Is Gay the new Black?
No. Black is the new Nay.
The Advocate had a potentially interesting cover story about African-American nay-saying to gay civil rights. I say “potentially” because the story punted on its own premise. You have to go two pages into the story before they actually say anything about the subject. It’s yet another example of the magazine’s ongoing struggle with publishing bulimia–Binging on a delicious topic, then throwing it up before it’s fully digested.
But enough about why the magazine’s so thin you could mistake it for a brochure. Truth is, it’s a very provocative title. Some excerpts:
“Gay is the new black in only one meaningful way. At present we are the most socially acceptable targets for the kind of casual hatred that American society once approved for habitual use against black people…
Except in a few statistically insignificant cases (the gay kid who happens to be the child of gay parents), being gay begins with recognizing your difference from the people with whom you have your earliest, most intimate relationships….
Our oppression, by and large, is nowhere near as extreme as blacks’, and we insult them when we make facile comparisons between our plights. Gay people have more resources than blacks had in the 1960s. We are embedded in the power structures of every institution of this society. While it is illegal in this country to fire an African-American without cause and in most places it’s still legal to fire a gay person for being gay, we are more likely to have informal means of recourse than black people have. Almost all gay people have the choice of passing. Very few black people have that option…”
Here’s the problem: While these are all good points, does it matter? Is black support for discrimination acceptable because there are differences between us? Methinks the writer punted. Instead of holding that part of the African-American population that supported Prop 8 accountable, he gave them a pass. It’s almost like he’s apologizing to them: ”Well, you know, we’re DIFFERENT, so you don’t have a moral obligation to stop what was done to you.”
By holding them accountable I don’t mean BLAME. I mean holding a mirror up. The way MLK did to that part of white America that objected to black civil rights. Mirrors have a way of double-checking our self-perceptions. If I were the editors of the Advocate, I would have put an African-American clutching his Yes on 8 ballot on the cover, looking into a mirror, and seeing George Wallace smiling back.
