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This article is motivated by a series of conversations I have had and observations I have made about the study of Black politics, African American Studies, and the condition of African American communities. At the heart of such concerns has been what I believe to be a fundamental contradiction between the crises facing Black communities and the passive routinization of much of what passes for the academic study of Black people. As both the discipline of African American Studies and the sub-field of Black politics become more enmeshed in the curriculum and structures of colleges and universities, research in these areas seems to mirror the increasing specialization of disciplines and distancing between researcher and worldly experience that characterize the academy at this moment. It is the observation of disconnect between me and my colleagues and the communities from which many of us hail and purport to study that has motivated my interest in building a field of inquiry others have labeled Black queer studies.
I must admit to being a skeptic of the transformative potential of anything we might label Black queer studies, especially as such efforts begin to resemble a recovery project of the lost tribe of Black gay exceptionals. It is, of course, a worthwhile undertaking to include as part of the canon of African American Studies, for example, those Black gay writers of the Harlem Renaissance or Black gay activists of the Civil Rights Movement who for too long have been hidden and silenced by those who would police the representation of such critical periods and events. Furthermore, I, like other scholars concerned with the future of African American Studies believe that the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, and queer lives would not only open up new realms of research in African American Studies, but should also lead to the reconsideration and reconceptualization of now standard narratives in the field. For example, John D'emilio, in his book Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (2003), not only rightly inserts Rustin into African American and American history, establishing him as an architect of the Civil Rights Movement, but also helps us to interrogate the concept of leader and the standards used to construct public leaders both in and outside of...