The Black Gay Dollar: Ignored and Overlooked
by Herndon L. Davis
www.dissidentvoice.org
January 27, 2006



 

As we head into Black History Month, corporations and their advertising arms will once again pledge their allegiance to cultural diversity in a continual effort to strategically target the estimated $852 billion (2007) African American marketplace. However, there's also a thriving sub-segment of the African American community that has scarcely been acknowledged and rarely marketed to as a lucrative market niche: the black gay community. 

Currently this segment is experiencing an explosion of black gay themed books, magazines, movies and television shows; hence, America's black gay presence is beginning to make waves within the world of advertising and beyond. 

All Gays Are Not The Same 

Far too often the estimated $610 billion U.S. gay/lesbian market is tracked without significant regard to race or ethnicity while vast assumptions are made that all gays are basically the same, having similar interests and needs. Hence, one of the major challenges gay African Americans and other gays of color have, not being recognized as a viable marketing niche. 

So who's to blame, for such a vast oversight of gay people of color? Are racist marketers really at fault? In actuality the answer is a bit more complicated and two-fold in nature. Ironically, this situation lies parallel to what exists today within the mainstream community where there's a lack of ethnic diversity and outreach to communities of color. Further, when everyone sitting at the gay advertising decision table all look the same, what usually occurs is more of the same type of gay advertising and marketing directives. 

“Strategic marketing to the gay community is still young, and arguably less than ten years old.  Segmenting a very hard to reach population will take some time and expertise to map given the tools available to market researchers” stresses Bob Witeck, CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications, Inc., an advertising firm specializing in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) marketplace. 

The Commercial Closet, a non-profit organization which seeks to educate and influence corporate advertisers on LGBT inclusion and stereotypes stated in an online commentary that “few advertisers are yet at a point of being sophisticated enough about the market to begin worrying about anything other than medium-aged white men. Lesbians are widely left out of marketing plans, let alone sub-demographics such as people of color, youth, mature gays, couples, gay-parent families, and more.” 

Another reason for such a dearth of ethnic gay marketing is the fact that gay minority populations are not nearly as open about their sexual orientation as their white counterparts, hence making it more difficult to track and market to them directly. 

Earl D. Fowlkes, Jr., President/CEO of the International Federation of Black Prides, agrees and compares it to the “duality of race/ethnicity and sexual identify much like the duality of being Black and American that W.E.B. DuBois wrote about one hundred years ago in his book, The Soul of Black Folks. Oftentimes we feel that we have to choose between being either Black or LGBT just like many of us felt that we had to choose to be Black or American. Only during the past few years have many Black LGBT people realized that we can be both Black and LGBT, and celebrate as well as acknowledge both which explains part of the growth of Black Pride over the past ten years.” 

Having to overcome racism and historical disadvantage is hard enough, but to also self-identify as gay/lesbian carries with it a double challenged existence, triple challenged if you count gay women of color. 

Witeck concurs, stating “anecdotally we see and understand that self-labels are more problematic for many gay black males, and prefer to avoid the identity as gay when seeking sexual intimacy.  The 'down low' lifestyle certainly suggests there are identity and community issues that African-Americans address that many white people do not.  However, closet behaviors are certainly not isolated to any population or race.” 

The 2005 HIM (Hyperion Interactive Media) guide, which tracks the gay/lesbian marketplace confirms the difficulty of self-identifying as a gay person of color stating that “the mix of family pressure, machismo, and other cultural influences each have played their role in keeping these groups more tightly in the closet.” 

Hence, the face and voice of gay activism seen and heard most often on the evening news is almost exclusively that of gay white men who ironically still experience “white privilege” despite their challenged status as gay.  Often to be gay and white still brings with it a level of access that gay ethnic minorities have never experienced. 

Find a Way or Create One 

Ironically, the lack of advertising/marketing attention towards the black gay/lesbian community and other gay communities of color has in several ways helped to bolster their own abilities to serve themselves. 

