The intersection of multiple identities is introduced as early as the title in Danez Smith’s “& even the black guy’s profile reads ‘sorry, no black guys.’” In the poem, the narrator articulates the ways that a gay Black man’s sense of self is complicated by masculinity and sexuality. This theme is central to the poem’s message to the reader: these traits–Blackness, gayness, and masculinity–are “lovable” (Line 5) rather than things to be rejected.

Neither homophobia nor racism are directly named in the poem, yet they are critical aspects of both the narrator’s and the subject’s identities, as made clear by the multiple metaphors Smith uses to explore internalized self-hatred. The Black man whose profile rejects other Black man, in Smith’s eyes, looks “in the mirror” (Line 3) to “see a man you refuse to love” (Line 3). This rejection of the self, for Smith, is specifically caused by racism and homophobia, which starts early in childhood; the subject dreams “of soap suds & milk” (Line 4) as a child. In other words, even as children, Black boys (and especially queer or gay ones) are taught to think of themselves as dirty. Clorox, a bleaching cleaning product, is specifically used to scrub and whiten surfaces, while "milk" (Line 4) also evokes pure white

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