All Boys Aren't Blue

Femme is the French word for “woman,” although it has more nuance when used in English. Johnson defines “Black femmes” as “an umbrella term that captures Black trans women, Black queer men, nonbinary folk, [and] cishet Black women” (39). In essence, a Black femme is any Black person who is not a man and does not aim for masculinity. As an umbrella term, there are people within the groups Johnson names that may not be “femme” in the sense of “feminine.” For example, some nonbinary people may dislike the term, and traditionally masculine presenting queer men might also not fall under the term. All femmes, however, are viewed by society as feminine and therefore subject to misogyny and misogynistic attitudes. This includes being erased from their own inventions (like slang), which often happens to doubly marginalized Black femmes and other femmes of color.

Cisgender is often abbreviated as “cis.” Being cisgender means to be relatively comfortable with the gender one is assigned at birth. It also implies being comfortable with the puberty one will experience without hormone replacement therapy.

Although Johnson does not use this term within the memoir, it functions implicitly as an opposite to being transgender; e.g., where Johnson and Hope are not cisgender, Nanny, Johnson’s mother, and Kenny are. Throughout the memoir Johnson expresses fear that people they care about will reject them precisely because those people are cisgender (and likely heterosexual).

Cishet is a portmanteau that combines “cisgender” and “heterosexual.” Johnson uses this term when explaining who falls under the umbrella of Black femmes. “Cishet” often refers not only to the orientation and gender identity that society takes as “normal,” but also to the assumed behavior and social roles that accompany being a (cishet) man or (cishet) woman. Johnson’s self-isolation and inability to love themself for much of the memoir stems from these societal expectations and their inability to conform to them.

The closet is a metaphor in the queer community for hiding one’s identity from people and allowing them to assume one is cishet as a “default.” “Outing” derives from the metaphor of the closet and refers to involuntarily revealing someone’s identity. Alternatively, one chooses to “come out” of the closet. Johnson struggles with being in the closet throughout the memoir and looks to college as an opportunity to come out of the closet permanently.

Code-switching is the act of changing one’s behavior and language when interacting with different groups, often based upon what each group deems appropriate. In Chapter 3, Johnson does not use “girl lingo” around boys or boy lingo around girls (39). Code-switching protects Johnson from harassment by the boys while enabling them to switch back to a more authentic self when playing jump rope with the girls.

Code-switching frequently implies switching away from a more authentic self to something less authentic but more acceptable to the group one is interacting with. For example, code-switching often references how racial minorities in the United States feel compelled to “act white” when interacting with white people. When Nanny answers the phone in Chapter 2, she answers with her “usual white-lady voice” (30), switching to something white people deem more respectable when a white person may be on the phone.

At the beginning of Chapter 10, Johnson identifies critical race theory as central to the memoir. Critical race theory is a cross-disciplinary academic field, encompassing everything from anthropology to law, that examines the intersection of race, law, and social perceptions of race within the United States. Proponents of critical race theory view race as a social construct—i.e., a creation of contact with racist legal institutions and the law itself. Critical race theorists propose racism does not come innately to people but is instead manufactured and reproduced by societal structures. This stands in contrast to popular mainstream conceptions of racism as a personal moral failing with no (or few) roots in society and its institutions.

Johnson mentions this term only once, but critical race theory’s conception of race shapes the entire structure of Johnson’s memoir. In Chapter 5, Johnson remarks that the only Black teachers in their elementary school tended to draw the Black children to them and were regarded as having the “bad students.” Johnson uses critical race theory to look beyond individual students to try to understand why the educational system labels students as problems or practices de facto racial segregation. Whenever Johnson speaks about their personal experience in one paragraph and discusses American history and social context in the next, they are using the lens of critical race theory.

