An open letter to the editors of the Journal of Language and Sexuality

In this open letter, I ask the editors of the Journal and its readers, to reflect on the Journal’s relationship to studies of language and Black sexuality, and consider new ways to reach scholars of Black life, culture, and language. Studies of Black language practices rarely deal with the ways that Black language practices are often complicated by gender/sexuality. And yet, there are scholars doing this work, but like Queer Linguistics, it often doesn’t “look” that way that typical studies of language are supposed to look. This is because linguistics and linguistic anthropology as disciplines have often failed to capture the imagination and attention of these scholars; it is not because studies of Black sexuality and language do not exist. I encourage the Journal then to seek out these studies and to do so with a sense of urgency.