We wanted to find out more about this whole “down low” phenomenon - the notion that there was this new thing happening, that married black men were sneaking around and engaging in homosexual sex, contracting AIDS and bringing it back to their black wives. We came across an article by Keith Boykin that challenged the “down low” and decided to check out his book, Beyond the Down Low. But we found that Boykin is much more than an expert on the “down low,” in fact we may have had one of the last conversations with him on the topic, he’s also authored two other books, he was a contestant on the controversial reality TV show American Candidate, he’s worked on several political campaigns (including Clinton’s run for the White House), he’s a professor and a leading commentator on race and sexuality. As you can guess from his bio, we had quite a bit to talk with him about.
THE BASICS
Age: 39
Occupation: Author
Place of birth: St. Louis, MO
Current residence: New York City
Length of time in New York: 4 years
Online guilty pleasure: Wrestling sites
THE INTERVIEW
Why did you decide to write a book about the “down low?"
I didn’t really want to. I was kind of forced to do so because I got so tired of hearing all the nonsense and hysteria about the “down low” and so much of it seemed transparently false, so I felt I had to do something to step in and correct the record.
What was your hypothesis going in?
My hypothesis was that the “down low” was not new, that it was not just a black thing and it was not the cause of the AIDS epidemic in the black community. Those all seemed fairly obvious statements to me, but that was not how the media portrayed the story in the previous year. After I did the investigative work, I found my hypothesis to be true.
As you mentioned, the “down low” has been associated with the spread of AIDS in the black community. Now AIDS is a huge problem in the black community and even if the “down low” isn’t to blame, isn’t any dialogue about AIDS positive?
I go back and forth on this one. At times I’ve thought, well maybe the “down low” discussion is somewhat useful if it gets us talking about AIDS in the community. But after doing this discussion for the past 5 months, I’m convinced it’s a real distraction from the issue we should be talking about - that it does not keep us talking about AIDS - it actually prevents us from talking about AIDS because it sends the wrong message. It sends the message that the “down low” is the only major concern with AIDS in the black community. So as long as you aren’t involved with someone who is on the “down low,” you can tune out all the other AIDS messages and safe sex messages. You don’t have to engage in safe sex, you don’t have to do anything other than avoid men on the “down low,” which is preposterous. To me that’s why this whole story is a tragic diversion of resources and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.
Basically the entire “down low” craze was given credibility because J.L. King stood up as its “poster boy.” The guy’s written two books on the subject, has appeared on Oprah and you devoted an entire chapter in your book to him. Should this man just be taken out and be shot for what he’s done?
I have to hand it to him for being able to manipulate the media so skillfully for at least a year, convincing them that the down low was this new phenomenon of black men responsible for the AIDS epidemic. But the guy’s a hustler and he’s an uninformed hustler at that. Every time he speaks I just cringe.
I read an article in the Chicago Sun Times last week called “Sunday Lunch with J.L. King.” This is in May 2005 and he’s still saying a lot of crazy things that I would think he would have learned over the year don’t make any sense. He’s saying he doesn’t identify with the black gay culture because he doesn’t want to be out at the gay clubs kicking and screaming all the time. And I’m thinking, “You’re an idiot.” I mean, I’m black and I’m gay and I'm not out at the clubs kicking and screaming all the time. He has this whole sort of reductionist, absurd argument about what it means to be black and gay and he trivializes the diversity within the community with his generalizations. It’s almost funny, but it’s really just sad. I put him along the lines of…I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Shahrazad Ali.
You mention her in your book…
Well, she wrote a book back in the early nineties. I put him along the lines of her and Vanilla Ice and all these other people who come along and get their 15 minutes of fame doing really stupid things and then you forget about them eventually. And, I’m convinced that once this whole “down low” phenomenon dies out, people will forget about J.L. King or if they remember him, he will be remembered as a guy who trivialized the AIDS epidemic.
Do you agree that he basically sold out the black community?
I definitely agree with that. I don’t believe his motive was to betray the black community. I think his motive was to make money at whatever cost. Obviously from what I can tell he doesn’t have much of a conscience, a social conscience that is. I’m not sure he really cares about the effects on the black community, but I think the effects have been devastating over the last year or two.
How so?
I was out at a book signing in Atlanta in late February and a black woman in the audience told me that she now assumes that all black men are gay until proven straight - this is a straight black woman saying this to me. And I thought, wow, this is amazing how this whole phenomenon has just been blown out of proportion. Even if you accept the 10% theory that Kinsey put forward decades ago, that still means 90% of men, even in the African-American community, are likely not to be gay or bisexual, so why are we getting all bent out of shape about this when we should be focusing on real issues. But that’s what happens when you have someone willing to twist the facts in order to serve his dumb personal gain.