Gentrification is the act of rich and privileged people buying property in a more impoverished area and pricing existing residents out of their own neighborhood (often to attract further wealth and investments). Gentrification very often has racial overtones, with white people gentrifying neighborhood traditionally inhabited by Black people or other people of color. Gentrification appears in Chapter 8, where Johnson’s maternal grandmother’s home, a place rich with family history, is leveled to build a parking lot.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus that weakens the immune system and, if untreated, develops over time into acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which causes a total collapse of the immune system and leaves one vulnerable to infections and cancers. HIV/AIDS began to appear in the US in the late seventies and early eighties, spreading through bodily fluids. At the time there were few treatments available, and it had an extremely high fatality rate. In the US, it first appeared in gay communities and stayed largely contained within them for some time, giving rise to the misleading and stigmatizing name “GRID,” or “gay-related immune deficiency.” Anti-gay bias, coupled with bias against other demographics the virus disproportionately affected (e.g., people who injected drugs), made many governments slow to respond to the deadly epidemic—most notably, the US under President Ronald Reagan. Some viewed the mass death of LGBTQ+ people by HIV/AIDS as “natural” or even as divine punishment. The crisis was only relieved by the work of queer activists themselves, which led to the development of medications to combat HIV/AIDS.

These biases, combined with the broader anti-gay atmosphere of the seventies and eighties, have shaped contemporary conceptions of queer people in the United States. HIV/AIDS continues to disproportionately hurt queer communities of color. Johnson quotes the CDC to prove this (160). The context surrounding HIV/AIDS continues to make it hard for queer people to come out of the closet, as its association with queer sexuality associates LGBTQ+ identities with danger and dirtiness. This stigma around HIV/AIDS greatly contributes to Johnson’s struggles opening up to their family.

Intergenerational wealth is the ability of one generation of a family to pass on wealth and material assets to a younger generation of the family. This transfer of wealth can be direct—e.g., a grandparent giving a child money or a parent buying a car for their child—but intergenerational wealth often manifests less visibly, such as in a family paying for college or expensive private tutoring. The lack of intergenerational wealth is a major obstacle to breaking the cycle of poverty, particularly in communities of color, which have often faced additional institutional barriers to acquiring assets. Johnson’s family is an anomaly among the African American community because they have some intergenerational wealth.

Intersectionality, a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, is the practice of viewing a person’s identities (and the oppression that may adhere to those identities) not as isolated from one another but as overlapping and weaving together to form an identity distinct from the sum of its components. This is opposed to viewing the parts of a person’s identity as discrete and stackable—i.e., never interacting with or affecting one another. Johnson holds an intersectional identity as a Black queer person, facing struggles that emerge uniquely from where their Blackness and their queerness meet. For example, where a white queer person may still be relatively safe from police violence, Black queer people are more likely to be brutalized than Black people perceived to be not-queer. One of the most prominent themes of All Boys Aren’t Blue is this intersection of Blackness and LGBTQ+ identity.

Chapter 8 explains Jim Crow laws as “a set of rules put in place by white lawmakers to govern how ‘negroes’ were to be treated” (88). Johnson goes on to give examples of these laws, which were discriminatory and stoked fears about racial intermingling post-Emancipation. Jim Crow Laws illustrate the theoretical framework critical race theory proposes; they reinforce, create, and reproduce racism by creating a racist environment that shapes those who live in it. Jim Crow Laws haunt the older family members Johnson’s memoir mentions, like Johnson’s father and paternal grandmother. Johnson also describes Black teachers disliking their students using the n-word because of their experience with Jim Crow Laws. The last law recognized as a Jim Crow Law was repealed in 1965, meaning all of the older people within the memoir were alive during the Jim Crow era. The name Jim Crow is thought to come from “Jump Jim Crow,” a racist performance in the 19th century by white performers wearing black face.

The acronym stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual, plus. It is a more exact phrasing of what “queer” encapsulates, without relying on a reclaimed pejorative. Other forms of the acronym include LGBT, LGBT+, LGBTQ+, and so on. Identities whose letters are not present are still included in the meaning of any variation. Broadly, LGBTQIAP+ identities are gender and sexual identities that are “non-standard”—i.e., not cisgender and/or heterosexual.

A majority can refer simply to more than half of a whole. In a social context, however, it can also signify the group that holds power in a given situation, even if the group is not 51% or more of the whole. White people are the numerical majority population by a slim margin in the United States but hold a disproportionate share of government positions and other positions of power. Cisgender and heterosexual people are also a majority, creating an intersectional identity of those who hold power as typically white, cisgender, and heterosexual.

