The Meme That Will Not Die: Blacks Enabled Prop 8 to Pass
It's really time to stop dancing around the fantasy of a post-racial America, particularly with the exposed nerves around Prop 8. Here's another example of jaw-dropping color arousal and unhelpful ruminating, this time in an op-ed by Caitlin Flanagan and Benjamin Schwarz in the New York Times, "Showdown in the Big Tent" -- it asserts most blacks are homophobic, apparently due to race itself.
Christian teaching on marriage is not the only reason so many blacks supported Proposition 8. Although it has come as a shocking realization to many in this community, a host of sociological studies confirm that many blacks feel a significant aversion to homosexuality itself, finding it morally and sexually repugnant.
None of these studies are cited by the way, and besides, if we run with that ludicrous statement and take a look at general demographics in this country -- many whites feel a significant aversion to homosexuality as well, or we'd have marriage equality in quite a few more states. Homophobia has nothing to do with race; religious beliefs, levels of education and class are much better predictors -- and that applies across color lines.
A blanket statement about blacks and homophobia overlooks black LGBTs, secular blacks, those with high levels of education -- those who did vote against 8. Did these folks turn in their Negro card when they lost their homophobia? It's absurd thinking.
But acknowledging this that would render this op-ed's hysteria useless, facts and logic are inconvenient. It's amazing how intelligent people can so easily fall prey to their own biases, and display them so publicly.
Again, it's clear there are unique cultural factors that make homophobia in the black community worth exploring and combating, but this op-ed is unbelievable, even suggesting that
Many gay activists have begun quietly to suggest that had Hillary Clinton been the Democratic nominee, Prop 8 would not have passed.
Why will this zombie meme -- that the black vote was the cause of the failure to defeat Prop 8 -- simply not die?
Left-leaning California's horror about this newly revealed schism between two of its favorite sons is a situation that cries out for a villain, but the one that liberal white Hollywood has chosen for the role probably won't make it all the way to the third act."It's their churches," somebody whispered to one of us not long after the election; "It's their Christianity," someone else hissed, rolling her eyes.
Their churches -- those black churches did it. Have they forgotten who bankrolled Yes on 8 and exploited the cultural conservatism of a slice of the religious black community -- white evangelicals and Mormons. Gee, aren't the vast majority of those folks white?
More after the jump, including the unsettling news delivered to me on Saturday just before I had to go onstage to moderate a panel about building coalitions.
This kind of irresponsible baiting is incredible, yet I have to say that this kind of thinking is still roiling inside the LGBT community. On Saturday, just prior to the one I moderated at the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Conference, I had more than a few people come up to me to say that this kind of irrational, unproductive blaming was stirring among some of the attendees of a panel about Prop 8 moments ago.
Of course I was told this just before I had to go on stage and discuss "Winning Coalitions for the Common Good." Needless to say, it was intimidating to think that a good number of people in the room arrived agitated over Prop 8 and race, and here we were, there to talk about communication, reconciliation and moving forward.
As I said in my post about the plenary session, I had prepared opening remarks to lay the foundation for opening honest communication, and in light of what I was told about the rancor just before going on, I had no idea what to expect:
Today I'm here with my colleagues from the National LGBT Blogger and Citizen Journalist Initiative that is being held just a few blocks away. In many ways the issues we are discussing there have much in common with those this panel will address. In our workshops we are dealing with long-simmering communication challenges between blogs, traditional LGBT media, elected officials, community leaders and LGBT advocacy organizations. We're meeting to learn how to build mutually beneficial ties as we advance, report on, and provide commentary about the LGBT rights movement. The bottom line is that we have to add effective communication tools to our toolboxes to make that happen.And here we, at your conference, to being a discussion about how to achieve similar goals on a different front -- how to build stronger coalitions, in this case between the LGBT community and communities of color, labor, women, the faith community and other potential political allies for the common good. And that involves developing a framework for productive dialogue in the wake Prop 8. In the blogosphere the reactions were raw, long-simmering tensions were unearthed in a very public way.
