Rethinking the Down-Low Phenomenon
J.L. King has been making the rounds touting his book on the DL lifestyle. The “DL” lifestyle, for those brothers and sisters with their heads in the sand, is a lifestyle of lies, deceit and deception. A lifestyle in which supposedly heterosexual men engage in homosexual sex without protection and without informing their heterosexual partners. The end result is more than hurt feelings. The end result for black women can be HIV/AIDS. JL is best known as the DL poster boy — a formerly married brother who was caught having sex with one of his boys. After his divorce, rather than coming out and living as a bisexual or homosexual man, he continued to “act” as if he were heterosexual, all the while continuing to see other men discretely. According to him, the phenomenon is rampant and constitutes a severe crisis in African American communities.
The DL phenomenon is mired in the myth of black pathology.
J.L. is not the only one telling this story unfortunately. I’ve read stories in every major venue about this dynamic. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon.com, Time, Newsweek, Essence, you name it. From the way they tell it, sisters (married or single) should run some type of check on their men to make sure they aren’t closeted bisexuals. I remember talking about this on a black email list I belong to, and the sisters were up in arms, wondering if they had to do checkups on every man they dated or were even thinking about dating.
Let’s be clear. Because of the sexual politics of America, much less of the black community, it is very difficult to be anything other than straight-laced, heterosexual and black. And because of that weight, there are indeed a number of people who are closeted for fear of losing their loved ones, losing their social connections, losing their jobs, and even in some cases losing their lives. This is a serious matter that should be discussed in churches, in schools, in homes, and in businesses, as well as in organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League.
But I’ve got questions. Two mainly.
Where the hell are the numbers? Where the hell is the theory?
You see, I think the DL phenomenon is mired in the myth of black pathology. The myth that our central problem as a people comes not from poverty or the lack of government intervention but from us. From our lack of standards. From our lack of morals. From our lack of command of the English language. From our inability to be quiet during movies. From our inability to control our pound-cake stealing urges.
From the inability of black men to be faithful to their wives and keep from sticking themselves into anything that walks.
Bill Cosby, Henry Louis Gates and a whole host of other prominent and intelligent brothers and sisters have bought into this to one degree or another. Some of us regular folks have too…and I see it in the discussion around this issue. The central problem is at least two fold. Because this column is ostensibly about domestic politics, I’ll deal with the political ramifications first. As HIV/AIDS is a public health crisis, it requires funding from federal, state, and local entities. Just as we don’t expect Ford Motor Co. to fund NASA, we should not expect private sources to combat a disease as problematic as HIV/AIDS. And as the current administration has acknowledged the severity of the crisis both at home and abroad, we would expect funding for HIV/AIDS to increase.
We’d be wrong. Funding for HIV/AIDS in most major cities has been cut severely. Here in Saint Louis for example, the current administration cut funding by 13.5%. In fact, of the largest 50 cities, only 11 saw their funding increase. Now given how hard HIV/AIDS affects our communities specifically, we can say with little to no hype at all that black people will die as a result of these cuts. They won’t just get a little bit sicker. They won’t just be out of work a little bit longer. They will die. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Wait. It gets worse. It has been accepted as a given that using condoms not only helps prevent pregnancy, but are highly effective in preventing the spread of diseases (including HIV/AIDS). The current administration is considering cutting CDC funds of all HIV programs that do not contain “anti-condom propaganda” noting that condoms are not effective in preventing disease. Yep. To continue to get money to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS you’ve got to actually say that condoms are bad for you.
Now I’ve mentioned two ways in which the allocation of government resources (or in this case, the decreased allocation) can arguably result in black suffering. But what if we focus instead on black behavior? If we believe instead that the increased spread of HIV/AIDS is due to the activities of black men with shady sexual habits? Where exactly does that lead us? Our dialogue about the DL phenomenon causes suspicion, hatred, and violence. When instead we could be engaging in earnest dialogue about how we can increase the rate of funding, about how we can get the administration to properly disseminate information about HIV/AIDS transmission. And finally, we can be having a discussion about how we can create a loving culture where we can be open and honest about who and how we love.
Now I play a columnist on TV…but I’m also a social scientist. The second problem with this phenomenon is that it appears to be almost purely a media-driven phenomenon. We have absolutely no idea about how many men in general are living dual lives…much less how many black men are doing it. Furthermore, we have absolutely no idea about how many of these men are indeed carriers of HIV/AIDS, because we have absolutely no idea about their sexual practices. Do they engage in safe sex when they have encounters? Do their partners engage in safe sex? All of our stories are based on the anecdote.
Some might say that there is something mildly funny about hearing about a woman who followed her husband to a joint only to catch him with Steve rather than with Eve. Very funny.
Ha.
Ha.
But this ain’t no joke. I believe strongly that our understanding of HIV/AIDS should not be based on a survey sample of people hanging out at the club. It should not be based on some brother looking to get paid off of his random and trifling stories. It should be based on a combination of research designed to measure the routes (and roots) of HIV/AIDS transmission, and political mobilization designed to get the resources to both study the dynamic and to solve (or at least stem) the problem. The DL phenomenon should take a back seat to funding HIV/AIDS initiatives in our cities. Let’s wake up from our fear induced haze and start dealing with it. The deadline for weighing in on the condom regulation was yesterday. Take a look at some of the submitted comments and get informed. In the small chance that they extend the deadline, make yourself heard. Leave the DL discussion for Oprah.
