published on July 23, 2024 in Front Page News

Podcast aims to go beyond Surface Level discussions about being Black and gay in America

Popular culture tends to portray Black gay men as two extremes: the hypermasculine brute or the sassy femme.

Howard University alums Damon Epps, Tony Jermin and Jordan Randall hope to provide a broader and more nuanced take with “Surface Level,” a podcast full of uplifting stories, some comedy, and a lot of real talk centered on the reality of being Black and gay in contemporary America.

The show, started at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, examines societal expectations of Black gay men and attempts to shatter stereotypes through stories and interviews that amplify a range of voices and experiences.

“When it comes to representation in the LGBTQ+ community, especially with Black gay men, there aren’t a lot of representations,” said Jermin, a senior brand marketer for Nickelodeon. “We’re not a monolith. And we want to showcase that.”

Black gay men struggle more to find acceptance, whether it’s revealing their true self to family, friends on the block, college buddies, or in the workplace, because “there’s a lot of conditioning that happens within family dynamics and within the larger community, that this is how you’re supposed to show up in the world,” added Randall, who said it’s important that the trio use their platform to counter those notions.

A 2018 report from the American Psychological Association found that from a young age, boys are socialized not to cry, and to get swole and play rough sports. Another study on pop-culture consumption by the Association for Consumer Research noted that mainstream media — reinforced by hip-hop culture that signifies Blackness and its characteristics — intensifies those ideals for Black men. The hosts say society is simply not accustomed to accepting men, especially Black men, outside those linear identities.

“Sexuality and gender aren’t the same,” Randall said, “but we grow up thinking that we can’t possibly be accepted if we’re gay.”

Now in its third season, “Surface Level” has had an eclectic mix of guests, including a pastor; a gay activist and scholar; and a Google diversity, equity and inclusion expert. It has covered topics ranging from sexual health to body image to social issues to politics and dating. The idea is to broaden the discourse of the Black gay narrative — something they lacked when steering their journeys.

“The idea of what some think gay people are is maybe purely crazy sexual beings or people running around in Speedos with rainbows in June,” said Epps, a buyer for Calvin Klein. “That is not the experience of being a Black queer person. When I think about sexuality, yes, I think about freedom, but I’m also thinking about HIV rates within our community. [It’s] not just about rainbows and corporate banners, it’s about the persecution of Black queer people and Black trans people.”

In their “Dad, I’m A Bottom” episode, the three men, who met during their freshman year at Howard in 2007, explore what they experienced coming out to their fathers.

“After verbalizing both coming out and about being HIV positive to my parents, my relationship with them has gotten that much closer,” Jermin said.

But it’s navigating the workplace that can be most difficult, said Randall, a marketing director at Nickelodeon. “I spend a considerable amount of time adjusting the way I present myself so that other people will feel comfortable around me and will accept me. [In] the beginning of my career, I would dial down my gayness or not really make it a point of conversation because I had a natural anxiety operating around straight men” — an area the hosts interrogate in their “The Magical Negro Is OOO” episode.

It’s a complex reality assimilating to the corporate world as a non-heterosexual. And it muddies the coming-out process for Black men because they have a privileged position in terms of gender, said sociologist Tsedale M. Melaku, whose work focuses on race and gender inequities.

“When we’re thinking about the experiences of Black queer men in the workplace, it is understanding that their identity, in terms of being Black — a marginalizing identity with respect to race — is stigmatized [in] the workplace,” Melaku said.

Adding sexuality into the mix — when stereotypes are already stacked against Black men — complicates that intersectionality further because it is “oftentimes seen as an invisible form of identity. So, unless they are choosing to outwardly be themselves in spaces where they know they would absolutely face marginalization or oppression, that’s not something they necessarily want to share,” Melaku said.

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Frances Armas-Edwards, a Google inclusion expert who was a guest on the show’s “No Lesbians Allowed” episode, agreed: “There’s a lot of cultural norms around power and gender that are subverted by gay men and their authentic selves. That in and of itself creates a challenge.”

People in the workplace “didn’t just wake up this way,” Armas-Edwards said. “It was indoctrinated into them from a young age, they were fed it and it was reinforced in society.”

On that episode, the conversation landed on the broader LGBTQ+ liberation journey, examining what the movement looks like today, 52 years after the Stonewall riots, in various spaces. “Society seems to move forward, but there’s still so much progress left to be done,” Jermin said.

That June day in 1969, spurred by a police raid at Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City — a typical sweep during that time because homosexuality was still illegal in 49 states except for Illinois — the LGBTQ+ community stood in solidarity and fought back. That became the impetus for the gay liberation movement. The creators of “Surface Level” say they are especially keen on elevating everyday awareness of LGBTQ+ inclusivity that does not just center on one month.

“Oftentimes we don’t get to hear or see our stories,” Randall said, “because the media shows a very limited view of what our lived experiences are or have been.”

The significance of this month is not lost on them because Stonewall’s symbolism of resistance against sociopolitical discrimination that led to the framework of solidarity within the larger LGBTQ+ community underpins the wide-ranging issues they examine.

There has always been an added complication at the intersection of gender, race and sexuality within the many movements for equal rights — another theme discussed during the podcast’s “Masculine Sissy” episode, where the men explore, with sprinkles of their trademark levity, expectations of gender roles and the value of embracing their femininity.

The search for belonging for Black men compounds when layered within the Black church setting — an influential mainstay in communities of color. This was a highlight in Epps’s coming-out story, with his churchgoing parents, who took longer to process his reveal.

“My response was, ‘Hey, this is my life,’” he remembers telling his mother. “You can choose to accept me for who I am, where I am with my life, or you cannot.”

CJ Rhodes, senior pastor at Mount Helm Baptist Church in Jackson, Miss., said that the Black church has long accepted homosexuality but hasn’t always been affirming. More than that, Black culture itself has not encouraged exploring emotions or showing vulnerability.

“We’ve categorized so many things that are healthy as quote unquote being gay: crying, expressing your feelings,” Rhodes said. A lot of times, he added, heterosexual women will say to heterosexual men who may present as softer to toughen up.

“Whether they’re homosexual or heterosexual, [Black men then] find themselves alienated by various parts of the Black community because they’re never performing a certain kind of masculinity that they may see in some pulpits and definitely amongst certain rappers” — in those elements that have long influenced Black culture.

Rhodes said broad discussion is needed to create safe spaces for Black men to verbally express “any number of emotional realities, mental health, mental illness, traumatic experiences” that come with that. “The more we do that, the more we will come into a healthier masculinity, however that shows up in one’s sexuality.”

Melaku, the sociologist, agreed. “We need to have these types of podcasts that will highlight and center the experiences of people based on their nuanced social identity and location. [It’s] filling that gap; it’s talking specifically to the experiences of Black queer men and creating the space so that they’re no longer being silenced. So that their experiences aren’t marginalized.”

The hosts say that’s the sort of community they aim to foster through their candid “We go there” conversations on “Surface Level” — shaping the national dialogue on Black LGBTQ+ culture and demystifying the Black gay man.

“We want to challenge the status quo and question everything,” Epps said. “All the rules that we’ve been told exist don’t necessarily exist. It’s up to us to create whatever life that suits us.”

They want listeners to grasp and experience this through the stories they tell. “If one Black kid, anyone really, who is afraid of being themselves sees us, hears us and feels empowered to go out into the world as their true self, that’s how change begins,” Jermin said. “We’re creating that space we needed.”

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