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This is the same rationale the gay community used (however unintentionally) to keep black characters out of lesbian movies, and it has worked. Although films targeted at the lesbian community tend to include more diversity than your average film, the characters are still overwhelmingly white (as demonstrated in movies like If These Walls Could Talk 2).

But the "right time" almost never just "comes along," it has to be created.

It doesn't help that well-known black actresses who might have some clout in the writing/directing/producing process do not appear to be clamoring for these roles. Even if they have good intentions, it's likely that what keeps black actresses out of black lesbian roles is the same homophobia that keeps lesbian characters out of black movies.

If you watch what's coming out of Hollywood, in fact, it appears that Nia Long, Whoopi Goldberg, and Queen Latifah are the only established black actresses willing to play lesbian characters. (Whoopi Goldberg played a lesbian in the The Color Purple, Boys On the Side, and The Deep End of the Ocean; Queen Latifah played a lesbian bank robber in Set it Off, and Nia Long played a lesbian in If These Walls Could Talk 2 and The Broken Hearts Club.)

You might be able to include Nicole Ari Parker in this list (recently in Remember the Titans and Showtime's television series Soul Food), because she played a lesbian/bisexual teenager in 1995's The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love. But she was completely unknown at the time, and the film was targeted at the gay community, not the black community, and she has not played a gay character since then.

There are many lesser-known black actresses playing gay characters in independent and/or gay movies, such as T. Wendy McMillan in Go Fish, and Cheryl Dunye in Watermelon Woman. But none of these roles (besides Latifah's) have been in movies designed for black audiences.

And even Latifah's landmark role is offset by the fact that her character falls into the tragic-and-criminal stereotype (and since Set it Off does not exactly fit into the "feel-good movie" category, it is also outside the scope of this article).

Straight black people clearly don't understand the scope of the problem when they ask black lesbians/bisexual women to be patient, or to "put the black community first." To put it simply:

• there are only a very small number of black lesbian/bisexual women in gay movies
• there are no black lesbian/bisexual characters in movies targeted at the black community
• the few lesbian/bisexual characters in mainstream movies are usually white

All of which adds up to almost no black lesbian/bisexual characters anywhere.

Since this is basically the same complaint the black community has been making about Hollywood for decades regarding the invisibility of black characters (and later, positive black characters) in mainstream films, it seems hypocritical for these same black writers/directors/producers to turn a deaf ear to this plea from members of their own community.

Because no matter how many black lesbian/bisexual characters are rendered invisible in the movies, in real life, black lesbians and bisexual women are not going away. It is both foolish and disrespectful to pretend otherwise.

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