Anyone who’s gotten anywhere got there thanks to a helping hand. Black, Gifted & Whole, a foundation based in Washington D.C., is doing its best to hand out those type of helping hands to young, black gay men.
The organization recently launched its Ambassador Program, awarding Jauan Durbin $4,000 in tuition support.
In speaking with Blavity, Black, Gifted & Whole president and co-founder Guy Anthony said the Ambassador Program was important given that, “there are close to 106 historically black colleges and universities in over 22 states, and only 34 of the have LGBTQ resource centers, or even organizations, that cater to LGBTQ students — and half of them are defunct.”
Guy Anthony; Photo: Black, Gifted & Whole
“A large majority of black gay men attend … HBCUs, yet they are invisible to the faculty and staff and even the president, and that’s not okay,” Anthony said. Ambassadors like Durbin help to give increased visibility and agency to the LGBTQ community at HBCUs through lessons learned through Black, Gifted & Whole programs.
For Durbin, the process began in high school.
Anthony first met Durbin after long months of reaching out to “local high schools to see if we could meet other young, black gay men at GSAs.” GSAs, for the unfamiliar, are gay-straight alliances, also known as gender and sexuality alliances, and are usually school-sponsored organizations that support LGBTQ students and allies. Unfortunately for Anthony and Black, Gifted & Whole co-founder George Johnson, “urban schools were not interested in having black gay men come to their schools, especially if they had a heterosexual principal.”
Although Anthony and Johnson were finally invited to speak at Washington’s School Without Walls — where they met Durbin — the difficulty they had connecting with gay young men at predominantly black schools led them to feel that they needed to take things a step further.
One thing they could do, they realized when Durbin reached out to them for help with his college applications and application fees, was to assist “young, black gay men in high school that would like to go to school and have the smarts to attend the school, but can’t because they can’t even pay the application fee.”
The other thing they soon found in working with Durbin was that “he also needed help with sexual health and wellness; you know, he’s a gay man.”
Gay students, like straight students, aren’t opposed to having amorous encounters. However, Anthony feels that LGBTQ youth are at a disadvantage. “You better believe there is no sex ed class that is teaching a young, gay person how to have protected anal sex,” he said.
“We know that the HIV rate in America, according to the CDC, is largest in the ages of 14 to 24 years old,” Anthony told us, noting that these figures suggest that students are “having sex at a very, very young age now, and nobody is talking to them or mentoring them or sort of handholding them, and teaching them how to protect themselves, both mentally and sexually.”
This is where Black, Gifted & Whole comes in — through mentoring, networking, and supporting the development of young, black men, Anthony believes that his organization can help those that feel lost, overwhelmed, and disenfranchised to find success while living in good health no matter where they may go.
And not only that, but that those Black, Gifted & Whole aids can help others, particularly at HBCUs.
Anthony believes that HBCUs “aren’t that progressive,” reminding us that many “were founded by pastors and ministers; they are very conservative.”
Students in the Ambassador Program are working hard to change the status quo at their schools. Durbin now attends Morehouse, where he is the first openly gay student to be a class senator. He has introduced bills to establish gender-neutral bathrooms on campus, and to amend the school’s constitution to reflect gender inclusion in its pronoun usage.
In “introducing LGBTQ adjacent narratives and bills into their actual constitution … he is making a change in his class and on his HBCU,” Anthony said. And Durbin isn’t the only of Anthony’s ambassadors making positive waves. “Our new ambassador just spearheaded the first ever queer week on their campus.”
It’s a very strong start for the year-old organization. And Anthony told us that this is only the beginning. “We’re trying to raise about $20,000 this year to help 10 guys,” Anthony said. The money will go towards supporting the next class of ambassadors. If you’d like to help Anthony help young, black gay men, you can find out how to support Black, Gifted & Whole’s work here.
