Monday, November 17, 2008

Prop 8 and Gay/Black Relations

I'm glad that the rhetoric has cooled a bit. I for one was getting quite sick of being blamed for something I didn't do. I can't read fast enough or care hard enough to follow all the threads that are sewing there way through the internet right now on this topic. I just find it incredible interesting that somehow every one of the country's woes somehow or another ends up being black folks fault. But guess what, it turns out it was all a myth after all --

At the end of the day, Prop 8's passage was more a generational matter than a racial one. If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two.
[From FiveThirtyEight.com]

This is also assuming that there are no such thing as a gay Black person. The ABW posted about this topic (based off of a comment by little ol' me no less, WoooHooo!) that goes into the reaction from the other side of the fence.

And speaking of fence, I find it really fascinating that the reasonable guy in this Colbert clip is the same Dan Savage who said --

—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color. [From the Stranger]

He has been playing both sides of this issue. First, let's blame the blacks for all their homophobia. Then, let's be all reasonable.

And huge number, huh? So a small population of a small population in California are equal to all Black people, huh? Maybe this was a knee jerk reaction on Savages's part after the initial shock of the passage of Prop 8. But it also was a racist knee jerk reaction. (I'm not calling him a racist, I'm saying what he said was racist. There is a difference. One is about who you are, another is about what you did. See this for an explanation of the difference.) It strikes me that his Colbert appearance was some kind of spin control. (BTW, Dan Savage, thanks for getting this nasty business going, you careless jerk.)

This situation is a little bit of the chickens coming home to roost. Black feminists have been screaming about the racism in the gay community for years with no one paying even lip service to the issue. Now, that lack of interest, the lack of organization, the lack education, and the lack community bonding between the two groups has come back to bite everyone in the butt.

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