Two Articles in the Archive: Portraits of Elizabeth LGBTQ Youth Under a Heteronormative Lens
Yamil Avivi
During the summers of 2013 and 2014, I had been searching for local newspaper articles about Elizabeth youth in the 1980s-1990s. My hope was to gain more local context and discourse around youth of color in Elizabeth. I found that the local Elizabeth Daily Journal, a long-defunct local paper, was a gold mine for different articles about the school environment at Elizabeth High School and academic performance among the students there. Surprisingly, the Elizabeth Public Library had a handwritten index of topics this paper covered. In particular, the index documented articles about the high school that provided some important historical context and discourse surrounding the school. For me, that meant weeks of research at the Elizabeth and Woodbridge Public Library, sorting through tons and tons of microfiche during 2013-2014. It was through my findings in the Elizabeth Daily Journal that I came across the state investigation in 1991 about Elizabeth High School’s underperformance and truancy. Most of the interlocutors I interviewed in 2013 and 2014 attended Elizabeth High School during the time that the investigation was happening.
However, I also knew that I could not rely on the Elizabeth Daily Journal. I wanted to find more local archival possibilities. And to my surprise, I was able to locate two other local news journals. These were Spanish language, immigrant-owned ones, Despertar and La Tribuna, which Yale University archived. For this entry, I will refer to an article from La Tribuna. From what I gathered from this paper, the writers did not write directly about Elizabeth High School, but often presented images of youth. These portrayals of exceptional and successful Latinx and students of color either in high school or college were celebratory, in contrast to the negative and/or criminalized depictions I found in other mainstream media sources of the time. One could say that these upwardly Latinx mobile entrepreneurs in the journalism industry were reflecting themselves by seeking to portray the Latinx community and its youth in an aspirational way.
However, among the articles I found, the writers from both newspapers elided any discussion of anti-heteronormative gender and sexuality for a conservative and heteronormative readership. Overall, the writers portrayed these youth according to normative discourses of family, aspiration, and upward mobility. Youth never directed the conversation. In what follows, I show an article from each newspaper to suggest how their narratives and/or images need amplification to center either anti-heteronormative sexualities or queer genders and sexualities claimed by the youth. In the first article, I show how La Tribuna portrays an African American young adult as a model for Latinx youth and parent readers but may also be eliding important characteristics about that individual and, generally speaking, the fashion industry of that time, namely that LGBTQ youth and young adults are/were driven to work in it and led successful careers. The second article is from the Elizabeth Daily Journal and is the only article I discovered that names some of my LGBTQ interlocutors, but discussion around gender and sexuality difference is not raised and is quite possibly intentionally thwarted.
La Tribuna de North Jersey: The Promising African American Young Adult in the Fashion Industry
In a visual text dated August 20, 1994, under a section titled “News from Elizabeth,” journalists from La Tribuna featured Anthony Mark Hankins, a 25-year-old Elizabeth native. What is striking about this article is that this is the only text I came across in which the Latinx/Spanish-speaking staff ran an article about an African American young adult. Under Hankins’ picture, the caption says, “Sons of Elizabeth.” Hankins’ educational and work accomplishments are captivating and a source of pride for the city (hence the title). Like the Latinx youth and young adults featured in this paper, even though Hankins is seemingly not of Latinx parentage, his exceptional achievements make him worthy of being featured, especially as an example instructing Latinx youth not to be “lazy,” “apathetic,” “non-aspirational” or “delinquent” but instead to think about being goal-oriented, getting ahead, and working toward achievement. The journalists describe Hankins as a designer who graduated from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and works as a designer for JCPenney. They state that he worked for designers Yves St. Laurent, Willi Smith, and Adrienne Vittadini (9).