Back during the days of racial segregation when Jim Crow laws kept black people out of many public establishments, black communities across the country were forced to ban together in order to create their own economic centers. The more racially segregated the city, the more vibrant the black economic community, hence the creation of thriving black city districts such as Wall Street of Oklahoma City and the bustling corridor of Atlanta's Auburn Avenue. 

In an eerily parallel fashion, the same thing has now occurred within the black gay/lesbian community and in other gay communities of color who feel shut out by their white gay counterpart initiatives. 

As a result, this has given birth and rise to numerous black gay themed books, magazines, movies and television shows that now proliferate the internet other venues across the country.  Publications such as Clikque Magazine, TV shows such as Noah's Arc, and movies such as Brother to Brother, and Ski Trip, and the thousands of black gay/lesbian themed books published over several years now appear through word searches on Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobles, and Yahoo search engines websites. 

These dramatic facts definitely reflect a community of consumers of black gay themed products and services. In fact, savvy black gay entrepreneurs already realize this and are standing to fill in the gap. 

From the black gay owned BB, The Bates House in Oakland, to the black gay focused Matais bookstore in Long Beach, CA, to Atlanta's black gay/lesbian focused business networking organization, Affair With Flair, and several black gay travel companies which provide excursions from exotic cruises to backpacking adventures; the black gay community has managed to quietly thrive under the advertising radar of Madison Avenue. 

“We are a huge community with great spending power,” states Dwight Powell, editor of the glossy, nationally distributed, Clikque Magazine. Powell adds: “all year long I come in contact with tens of thousands of people at various events. These are people with great jobs, education and healthy relationships. These are people that own houses and purchase expensive cars. They are frequent travelers, extremely concerned about grooming and fashion, and are avid fans of music. This is an untapped market that much be included in marketing plans.” 

In fact, probably the most visible signs of a thriving black gay economic community is the over 30-city Black gay pride circuit which occurs every year in large and mid-sized cities across the country and Canada. Entire weekends and partial weeks are filled with completely black gay focused events from literary salons, empowerment workshops, film screenings, and social gatherings at night clubs, restaurants and in private homes. 

According to Fowlkes, of the International Federation of Black Prides, in 2004 alone, “175,000 people attended 30 Black Prides events in the US and Toronto. Atlanta and DC had the largest prides with 35,000 and 25,000 attendees respectively” and the number is estimated to have increased dramatically in 2005. 

But despite the impressive numbers, getting advertisers/sponsors on board is still a major challenge. Fowlkes explains, “I was usually shuttled between the LGBT marketing person -- who was usually a white gay man or the Black community marketing person -- who usually heterosexual when I used to solicit sponsorship from companies for DC Black Pride.” 

“One would think an event that brings 25,000+ people into a city would be an easy sell.  No way! The LGBT person would tell me that they give money to the 'other' pride event despite the fact that most of the attendees of the Black Prides do not participate in the 'regular' pride events. They would send me to the Black community marketing person where I would have to explain the event over and over as well as deal with their homophobia. Sometimes they got it and sometimes they didn't.” 

Surprising Trends 

In a ground breaking study released in October 2004 by the National Lesbian Gay Task Force, titled “Black Same-Sex Households in the United States: A Report from the 2000 Census,” researchers found that black lesbian couples are raising children at almost the same rate as black married couples, and that black same-gender couples in general are raising children at twice the rate of white same-gender couples although Black same-sex households represent 14% of all same-gender couples in the US. 

The Future 

As more gay/lesbian African-Americans come out the closet and begin to publicly self-identify as gay, the face and voice of the gay dollar will soon begin to transform.  Therein lies the distinct possibility of black gays not only being consumers of gay focused products and services but instead becoming leaders of the direction of gay focused products and services. 

Just as white suburban youth now make up substantial sales of hip-hop music in an arena dominated by black faces and voices, the same potential lies for black gay artists in music, fashion, and entertainment within America's gay/lesbian circles. 

As we forge further into 2006, the possibilities of the potential power of the black gay dollar appear to just now be awakening and emerging into a new day of opportunity for a previously invisible and untrackable community. 

Herndon L. Davis is an author, lecturer, and TV host of America's First Black Gay TV Talk Show. He can be reached directly at: http://herndondavis.com. 

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