Celebrating Black Queer Love

Gay love stories highlighted by both straight and LGBTQ media people hardly ever show images of gay black couples. When one looks in the media, you never see any posts on Black Queer Love because the face of Queer we have been fed has always been white. This is not only about love, you see this in the adverts targeted at the queer community whether it’s holidays or events, they all have white faces and it’s hard to not feel excluded by this. Heck, even the majority of the LGBT spaces in Cape Town cater for the white queers, black queer folk have only one venue that caters for them, which is Zer021 Social Club.

We should be glad that citizen journalism is now prominent thanks to social media, accounts like @allafricanlgbtq on Twitter and @BlackQueerLove (also on podcast) on Instagram celebrate black love and share images and videos from black queer couples. This is the content we have signed!! My favorite international couple on social media currently is  @dom_and_nick, whom I discovered The Way We Met Instagram page, the page profiled the 27- and 25-year-olds, who live in Brooklyn, New York. Locally, my heart skips when I see couples like Siya and Mandi, who feature on a new South African Youtube Channel called, Black Queer Love curated by Andile Ndlovu, which follows the lives of BLACK queer couples and having a conversation about their relationship, challenges and insight on making a relationship work. I thoroughly enjoy this channel as I am a firm believer in representation, it truly warms my heart to see SOUTH AFRICAN BLACK QUEER COUPLES because some of us struggle in relationships and have no one as a point of reference to inspire and advise us.

In 2016, Black same-sex couples shared their love on social media using the trending hashtag #BlackQueerLoveLivesHere during the festive season and we were loving it. As I said, representation truly matters and hashtags like these remind us of the fact that there are amazing black queer couples out there that are open to sharing their love with the world and also be a beacon of hope for some of us who truly believe we are not destined for such or even finding Mr. Right (Lord knows we’ve tried). My longest relationship has only been 8 months and during this time I met Siya and Mandi who always gave me advice on some of the challenges I faced in my relationship then, which is why I am appreciative of such platforms such as BLACK QUEER LOVE because we now can always go back to this content.

If you want to see what has got me so excited, check out the BQL Youtube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJGXCF-Cc02RsXngMiaVtA/videos

Phumlani Kango is a contributing writer for the Anova Health Institute and these are his views, which may or may not reflect those of Anova and its affiliates.