Have you met J.L. King face-to-face or spoken to him since your book came out?
I have never met him face-to-face in my life actually. I’ve only spoken to him on the phone and emailed him. The last time I spoke to him by email or in any way was in December of last year. There was an article that appeared in December, in the gay newspaper in Atlanta, The Southern Voice, that was a preview of my book. I was obviously very critical of him, and they contacted him to get his response. At that point, he basically criticized me but didn’t deny anything I said in the book.
So, he wrote me an email shortly after the article appeared. As I recall the subject line of the email was “It’s not right.” And then as I opened the message it said, “It’s not right what you are doing to me. You’re going around the country spreading vicious rumors, untruths and lies about me and there is something wrong with that. We all need to come together and get along. I’m just trying to provide a service to the community.” At the end of his email he said he was going to pray for me because obviously there was anger in my heart. My tendency is that I respond to every email I get. And when I read that, I said this doesn’t even merit a response. So, I never replied and that was in December and I haven’t heard from him since.
Do you think your book has been successful?
I think my book was very successful in doing several things:
1) In addressing the lies and misinformation about the “down low."
2) In reaching a larger audience then I’ve been able to reach in any of my prior books actually. This is the first book I’ve written that became a New York Times Best-Seller.
3) I think it did a service in discrediting J.L. King and his message.
But didn’t J.L. King just come out with a new book?
He does have a new book out, it did not go on the New York Times best-seller list, and it’s been out for more than a month. It is not doing very well on Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble or any listings. It’s not selling anywhere as far as I can tell. And it hasn’t been reviewed anywhere for that matter. His new book as far as I can tell is a big flop. The funny thing about it, in that same email he sent to me last December, he threatened me by saying that people were going to boycott my book. He said that black women in particular were going to boycott my book because I was attacking him. He also pointed out that there were so many books coming out about the “down low” in 2005 that my book was just going to get lost in all the others.
But it turns out that my book has been the most successful of all the new books on the “down low." His ex-wife came out with a book on the “down low” that really hasn’t done very well. There are two other books, one fictional and one non-fictional about the “down low” that came out this year, neither one is really doing well.
So when you wrote the book, you weren’t thinking that the fact that it was on the “down low” would make it a hit?
I don’t think it’s just the “down low.” I was on the Tom Joiner Joyner morning show back in March I think, and the host of the show, Tom Joiner Joyner, asked, “Well you knew when you wrote a book about the “down low” it was going to become a best-seller, right?” And I thought, well no I didn’t know that, no I had no idea. I don’t think it’s just the subject, because obviously there are many other books out about the subject that are not best sellers, including J.L. King’s new book. I think it’s the message. People are looking for something that goes a little deeper than what J.L. King provided. He’s always going to have an audience of people that just want stupidity and nonsense, and I’m sure people will buy his book for that. But I think a lot of people who’ve read my book now have reason to question him and tell their friends to question him - particularly when they know he’s not even writing his own books and that his motivation is money and he’s not very informed about the issues.
This whole situation can be very frustrating at times because I feel sometimes like I’m knocking on a door and no body is answering, but there are times when I feel that people are paying attention. At times I’ve spoken to reporters who really don’t seem to get it and that troubles me even more.
Can you give an example?
On February 7, the Washington Post reported a story on the front page, the headline of which was, HIV/AIDS rates soar among black women. The story talked about the “down low” as a cause of the AIDS epidemic in the black community.
I wrote to the reporter because I knew the reporter from a previous contact and I told him the story and the headline and statistics quoted there in were inaccurate. I even gave him a link to the CDC website with the accurate statistics. I gave him the name of the communications director at the CDC, Carlie Stanton, and I told him what the statistics were that were wrong, including the headline, because the headline said that AIDS rates were soaring. The truth was HIV/AIDS rates had actually declined 6% in the previous four years among black women. But, they were so invested in reporting this old story that had no basis in fact anymore that they didn’t even really want to challenge it.
What did the reporter do after that?
He wrote back to me by email and the first line was “For crying out loud Keith," and then he went on to say, “it doesn't really matter whether the AIDS rates have increased or decreased or flat lined, the point is there is a problem here and I am trying to minimize the problem with my statistics.” Ahh…I just felt like, oh my God what will it take to get people to know the truth here. So that can be very frustrating.
Are there other ways the media have disappointed you?
