisters get lost and killed. My black and brown brothers and sisters, we are people. Live up to the words of your constitution!” Surveying the scene, it was hard not to think of Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Larry Kramer, and generations of LGBTQ+ leaders who insisted that the ease and convenience of the straight world must be interrupted if the queer world was to assert its right to exist.

What was particularly striking about the traffic stoppage on 6th and Washington was the level of support it garnered from the very cars it was blocking. Drivers stuck fists out of their windows in support to exultant whoops from the crowd, and one city worker even briefly rushed from his vehicle to take a knee with protestors. One truck was stopped in the intersection for over half an hour, with no ability to reverse course, but its drivers didn’t seem perturbed: “The movement is important,” Christopher, 24, told me quietly when I asked whether he minded being stopped by the protestors.

While many of the protestors were veterans of other rallies, some ventured out—amid COVID-19 concerns and the increased threat of police brutality—for the first time on Tuesday to support the black LGBTQ+ population. “This is my first day protesting and I’m usually not one to come out, but I absolutely had to come out for my people,” said Monique, 27, adding, “Black people, we don’t ask for much. We’re are always strong, we’ve been through so much, but when you’re not just subtly racist but blatantly killing us, and doing it publicly in such a vulgar manner to let us know you disrespect and hate us and don’t value us—how far have we come since MLK? How can we trust you to protect us if you value us as nothing?”

Many white LGBTQ+ people—myself included—have grown up and come out into a world where we have the right to legally marry, serve in the military, and any number of other civil rights, without being forced to reckon with the fact that those rights were hard-won for us by queer activists of color. It’s been easy for me to think of Pride as a party—an excuse to wear rainbow, drink too much, and take to the streets of New York with my friends in celebration—because the NYPD that’s now brutally attacking my colleagues has always been invested in keeping those same streets safe for me. When QPOC are already doing the work of telling white queer people how to be better allies, it is incumbent upon all of us to listen, educate ourselves, and carry the message back to our white friends and family: solidarity is no longer enough, if it ever was.

If we wish to consider ourselves worthy of the legacy of Johnson, Rivera, Maxine Perkins, Audre Lorde, and countless other people of color who fought for queer liberation, we must do the work: whether that’s donating to anti-racist causes, lobbying our elected officials to reallocate police funding to social services, showing up at protests to put our bodies between black and brown protestors and the police, or any number of other actions. The scene at Stonewall on Tuesday ably demonstrated that the struggle is ongoing for queer people of color, and white queer people have assimilated and exempted ourselves long enough: it’s past time to take up the fight.