The concept of the majority is important to Johnson because they speculate in the introduction that “the majority fear becoming the minority, and so they will do anything and everything to protect their power” (8). This is in keeping with the theme of breaking cycles of violence that Johnson frequently touches on. For Johnson, it is the majority that creates these cycles to keep their power.

To be marginalized is to be on the margin, or on the edge far away from the center. Being marginalized is often synonymous with being a minority. Johnson often uses this term when talking about their identities.

Masking means to cover up and hide aspects of one’s identity to appear “normal.” This could mean masking one’s queerness or, in the case of Chapter 1, it can mean masking traumas that society deems it inappropriate to express. Johnson often has to mask; the smile they present to the world is a fake one that covers up their inner turmoil. Many marginalized people have to mask in some way, shape, or form.

Johnson defines microaggression in Chapter 5 as “when a person insults or diminishes you based solely on the marginalized group you are in. […] [They’re] calling attention to your differences in a low-key way” (60). The moment Johnson begins attending a predominantly white school they begin experiencing microaggressions from their white peers. As the name suggests, microaggressions are small but build up over time, causing stress for people in marginalized groups. For example, Johnson’s peers make assumptions about them being “ghetto” or from “the hood”—questions the white students would never ask another white student.

The opposite of a majority, a minority is less than half of a group and/or a group that does not hold political power and influence. Minorities must often practice masking and code-switching to navigate institutions and social situations controlled by the majority.

Nonbinary is an umbrella term that covers a diverse array of genders that fall outside of the gender binary. The gender binary maintains that there are only men and women and that being a man or woman entails thinking, feeling, and behaving in very narrowly defined ways.

Nonbinary people, like other transgender people, may or may not change their pronouns and name (often they use pronouns outside of he/him and she/her, such as they/them), and they may or may not otherwise transition. Though nonbinary is an umbrella term for people outside of the binary, many nonbinary people identify with the term itself and use it as a descriptor of who they are.

To out somebody is to disclose their queer identity to people who otherwise assume the person is cishet. To be out is to make people aware of one’s queer identity. This can potentially put somebody in danger, as the person they are not out to might react negatively or violently to the knowledge. Johnson gossips with Kenny and outs many of their line brothers; though Johnson knows in hindsight they shouldn’t have done this, it shows how excited they were to have somebody to actually discuss these things with.

Performance is a term closely tied to masking and code-switching. One performs an identity through conscious and unconscious choices (e.g., Johnson’s mannerisms, walk, and use of language like “honeychild”). Unlike masking and code-switching, performance can have the positive connotation of performing a desired identity that makes one feel at home. Johnson talks about this when they muse about their feminine performance in Chapter 3. They wonder whether their performance is innate or learned from Black women. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter because the performance feels right to Johnson.

Queer is an umbrella term that is synonymous with LGBTQ+. Unlike the acronym, it doesn’t contain letters that stand for specific LGBTQ+ identities. Instead, “queer” encompasses all non-cisgender and non-heterosexual gender and sexual identities. “Queer” is a reclaimed slur, much like “gay.” Due to this, some queer people are uncomfortable with its use, especially by people outside of the LGBTQ+ community. Johnson uses this term exclusively in the memoir to talk about their identity, both in terms of gender and sexuality.

To be transgender is to have a gender that is different than one’s assigned gender at birth. This may or may not include gender dysphoria, which is the discomfort associated with being referred to by one’s assigned gender at birth. Gender dysphoria may also extend to primary or secondary sexual characteristics that do not align with one’s perception of their body. Johnson is nonbinary—a designation that often falls under the umbrella term of transgender since nonbinary people have a gender identity other than their assigned gender at birth. As a child, Johnson thought they would transition but later figured out they did not need to in order to be comfortable with themself.

Transitioning encompasses a wide variety of changes to align oneself with one’s actual gender versus the gender society expects one to be. Transitioning can include hormone replacement therapy (HRT), vocal training, changing one’s grooming habits or style of dress, changing one’s name and pronouns, gender confirming surgery (GCS), and much more. What transition looks like is unique to every transgender person and may include all, some, or none of these aspects.