Quickly: Race and Prop 8 etc.

Folks want to know what I think about the big media blame-game suggesting that Black and Latino voters are responsible for the anti-gay initiatives passing (esp. prop 8) on Tuesday. I am still too sick to write anything hugely coherent, but here's a list of points to keep in mind:

1. Race-baiting was a huge weapon in this campaign from the primaries to the general election. The media loves it and is looking to divide us into neat segments: the Blacks versus the Gays.
Resist this.

2. Anti-gay legislation passed by much wider margins in much higher numbers in the Bush elections. No record minority voter turn-out then, but no one said "it's the white people! they're all homophobic!"

3. Guess what? There are Black and Latino queers.

4. Gay rights are not the same thing as anti-racism. The movements have different contexts and different histories. White queers have not done their homework on the struggle for racial justice. They simply haven't and it has always turned my stomach when some ignorant middle-class white queer who knows nothing about the meaning of race in America compares marriage equality with the struggle for racial justice. There is loads of racism in the mainstream queer community and its flagship organizations. After years of shunting queers of color to the back of the bus, white queers should not expect to be understood and supported by minority voters. If we want minorities to take up our struggle, we sure as heck ought to have taken up theirs a long time ago. It ain't too late. Do some reading and educate yourselves and don't say one more time that not being allowed to marry is just like Jim Crow.

I am not saying that one group or the other is more oppressed. I'm saying the history of anti-racist struggle in this country deserves the respect of specificity. Co-opting its imagery is cheap and disrespectful. Not being allowed to marry is precisely that: not being allowed to marry. And that is stupid and sucks on its own without lazy knee-jerk comparisons. But I have to say that there are also worse injustices a person could suffer. And queers have and do suffer much worse. Usually though, these are not the middle and upper -class, privileged white queers who think that civil marriage is the key to liberation. And the people who've suffered the most as queers have been left in the cold by the mainstream movement too.

Saint Francis prayed "not to be understood but to understand" and that's what we white middle-class queers need to work on if we would ask other minority groups to support our concerns.

5. If you are a church-goer, pick up a Bible and read it. Learn as much as you can about it, so that you can educate fellow Christians about what it does and doesn't say. I have a few reading suggestions here. The best actual Bible to read is the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version. Costs a pretty penny, but chock-full of scholarly notes. See also, this post from about this time last year.

Sorry not to be more eloquent ya'll. I have a nasty flu and a raging fever and must get back to bed.

Meanwhile, give some love to my latest (and pretty old yet, since I've been so ill) post at Strollerderby on marriage equality and children.

Comments

[elswhere]

This is excellent, and provides much food for thought. Thanks.

[Allie]

This is very interesting to me - watching the whole thing from another country.

Your point 1 conclusion - resist this - is vital, I think, wherever you are in the world.

[frog]

Shannon, this is why I adore you. Even sick, you manage to say what I wish I could have said. Love this.

[Islay]

I think what you have to say is SO important. I've always had this nasty suspision that the only reason that the anti-homophobia movement is so 'in' with the liberal, white middle classes is because of the perception that homophobia affects mostly WHITE people. I bet if it was percieved to affect mostly black people, latino people or asian people it wouldn't be half so championed. (And I speak as a white middle class lesbian).

[Jay]

2.) The perception is that most people are homophobic, regardless of race. The reason why blacks have been spotlighted after this election is due to the irony that in an election that opened new doors primarily for African Americans, African Americans overwhelmingly voted to restrict rights for another minority group.

3.) Um, no one is confused on that point.

4.) Nice generalizations about white queers. But this kills me: "...that's what we white middle-class queers need to work on if we would ask other minority groups to support our concerns."

They ought to support our concerns because it's the right thing to do. Or at the very least they ought not to vote to restrict anyone's rights. Why should gay people's knowledge of other civil rights battles be a prerequisite for us to demand to be treated fairly?

[demetra]

You missed the point Jay. It is insulting for homosexuals or anyone to compare the hideous history of slavery and institutionalized racism
to gay rights.

[Jill]

Thank you for posting this. I hate that there was anti-gay *anything* on any ballot for people to vote on, but the finger-pointing has been distressing to witness. Roll on the 15th, and let it be a start to something much more hopeful.

[Rosemary]

What's fun about your strollerderby comment...I'm from Arkansas. My parents voted for this ban. The earthquakes it can give your sense of roots and lineage when your parents vote that you should not be a parent, and you are in the process of adopting with your partner. . . .