5 BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ Voices

There are quite a few similarities between the documentaries I Am not Your Negro and Paris is Burning. They both represent minorities expressing their dreams and how they want to change society in a positive way. We see in I Am not Your Negro that important black figures such as James Baldwin’s, Malcom X’s, and Martin Luthur King Jr’s thoughts are presented to us in the style of a digital autobiography. Occasionally there are excerpts of black and white films, journal entries, and archives to back up their claims about the constant fight to being treated fairly in a predominantly white society.

Paris is Burning records people who are part of the LGBTQ culture in New York City. We see drag queens in this film and how they formed their own little community in the shadows of the big city as they compete against each other in beauty shows and earning the title of “Mother” in their drag queen household and compete against other houses. We learn that the reason they created these households is to create a sense of belonging for anyone within their category and to find the support that they need to as they dream to be the best performers on stage.

When it comes to Ta-Nehisi Coat’s book Between the World and Me, there is a sense of familiarity between the three works. Coats teaches his son about the realities of being a black person in the United States and the history of racism that they endured in the past. In many ways this can be tied in with Paris is Burning as those people shared how friends and families shunned them to the point of not having a place to live, showing that homophobia and racism do not differ from one another. It is like Coats using the black body as an analogy of not fully owning their bodies in a sense. It feels that society decides how it will treat the black body like society decides how it will treat gay individuals no matter the skin tone. All three works show that a person has a voice to share and is always worth hearing even if someone wants to say it is time for a change. We can better our society if we choose to listen without fear of judgment.