Some of us are pressured into acceptance of an identity before we are fully ready to accept it ourselves

Kehinde Wiley - Support the Rural Population and Serve 500 Million Peasants, 2007 ['China' series]   (Source)

Gender is one of the biggest projections placed onto children at birth, despite families having no idea how the baby will truly turn out. (p. 08*)

It’s as if the more visible LGBTQIAP+ people become, the harder the heterosexual community attempts to apply new norms. (p. 09*)

I started writing this book with the intention that every chapter would end with solutions for all the uncomfortable or confusing life circumstances I experienced as a gay Black child in America. (p. 09*)

[...] now I know that queerness is a part of Blackness, and that there is no Blackness without queer people. (p. 12*)

The fact that I couldn’t see my full self in Black heroes or the history books was more about the changing of history to spare white guilt than it ever was about me knowing the whole truth. (p. 13*)

By the time I reached middle school and high school, suppression was my only option. I had become even more of a minority in the population, and I had to deal with the intersection of Blackness and queerness—and the double oppression that generates—for the first time ever. Fighting for Blackness in a white space came naturally to me, though, and I did it every chance I got. Fighting for my queerness, however, never seemed to be a viable or safe option. (p. 14*)

Her face became stone solid, teeth clenched. She looked at Little Rall with that face that every Black child fears from a Black mother. That face where you could see the words in their eyes before they spoke them [...] (pp. 28-29*)

When you are a child that is different, there always seems to be a “something.” You can’t switch, you can’t say that, you can’t act this way. There is always a something that must be erased—and with it, a piece of you. The fear of being that vulnerable again outweighs the happiness that comes with being who you are, and so you agree to erase that something. (p. 40*)

Although we were taught to love and adore Abe Lincoln for freeing us from slavery, I never once questioned why a hundred years later, Martin Luther King Jr. was still fighting for our civil rights. (pp. 50-51*)

American history is truly the greatest fable ever written. (p. 53*)

Even today, institutions are still having “the first Black person to…” And it means something.
It meant something when Halle Berry won the Oscar for Best Actress—still the only Black woman to do so. It was seen as progress when Hattie McDaniel became the first Black woman to ever win for Best Supporting Actress, but needed a special exemption to enter a whites-only building to accept her Oscar because of the venue’s adherence to Jim Crow–era segregation laws. It meant something when Obama became the first Black president, 219 years after George Washington, a slave owner, became the first white president—or 145 years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Symbolism gives folks hope. But I’ve come to learn that symbolism is a threat to actual change—it’s a chance for those in power to say, “Look how far you have come” rather than admitting, “Look how long we’ve stopped you from getting here.” (pp. 55-56*)

You must remember: No matter how it comes at you, the impact matters more than the intent. You are not some lab rat on display. If someone asks you a question and you have to squint your eyes and twist your face a little to make sure you heard them correctly, you’ve probably just dealt with a microaggression. (p. 59*)

Once I tried on my boots, I didn’t want to take them off. They came up about calf-high, and they had a little heel on them that made a clacking noise when I walked. They felt so perfect. They spoke to the boy and girl in me. Cowboys were manly, but the heel reminded me of my mother in her heels. They were the best of both worlds. (p. 65*)

It was a reminder of how we can take people for granted. It’s easy to believe that you will wake up every day with the people who were with you the day prior. You watch them age, but do you see them growing old or ever picture them not being here? (p. 91*)

It’s one thing to deal with just Black kids and worry about sexual identity. It’s entirely different to struggle with white kids because I was Black, and Black kids because I was gay. That double marginalization was a tiresome burden. (p. 126*)

[...] that is what coming out truly is. It is not a final thing. It’s something that is ever occurring. You are always having to come out somewhere. Every new job. Every new city you live in. Every new person you meet, you are likely having to explain your identity. (p. 131*)

Some of us are pressured into acceptance of an identity before we are fully ready to accept it ourselves. (p. 131*)

There is an old saying that talks about how “the thing you are trying to hide is usually what you give off the most.” All those years of thinking I was hiding something, and it was the most obvious thing people knew about me as soon as I entered the room and opened my mouth. (p. 131*)

I must say that it was challenging to write a young adult memoir, especially because I didn’t even know that was a thing. I should also say that writing a “memoir” and only being thirty-three years of age seemed a bit narcissistic at first. But knowing that the legacy of the book isn’t about me removes nearly all of those feelings. It’s for you. (p. 160*)
* as indicated on my e-book reader

George M. Johnson - All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020)