Pam's House Blend crossposted this Alvin McEwen piece of the Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters blog with his thoughts about a Newsweek article called Uncivil Rights comparing the African American and LGBT Civil Rights movements. This was the comment I posted on both the Blend and Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters blogs:
For far too long the peeps in the LGBT movement have forgotten that we exist, and it has been to the detriment of the TBLG movement as a whole.The African American community would like to forget that we exist, but news flash for the AA community, we're here and the chocolate SGL and trans community ain't going away.
I didn't give up my membership in the Black community when I transitioned, and I still get called the n-word by white peeps gay and straight.
And I agree we have a common enemy to fight in the same conservative anti civil right Forces of Intolerance the AA civil rights movement battled. They took the lessons learned in LOSING to us and are applying them in battling the GLBT movement
The sooner we start working together intersectionally, the better.
And as you probably guessed..it got contentious in the Blend comment thread from there. There has been this ongoing contentious back and forth sniping between the African-American and LGBT communities. The tension got ratcheted up another level in the wake of the 2008 Prop 8 loss and still hasn't simmered down much even though it's two years later.
And the Black SGL/TBLG community is uncomfortably in the middle of the debate.
We aren't seen as 'Black enough' by the African American community as SGL, intersex and trans community denizens. On the flip side the LGBT one questions our loyalties to it because of our cultural ties to other African Americans.
It's not an either-or proposition for me and many African descended TBILG people The bottom line is that we are both Black and part of that rainbow community as well Peeps on both sides need to deal with that reality.
We are tired of vanilla LBGT folks still acting pissy toward President Obama because they backed Hillary Clinton and she lost the Democratic nomination, and still hatin' by having unrealistic performance expectations for the POTUS that you didn't have for the previous Caucasian occupants at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue named Bush and Clinton. We also get upset when you fail to realize that your best friends in Congress when it comes to GLBT rights legislation have been the members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
The Black people are 'uniquely homophobic' meme that percolates in vanilla LGBT circle pisses us chocolate BTLGI peeps off. It galls us in light of our observation that the folks who are holding the petition drives, voting against GLBT rights legislation, founding orgs like Focus on the Family, calling you everything but Children of God and bankrolloing the efforts to keep you as third class citizens look like you.
But yet we're the 'uniquely homophobic' peeps you lash our at while failing to confront your oppressors in the GOP, fundamentalist churches and the conservative movement. .
At the same time as members of the TBLGI/SGL community and Christians we decry and can't stand the faith based hatred directed at the community that has resulted in many of our transsistahs being killed or injured due to ignorance and violence fueled by that rhetoric.
We have our hate pastors and assorted idiots, and we're fighting them tooth and nail as well. We will (and do) call them out.
But damn, we can't fight them and be sparring with y'all at the same time.
But like I said in the comment on both blogs, the gay and African-American communities have no option but to do a better job of working intersectionally.
