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I think that the climate was pretty queer-friendly for professors, grad students, white folks, and enough other groups to earn the school its liberal reputation. You couldn't ask for a more affirming faculty. But my sphere was predominantly among African-American undergraduate students. And it was stunning that at a school as left-leaning as UNC, at a PWI with such a relatively large Black student body, there were virtually no openly gay black undergrads on campus.
Don't get me wrong, there were TONS of queer African-American students at Carolina. From the track team to the fraternities, we were gettin it IN, lol. But it was a clandestine community. Although we socialized and hooked up with another, no one dared claim a gay/bi identity in mixed company. The intellectuality of UNC didn't change the fact that most of its black students hailed from conservative towns across North Carolina. And they brought their churchy social mores with them. There was no way that I was going to come out and risk becoming a pariah and losing most of my Baptist ass friends.
It's kind of funny that as soon as queer black students graduated from UNC, they started living more openly in the cities that they migrated to. My black gay friends from Carolina are now successful scientists, professors, lawyers and movers and shakers in industries such as finance, fashion, etc. I can't help but wonder what college would have been like for us if we weren't made, by our own community, to feel so ashamed about who we were.
But homophobia wasn't a UNC thing -- it was a Southern and an American thing. And I have no illusions that my experience would have been any better at an HBCU, especially since Carolina's Black student community was so smart and influential.
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