“Black Is The Color of the Cosmos," was the theme for the 2022 CNP Summit, held virtually on Saturday and Sunday, March 19 and 20. In framing this year’s Summit, CNP offered the following quote to describe the work at hand; “So often, we’ve looked to the past, but where our liberation lies is in our future. This summit is for us to prepare for the movement of tomorrow.” While there is much within this quote to unpack, what resonates most with me is the pointed emphasis on the importance of preparation for [the movement of] tomorrow. In the simplest of ways, it all boils down to one significant point we’ve all seen and heard demonstrated time and time again; representation matters.

However, when it comes to the lives of Black queer people (and Black gay men in particular), there’s far more nuance and context to consider, simply because of how our existence has always been toyed with. Our Black gay lives have almost always had an ongoing (and extremely toxic) relationship with silence, shame, secrecy, and fear. Thankfully, that is why organizations like CNP and so many others exist; to combat such pointed attempts at erasure and humiliation, while ensuring that none of those attempts are successful in trying to dim our light or silence us, as they are structurally intended to do.

In my walk from young adulthood to now, I’ve learned a lot about myself. Before landing in Washington, D.C. 24 years ago in 1995, no one told me how challenging that phase of life would be as I came to grips with accepting my sexuality, which was anything but a straight line.  I had no roadmap to figure out what was happening or how to navigate any of it. Back then, any literature that was black, gay adjacent that I could get my hands on, I read. It wasn’t until I discovered the works of E. Lynn Harris and James Earl Hardy that some of what I had been carrying around regarding my sexuality started to make any kind of sense. As liberating as that felt, it was also terribly confusing.