Queer is like a massive part of my identity. But also what is a massive part is my South Asian… like, my brownness as well. With the whole intersecting identities, growing up as brown and growing up as queer, I felt like I was sort of battling between the two identities. And I remember just, like, sitting on my bed thinking, ‘I’m going to have to live a double life. I’m never going to be openly out as a brown person.’ And I think that’s how it was for quite a while. Especially because, growing up, I didn’t believe that brown or black people could even be queer. I thought it was more sort of like a white thing. And it’s quite ironic for it to be a white thing, because if you look at colonisation, and then we look at how all these homophobic laws were created by white people, I think that’s one of the main reasons why a lot of people of colour have an issue with queerness and transness. And that doesn’t just disappear overnight, and it definitely affects the notions that we have of queerness today as well.
Ajamu X talks about his upbringing in Huddersfield, his nights out in the area as a young queer black man, and his work and study on the subject of black/queer archiving.