Bevy Smith and Nathan Hale Williams on Black women, Black queer and gay men and the power of ‘moving your chair’
TheGrio...
Smith and Patrik-Ian Polk will host Cultural Architects & Torchbearers: Muses, Co-Conspirators & Champions, an immersive experience during Atlanta’s Black Pride on Wednesday that explores important conversations within the Black community.
Black women and Black gay and queer men have long influenced one another across fashion, entertainment, music, language, art and identity. But the relationships behind that cultural exchange aren’t always given the same attention as the work itself.
That’s the conversation media personality and author Bevy Smith and acclaimed filmmaker and television creator Patrik-Ian Polk will explore on Wednesday as co-hosts for Cultural Architects & Torchbearers: Muses, Co-Conspirators & Champions during Atlanta Black Pride, according to a news release.
The event, produced by Nathan Hale Williams, president and CEO of iN-Hale Media & Entertainment, and powered by Gilead Sciences, is built around the theme “Reimagining the Black Swan” and will celebrate the relationships between Black women and Black gay and queer men. Williams, an Emmy-nominated director, writer and producer, is also the driving force behind the event and has helped shape its focus on allyship, cultural exchange and community.
For Smith, the timing is particularly important as conversations about gender and sexuality continue to create division online.
“I think there’s been so much division on social media about gays and straights, and we got the gender wars, and that even plays into this conversation that we’re going to be having,” Smith told theGrio. “While we’re celebrating the iconic Black Gay Pride weekend in Atlanta, it’s a perfect time to take the opportunity to stop in the middle of all the good parties that are going to be happening, and say, ‘let’s get together, let’s break bread, and let’s try to communicate, commune, and connect.’”
Williams said the division can feel especially jarring because Black women and Black gay men have historically supported one another.
“It seems new to us. It seems new to people like us because Black women and Black gay men have historically been allies,” Williams said. “Black women are the ones that really prop us up within our families, within our communities. When we’ve come out, they’ve held our hand. They’ve been friends and allies along the way.”
That history is part of what Williams hopes to reclaim through the event.
“We want to have the conversation about why- how did we get here?” he said. “When these two factions in our community were so united for so long, and historically so. And so we want to get back to that unity.”
For Williams, allyship is also personal. He has known Smith for 26 years, first meeting her at New York’s Indochine when he was a young man sitting outside of a conversation among cultural movers and shakers. Smith remembers noticing him.
“I always have a soft spot in my heart for anyone who seems to be deemed an outsider,” she said, explaining that she had been bullied as a young person herself. “So when I saw Nathan kind of outside of the loop of these conversations that were going on at this very la la la la, fancy table, I said, well, I don’t want him to feel outside. I don’t want him to feel lessened. I don’t want him to feel othered.”
So Smith moved her chair closer to Williams and asked him a simple question: “What’s your story?” The moment stuck with Williams, who was also struck by Smith’s extensive knowledge of fashion and culture while she was working at Vibe.
“The fundamental thing that struck me was just how brilliant she was,” Williams said. “This was not some kind of superficial knowledge of, oh, that’s Chanel or that’s Gucci. She really knew the DNA of these things, the DNA of the designers, the backgrounds.”
For Smith, that initial interaction became part of a larger philosophy about creating space for others.
“I never forgot how it felt to be not popular, and how it felt to be bullied, or … looked upon as like someone who no one wanted to sit at the table with,” she said. “So now I got tables, and I bring all kinds of amazing folks to the table.”
That idea of intentionally making room for someone else is at the center of Williams’ definition of allyship. He describes it as “moving your chair” — a metaphor for choosing to move closer to someone else’s lived experience rather than simply saying you support them.
“Friendship, you know, yeah, we can go out, we can hang out or whatever. But when, for lack of a better word, shit hits the fan, are you gonna be there?” Williams said. “Are you gonna stand up for me? Are you gonna stand up for me not only when I’m there, but are you gonna stand up for me when I’m out of the room?”
That also means accepting that allyship doesn’t require having the same experience.
According to Smith, it requires people to be willing to have difficult conversations about the issues that can create tension within Black communities, including misogyny, homophobia and transphobia.
“You have to acknowledge that’s probably going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people, and there may even be passions that will get flared, but that’s okay because as long as we’re doing it with a good foundation and also with best intentions, then we can get past any kind of misunderstandings or hurt feelings,” she said.
Health and wellness will also be part of the conversation, with the event incorporating status-neutral messaging around dignity, prevention, testing, care and stigma reduction. Williams said the focus on allyship also provides an opportunity to address HIV education within the Black community.
“We are still so grossly undereducated about HIV, and it is impacting us still,” he said. “And nobody else is coming to save us. We got to save ourselves.”
Atlanta was a natural setting for the conversation, Williams said, given the city’s significance within Black culture and its Black LGBTQIA+ community.
“Atlanta Black Pride is one of the preeminent Black Prides in the world,” Williams said. “You go where the people are.”
While the dayslong event is expected to have a large turnout, Smith and Williams hope this conversation extends beyond one night.
“We need each other. We literally need one another, and together, you know, we can really right a lot of wrongs,” Smith said.
Williams said strengthening those relationships requires looking at the Black community as a house whose different groups make up its foundation.
“We have to go across all the pillars of our house to get the foundation of our house strong,” he said. “You cannot blow over a house if the foundation is strong.”
Cultural Architects & Torchbearers: Muses, Co-Conspirators & Champions will take place Sept. 2 in Atlanta as part of Atlanta Black Pride. The invite-only event will begin with a dinner for community stakeholders before expanding into an immersive celebration featuring multimedia, live performances, music and movement for approximately 150 guests, according to a news release.