AUTHOR-ACTIVIST Keith Boykin’s latest book, Beyond the Down Low, published early this year by Carroll & Graf, explores an underground subculture of men who engage in same-sex sexual activity in secret while projecting a heterosexual public image. Attempting to counteract some sensationalized reporting on this phenomenon—such as the notion that the down low is exclusively the province of African-American men—the book became a bestseller that refocused the debate on “the DL.”
In his first book, One More River to Cross: Black & Gay in America (1996), Boykin argued that blacks and gays have in common a struggle against oppression and negative stereotypes. This and other points of intersection between gay issues and black issues have found their way into many articles in places like The Advocat
e and The Village Voice, and into his widely syndicated column in GLBT newspapers. Daily commentary can be found on his website at www.keithboykin.com.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was a leader in the campus diversity movement and editor of The Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review, Boykin went on to take a position in the Clinton White House as special assistant to the President and director of specialty media. For a time the highest-ranking openly gay person in the White House, Boykin helped organize the nation’s first meeting between gay and lesbian leaders and a U.S. president. Residing in New York City, he now serves as board president of the National Black Justice Coalition.
A popular public speaker and national media commentator, Boykin was invited to be the featured speaker at this year’s annual dinner meeting of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus. Soon thereafter, the following exchange was conducted in real time on the Internet.
