Each year, Dyana Mason kicks off the summer with two road trips: one to Washington's black gay pride celebration in May and a second to its predominantly white June counterpart, Capital Pride. Mason, director of an advocacy group called Equality Virginia, is not alone. Through the fall, similar celebrations will unfold across the nation, underscoring a racial rift some say splinters gay America when a united front is needed most.
National gay and lesbian groups are responding with marketing campaigns and old-fashioned schmoozing to win over minority gays, many of whom argue white activists want their votes on gay marriage and other national issues, but rarely include poverty, racism and other minority concerns on their agendas. "We have this rainbow of unity 'We're all in it together,'" said Earl Fowlkes, president of the International Federation of Black Prides. "Truth be told, it's not that way." [...]
Well, duh.
It really does amaze me that people ever expect gays to be different in other ways than straight people. That we should all bond together under the giant rainbow umbrella of diversity, that we should become one in our gaiety, a single really big point of light, and so forth. But of course, it doesn't work that way. Gays can be just as prejudiced as straights, sometimes in weirdly peculiar ways.
....Roughly 4 million gay or lesbian adults live in the United States, according to the Gay and Lesbian Atlas, compiled by the Urban Institute. Among them are large groups of Hispanics and blacks; in Los Angeles, for example, the group found Hispanics lead 32 percent of all same-sex households. In the South, black gays head more than a quarter of gay households in South Carolina and Mississippi. The numbers say minorities are just as prevalent as whites. So why, then, do their faces number so few at national gay rights events? In 2000, the Human Rights Campaign set out to answer that question, surveying leaders in several communities of color across the country. "Their perceptions of us were rich, white male elitist organization with low investment in issues facing the multicultural community," recalled Donna Payne, senior diversity organizer with the HRC, the nation's largest gay rights advocacy organization. In addition to creating Payne's position, leaders began to showcase work by black, gay filmmakers in their Washington store, establish a gospel social and an outreach program to mentor gay youth at historically black colleges. [...] Hispanics and blacks say they feel distanced from a national gay rights agenda focused on same-sex marriage. Fowlkes and Perez named "existence issues" such as poverty, discrimination and job stability as primary for minority gays not wedding bells.
"If I don't have the money I need to have food in my refrigerator or to get on a bus to get to work, the whole issue of the right to marry, that's secondary," Perez said. "The lives of the folks on 'Will and Grace' are not necessarily reflective of the lives of gay Latinos."
But for some minority gays and heterosexuals distance from the white mainstream stems from a notion that race trumps all. It's an age-old idea that leaves many viewing themselves as black or Hispanic first and gay second.
"We (have) formed our own institution that being the prides, our social organizations, our social clubs," Fowlkes said. "All the things our parents and grandparents did to react to racism in their day." [...]
OK, yes ... but also no.
Yes, our parents and grandparents reacted to racism by creating parallel organizations and institutions. That's why, for example, the NAACP exist. That said, most, albeit not all, historically black colleges exist in part because the white state establishment felt that allowing us to have some sort of higher education was just ... they just didn't want to have to share space. In addition, our parents and grandparents, where separate organizations were clearly unequal, also banged on the doors of the white organizations, demanding to be let in, demanding to be heard.
And the plain fact is, race really does trump all. If I don't go around bellowing, "I'm here! I'm queer!" people may never realize that I'm gay; they will always and forever know that I'm black when they see me, whether I say one word about it or not. That's true for the majority of blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. The first reactions you get from people will be based in large part on what you look like, not who you are.
Posted by iain at October 10, 2005 11:18 AM
