"Part of what concerned me [about King and the "Down Low" phenomenon being publicized in the media] was that the connection between the down low and black women seemed a bit illogical. There were two ways to look at it. Either the down low was new or the down low was old, but either way it did not make sense. If the down low was new in 2001, it could not have been responsible for an epidemic that was twenty years old. On the other hand, if the down low was old in 2001, then we should have been alarmed about HIV infection rates among black women ten to fifteen years earlier when the epidemic was raging out of control...
"The AIDS community of funders, researches, activists...had a problem...some activists [in the early 90's] decided to market the epidemic for Middle America... 'There was definitely an effort to make AIDS more compelling to the Black community' [Phil Wilson] recalled, 'and that process entailed a de-gaying of the epidemic'..."
Keith Boykin
BEYOND THE DOWN LOW
From Chapter Five
"When a Disease Becomes an Excuse"
"Governor McGreeley [of New Jersey]'s wife must have been going through a full range of emotions the day she stood next to her husband at his press conference...McGreeley also admitted to 'an adult consensual affair with another man' which he said 'violates my bonds of matrimony'. That was the real bombshell...dropped that day...By announcing his affair with another man, Governor McGreeley...proved that the down low is not just a black thing...We should have known that black men were not the only ones who cheated on their wives. Or had we bought into the myth of black male identity that constructs black manhood solely as pathology?"
Keith Boykin
BEYOND THE DOWN LOW
From Chapter Four,
"It's Not Just a Black Thing"
"I believe the recent trend toward demonizing those who are HIV positive for failure to disclose their HIV status sends the wrong signal. It stems from our need to blame other people for our own failures, and it is based in an unhelpful concept of victim-based morality that takes away our personal responsibility and assigns all the blame and puts all the responsibility on those who are HIV positive. Blaming someone else for our own actions will not change our actions, nor will it change the past. By the time you get to the point of blame, you have already passed the point of responsibility."
Keith Boykin
BEYOND THE DOWN LOW
From Chapter Twelve,
"Let's Talk About Sex"
Keith Boykin's heartfelt book BEYOND THE DOWN LOW: SEX, LIES AND DENIAL IN BLACK AMERICA is a scathing critique and passionate love letter to the Black community simultaneously. Simply put, Boykin analyses the structural hypocrisy, denial and irresponsibility that lie at the core of the African-American conversations about class, sex, sexuality, honest communication & true intimacy in relationships, racism and AIDS. It is his profoundly logical belief that these structural hypocrisies--concretized in Black culture by their deification in the fear-based, narcissistic linguistics of much of the Black church--combine with HIV to make any and all spreading of AIDS the seeming epidemic it has become in the Black community--not Black bisexual men in the closet (termed the "Down Low" community of brothers by J.L. King in his book).
Boykin's analyses of the myths in the Black community, those of the dominant culture, the gay subculture in both communities and the immature beliefs regarding honesty, communication and sexual responsibility of many Black women in relationships that Boykin reveals are made more astounding by four things:
1) his actual quoting of Center for Disease Control statistics on HIV and AIDS, the likes of which J.L. King purposely never quotes in his book (for reasons he describes that would have had him sued by King for libel by now if they weren't true)
2) His candid revealing of his life and mores as a gay man and his advocacy for the gay community
3) his blistering critique of both the character and motivation of J.L. King, on the basis of having spoken with him personally on several occasion, and
4) the powerful critique and detailed analysis of the book, ON THE DOWN LOW; a book that Boykin reveals was not actually written by J.L. King, but by a professional Hollywood ghost writer he hired with the express purpose of creating a hysterical media buzz around the topic.
The media hype on the subject of King's product was successfully achieved by this year (when King appeared on Oprah) for the benefit of (what else?) making money on the fears and emotional issues of Black women in particular and the latent racism of white people in general. Nothing sells better than sex...except fear. J.L. King used both to sell his product: ON THE DOWN LOW. Truly, Boykin in BEYOND THE DOWN LOW shows that the whole "On the Down Low" phenomenon has been brought to hysteric proportions in an amazingly short amount of time in the exact same way the Classicist scholar/Reactionary Republican Mary Lefkowitz' uneven, politically biased and scientifically inaccurate critique of Afrocentrism called NOT OUT OF AFRICA did: it combines a topic of emotion-producing complexity (for Lefkowitz: the crisis of integrity in academia and ancient cultural research; for J.L. King: bisexuality in 21st century America) with another simplistic application of the 19th century *Black Buck/crazy Nigga/Mandingo* myth in modern times.
J.L. King's book is still incendiary and important, because it reveals the closet bisexual phenomenon and its actual consequences to people in both the homosexual and heterosexual community (who didn't already know about it), when combined with deceit and HIV. In fact, the only thing that could put ON THE DOWN LOW in its proper context, for the good of the Black community and the world at large, is BEYOND THE DOWN LOW by Keith Boykin.
Read this soon; read it now.