Imagine you know these young people relaxing in the park. Picture how their goals, ideas and visions are entwined – how reliant they are on one another. Imagine one or two of them are Same Gender Loving.

Black on Black bigotry against just two of these youths (discrimination in hiring, ostracization by college dorm administrators, neighborhood humiliation, taunting and other forms of malice) can unravel all of their ideas, tear into their belief in one another like a bullet, and stagger their lives in various ways.

Intra-race bigotry, exclusion and discrimination ricochet through our communities taking a devastating toll on us all. Stale, deeply rooted prejudices are taking notes on our epitaph. We assume the role of the oppressor, numb to how susceptible we are to the repercussions we generate. If we open our eyes, the consequences are all around us. This does not suggest that bigotry and lack of acceptance is ramped only in Black communities. But, we have never based whether we “handle our business” on whose cultural prejudice is bigger.

We do know that our community bigotries are destroying us from the inside out leaving us in a state of perpetual traveling against the wind. We claim an anxiousness to take flight, while our dominators clip our right wing and we pluck feathers from our left. That is our quandary. Our cultural reckoning is that just like a safety deposit box, the door to our Black community progress will not open without a second, and in this case Same Gender Loving key.