I just wish that someone in the press had written an investigative piece about J.L. King and his views. I tried to do some of that in my book, but how is it that this guy was involved in a relationship 25 years ago and that’s relevant to the HIV/AIDS epidemic today. When at the time he was involved, there was no AIDS epidemic. And, how is it that he writes this book about the “down low” with no information that nobody challenges. And then his ex-wife writes the other side, with a book that’s written by the same author. I mean neither one of them wrote their books; it’s the same person, Karen Hunter, who wrote both sides. It seems like such an obvious sham.
What about Oprah?
I’m going to give her a pass on this, because as long as she doesn’t do anything else on it, I’m not going to be critical. If she does another story on the “down low” and doesn’t present both sides, it would be a huge mistake. It can be a hard story to figure out. But, I’m glad she didn’t put J.L. King back on there again, or J.L. King’s ex-wife on there without showing a different perspective.
You must be pretty skeptical of the media after all this…
I’ve always been. I’ve worked with the media all my life. When I was in college I was editor of my college newspaper. My first job out of college was working with the media on the Dukakis campaign. When I was in law school, I was a media spokesperson for an organization on campus. Then when I was in the White House, I worked as a spokesperson for the White House. So, I’ve worked with the media all my life. I even taught courses on media when I was in Washington D.C. at American University. I have always had sort of a healthy respect and skepticism for the media.
In your book you also talk about an article that Andrew Sullivan wrote sort of announcing the end of the AIDS epidemic…
Andrew Sullivan used to be one of my heroes. When I was in law school I invited him to come to Harvard to give a speech and I think at that time he was still an editor at the New Republic. He came and I spoke to him and I admired him and I applauded what he was doing, even though he was a conservative. He was willing to speak up as an iconoclast, and I appreciated that.
Over the years, I found that I disagree with him a lot more than I agree with him. What really caused me to part ways with Andrew is just the whole notion of the way he treated the AIDS epidemic and his New York Times Magazine piece in 1996. I think the title of the article was “When Plagues End” or something like that. And I remember reading that back then and was like wow, I have friends that are still dying from this and here’s this guy who obviously has access to wealth and resources, whose friends obviously have that same access, who sees a whole different side. I think he’s sending the message that will encourage people not to pay attention. I don’t blame him for doing that, the media wanted a new story and he offered the new story to them.
Would you say the black community is more hostile than other groups towards homosexuality?
That’s a really tough question. In my first book, One more River to Cross (1996), I actually spent a chapter where I wrote that homophobia is no worse or no better in the black community than in any other community. But I swear, the last couple of years have forced me to challenge that - the whole gay marriage debacle, the “down low” story and all these other things going on. I still think basically my original theory was true, but I have to give new context to it I guess.
The black community historically has been politically progressive but socially conservative. So from a political perspective on civil rights issues, black people I think do get it with regard to gay and lesbian civil rights protection. From the social perspective or morality perspective, we are probably way behind - we don’t get it. We tend to be far more conservative than whites on morality issues and with respect to homosexuality. So there in lies the difference.
In the polls I’ve seen over the years you see that blacks were as supportive or more supportive of civil rights for gays and lesbians than any other group, including whites. The only exception is the issue of relationships, gay relationships, where blacks tended to be more conservative. And I think that was because we saw it as a morality issue instead of a civil rights issue. I think that trend has continued over the years.
We know it’s hard to separate, because you are both, but do you feel more discrimination from being black or being gay?
Since sexual orientation is not easily visible, I’m more likely to experience discrimination because of my race. So if I try to get a taxi in midtown and they pass me up to pick up someone else, they don’t know that I’m gay unless I’m holding my partners hand. But they can see I’m a black man. So more likely discrimination is based on race.
On the other hand though, there is always another hand, I think that overt racial discrimination has become much less acceptable in our culture than it was say when I was born in 1965. And so I think overt homophobia on the other hand is still really tolerable in many quarters and not frequently challenged. So, I think those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender are more likely to come into contact with bigoted remarks than are African-Americans because most people who are prejudice towards blacks won’t say it to their faces.
So where are you now with regards to the “down low?" Are you still doing publicity for the book?
This whole experience has really tired me out, where I really don’t want to do the “down low” thing anymore. I had a tour planned from January to May, which I’ve basically done, and then I was gonna do some extended events in June, July and August, and I just decided recently that I’m not going to do those, unless something changes. I am really tired of talking about the “down low.” Even though I feel there is a message that needs to be communicated, I run the risk of perpetuating a story that I’ve tried to kill.