Speaking with Vanity Fair for
their September issue, out actor Billy Porter said that “Black
queer people are Black first.”
Porter is best known for playing Pray
Tell, a gay man who is HIV-positive, on the FX drama Pose.
Porter is among the 22 activists and
visionaries featured in a segment titled “You Said Hope.”
(Related: Indya
Moore on Trump's attacks on the transgender community.)
Porter said that the “public lynching
of George Floyd galvanized people all over the world to rise up, once
again for equality and justice.”
“This moment,” Porter
said, “has lit a fire inside of me and truly thrusted me into
using my platform to deliver the message [that] Black queer people
are Black first. Queer second. Our queerness is not a 'choice.' It is
who we are and we will no longer be silenced. None of us are free
until we all are free.”
“The reason why our country is in the
mess we’re in is simply because of whiteness,” Porter continued.
“White supremacy. White people choke-holding power and sucking the
life out of humanity. Orangina 45, that cancer that is in our White
House, has been handed the power, without consequence, to have his
hate metastasize all over the people. Why are we not talking about
figuring out how to remove this monster from the highest office in
the land right now! ’Cause we might not be alive come November. And
this is not hyperbole.”