While Hankins certainly deserves to be recognized for his accomplishments and for moving ahead as an Elizabeth (assumed) African American, I have questions about the possible subtexts holding this article together. Employing a queer of color critique lens, a more critical reading of the image and text of this article engenders critical questions about Hankins’ gender and sexuality, and about overall perspectives of the fashion industry centering those very markers. The article is laid out very tightly, with no room for exploration or nuance. Hankins’ image appears conservatively male and impeccable, dressed in an ironed button-down shirt and tie, unlike the subculture styles of youth (as discussed in my book chapter) that are unruly, revealing, eccentric and even perceived as threatening in some instances. His beard is perfectly trimmed. Hankins comes across as slightly uptight, with a feigned smile as if he is exerting extra effort to perform “exceptionality.” Hankins’ subtly uncomfortable glare may even be slightly subversive, especially if in fact he was out during that time. It’s as if he is following the instructions of the staff who were trying to uphold a masculine, male and heterosexual image.
In effect, the presentation almost leaves no room for contemplating possible queerness but just assumes heteronormativity. His portrait strikes me as very stiff and rehearsed in how he is posed studiously, holding a sharpened pencil and design sketch. The picture evidently reflects the staff’s gaze in presenting him as a “good,” “exceptional,” and heteronormative African American young adult adequate for the moral instruction of family and youth alike who read the paper. There’s no room for Hankins to discuss how he navigates a queer-friendly industry or diversity. There is even less room for him to suggest that he might not actually be heterosexual.
Elizabeth Daily Journal: Containing Students in a Heteronormative Narrative of Respect
After reviewing a hundred handwritten index cards containing article titles written in neat cursive, I came across a reference to an article dated April 11, 1991, entitled “Youth Poll” and did not think much of it. But after reading the article, I knew I had come upon something invaluable. It was a rediscovered treasure both for my research and for one of my interlocutors, with whom I had been extensively in touch about LGBTQ youth in the high school. While the rest of the articles provided historical context and details about the school environment, this one showcased a couple of the LGBTQ students my chapter discusses! The article reflects how the writer missed an opportunity to raise any awareness of sexual and gender non-conformity within the high school.
The article is based on a simple question, “What do you consider the most important thing in your life?” that was asked of a racially diverse panel of Elizabeth High School Students. I want to direct attention to Danny Tiberius Ninja Infiniti (street name) and Jean Paul Fields (street name) who were at the time LGBTQ students. In all fairness, the question is not a leading one nor does it directly focus on the troubling issues within the high school at the time. Both Danny Tiberius Ninja Infiniti and Jean Paul Fields very similarly say that one of the most important thing(s) in their lives is “getting respect for me in this school.” They also similarly answer that their families are equally important. Ultimately, their answers about “respect” do not reveal the actual tensions they faced being LGBTQ nor the lengths they went to in order to stand out as LGBTQ eccentric students. The writer does not attempt to have the students further amplify why they want to gain respect, exactly. Ninja Infiniti explains that after fighting for respect in the school, he aspires to, “be who [he wants] to be,” which resonates with being different from others despite criticism. Fields explains clearly that fighting for respect involves being marked as a “minority,” yet it’s not clear what identity markers he may be referring to. But like Ninja Infiniti, he is signaling that he is different from the majority and is therefore marginalized, excluded, and treated as a second-class citizen.
Even more, both raise the importance of their family, despite the tensions and struggles I have come to understand that each faced when coming out courageously to their parents and their friends’ parents without much support other than from their street friends. For one, their friends’ parents perceived them as a bad influence on their peers. Ninja Infiniti, for example, has reiterated to me his late mother’s tireless attempts to get him to change his orientation and lifestyle both during and after high school. Even more, he recounted how his friends’ parents called his mother, demanding that she make him cut ties with their sons because he was influencing their sexual and gender orientation. In fact, Ninja Infiniti said that his parents and his friends’ parents equated being LGBTQ with being in an immoral lifestyle in which getting HIV/AIDS and spreading it to others was inevitable. The early to mid 1990s was certainly a time in which the HIV/AIDS scare was rampant, and a working-class gay youth of color was one of the faces of HIV/AIDS. Given their parents’ lack of support and friends’ parents treating them as a bad influence, it is very likely that both Ninja Infiniti and Fields were brief in making their statements. Yet, the writer wrote the article in a safe format. The writer did not elicit anything further, or in other words, push to ask what they meant by respect.