Oral historian being transparent with storyteller. Illustration by Marina Labarthe.

Intro:  In this blog post, current OHMA student Marina Labarthe del Solar shares a conversation with Theodore Kerr about the importance of being transparent about your identity and positionality with the communities you work with. Marina writes about identity politics and how knowing where you stand with respect to power is an essential skill for oral historians.

We live in an interesting time, watching inequality widen under capitalism while the fragmentation and oversimplification of identity politics increases. We compete for attention and legitimacy based on how many oppressed identities we can claim. Before I met Theodore Kerr, all I knew about his identity was that he is a white cis man, who is HIV negative, working with communities that are HIV positive. I wrongfully assumed he would attempt to hide his HIV status unless asked. This is what people do, I thought. They downplay their privileged identities to shield themselves from critique, or just to seem cooler. To my surprise, Ted revealed his ‘relevant’ identities within two minutes of the presentation starting. I took a step back and realized I was now genuinely interested in what he had to say. Being transparent about who you are, being vulnerable about your own story, especially in Oral History and social justice work, is the first step in manifesting the values of equity and shared authority that we talk so much about.

Ted Kerr is a Brooklyn based writer, organizer and artist whose work centers the HIV/AIDS community and culture. Ted, however, was not always Ted. He once went by “Nebulous Negative”. Well, one person called him that, but still. It clearly stuck with him because he still talks about it today. I asked Ted to reflect on the importance of being transparent about your positionality with the people you’re working with, as well as your audience.

“When I was young and doing HIV work in Edmonton, I was often leading the conversations and I had an awareness of different people's different HIV status in a room. And I was aware that there were some people who were living with HIV who didn't want to or couldn't disclose their positive status for lots of reasons. Safety and a very rational fear of stigma being kind of the loudest. And so I would, on purpose, intentionally, not disclose my negative status. So I kind of used my positionality as a liked person in the room to absorb any fear of people talking negative. And I think that that was a fine thing for a young person with good intentions to do at the time. I understand where I was coming from. Then when I came to New York, I had a friend and we went for coffee, then halfway through the coffee, he basically suggested like that we had a shared HIV positive status together and that he had bonded with me over this assumption that we were both living with HIV and I had to disclose that I was negative. And it was hard. It was hard on him. It was uncomfortable for me.

“I realized that I had let anybody and everybody believe that I was living with HIV and that they'd created emotional and maybe intellectual bonds with me over that. And he called me a "Nebulous Negative" and he helped me understand that by not being clear about my negative status, that I was taking up space for positive people and that the HIV movement has been built on positive people naming and claiming their power. So people would listen to me, thinking that I was coming from a place of living with HIV when in fact, I wasn't. And that was important. And what I also learned during that period was that I had to make space for people to value that I was doing hard work, and as much as we should always privilege lived experience, we should also privilege— we should also acknowledge that some people do hard work to be good allies, or a lot of people do hard work to try to do it right and that if at least they're being honest about it, we should make space for that as well. So that's where I'm at now.”

Below, you can listen to an edited clip from our conversation on April 29th, 2020, which begins with the previous quote.

Ted Kerr talks about his early work with HIV/AIDS communities and learning about the importance of acknowledging your positionality.

What I loved about Ted’s story was the honesty, the vulnerability, and the compassion. These are all characteristics that, in my opinion, help make a good oral historian. One should be willing to put all their cards on the table when doing social justice work, where oftentimes you’re working with marginalized people who are not only deserving of that information, but might need that information to decide if they want to trust you or not. Oral historians should practice and advocate for reflexivity as a strategy for situating knowledge and they should have a strong sense of awareness on how identity intersects with institutional and geopolitical aspects of their own positionality. 

In the book I Hope We Choose Love [insert hyperlink], author Kai Cheng Thom writes, “The language of identity politics allows us to describe social power dynamics that would otherwise remain invisible, such as white privilege, shadeism, and transmisogyny.” We live in a society where people often attempt to downplay their privileged identities and amplify their marginalized ones. This aspect of identity politics makes me highly uncomfortable because it is completely disingenuous and self-serving. We don’t want to reduce ourselves to our ‘relevant’ identities, but we want to be visible and knowable. The transparent-self looks outward, understanding its place in the world and knows where it’s situated in relation to power. 

Marina Labarthe del Solar was born and raised in Peru and migrated to the U.S. in 2005. They are graduating from OHMA in May, 2020. Their thesis, Enby Spoken Histories, centers nonbinary and transgender voices, offering space for lifesaving conversations for listeners seeking human resonance.