With three short sentences in this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated, Jason Collins became the first pro athlete to announce to the world that he is gay. With those three sentences — “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.” — Collins has joined a growing cacophony of (and this is significant) black voices, from the last outposts of homophobia, the hyper-masculine arenas of professional team sports and rap and R&B music. He joins the likes of grammy award winning musician Frank Ocean and rapper Angel Haze, who have casually and unapolegetically mentioned their homosexuality and bisexuality to the world, almost in passing, as though being gay or bisexual were natural ways to be — which, of course they are. Ocean’s and Haze’s nonchalance are sweet, beautiful, powerful things. Chalk it up to their youth. Haze is 21, Ocean is 25, which makes them the first generation to live their whole lives in a time when people were out.
Tags: Angel Haze, Frank Ocean, Jason Collins, LGBTQ, Snoop Lion, The Culture, The Interconnectedness Revolution, The Mix