The fact is, this wasn't surprising to those of us who inhabit both worlds as LGBT people of color. What it laid bare was the long-standing dire need for better communication between the LGBT movement and communities of color, and discussion about LGBT issues within communities of color. So I see this as an amazing opportunity for all of us to add tools to our toolboxes to reach our common goal of equality.
The panelists on stage with me, Kathryn Kolbert, President of People for the American Way; Assemblymember John Pérez of the California State Assembly; Robert Raben, of the Raben Group; and Dr. Kenneth Samuel, African American Ministers Leadership Council deftly negotiated this difficult territory, and the Q&A with the audience was productive. I left the stage with a sigh of relief; I do hope that there was active listening going on because that's the only way to move forward.
I did receive positive feedback about the session, so I left somewhat reassured that what was said gave people food for thought, and that they were perhaps ready to actually take action individually to leave their comfort zones to do the difficult work needed to use those tools in the toolbox and communicate beyond our fears about race, religion and difference. If we don't, the religious right will continue to exploit our inability to come to grips with the solvable schisms in our community.
Related:
* Nate Silver at 538.com takes on the Prop 8 Myths
* Open thread - flicks and pics from the conference
* Shameless celebrity moment at the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Conference (Kate Clinton)
* The National LGBT Blogger and Citizen Journalist Initiative
(UPDATE: Mike Signorile weighs in as well.)
Follow Pam Spaulding on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Pam_Spaulding
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FogCityJohn,
Finally...
Well said. These posts presume that gays are both ALL white and ALL racist. They also presume that cooperation and outreach doesn't already exist -- Critical Caucus is a prime example of this in Chicago, where a wave of murders against gay blacks on the South Side have garnered LGBT support in putting pressure on local law enforcement.
I have listened to accusations of "racism" leveled against the gay and lesbian community for reacting to a level of homophobia in the black community that no one seems prepared or willing to challenge on the basis that white racism will always eclipse black racism. While I have been lumped into the collective bigotry of "all us gays" by association, this practice has conveniently served to obscure any concern or outrage at the level to which the black community's own homophobia has condoned black-on-black violence. This violence receives little or no condemnation from church or community leaders because the victims are...gay. Here is an opportunity for black leaders to accept the outreach gays and lesbians are accused of not promoting.
(cont)
(cont)
I suspect much of these accusations have to do with the perception of the gay community as a "white entity" (appeasers are free to perpetuate this myth, but as a person of color, I find it insulting). What makes gays so easy to attack (as opposed to “the entire white race”), is that they represent a smaller, focused target -- a susceptible minority made up of members of the "oppressor class" whose rights are being debated on a national level. I read a post in which someone confessed that "[they] would support gay marriage if it weren't for those white gays." Let me be the first to propose that the black vote on Prop 8 had just as much to do with racism as it did with homophobia. It is this misappropriated bigotry that fails to recognize gays and lesbians as allies against discrimination and, if anything, might sheds some light on to the reasons why many have voiced their sense betrayal to this characterization. The vote against gay marriage was also a vote against whites.
Pam -article writer- good luck with your coalition building. Your work is cut out for you. You have some people who don't want anythig to do with blacks or think less of black people. These people are just as prejudice as the majority of white society. I will be looking for some sort of apology to blacks or repudiation of hate mongers (at a national tv level). How any self respecting black person could be part of an organization/group of people who condone this type of garbage is beyond me. Good luck again....I am glad you got the article up to discuss.
You absolutely will not get an apology from me for something a bigot said about black people.
In kind, I don't expect you to apologize to me for something a bigot said about or did to gay people.
I was not looking for an apology from you ....I am looking for someone who states they are sort of leader/activist to apologize.
This argument is being prosecuted in the same format as the NEOCON agenda. "If you don't agree with everything I say and do you are against me." Does anyone remember this mantra issued by the Bush regime after 9/11? Here we go again with social manipulation. The argument is slimmed and confused by people who have an agenda to prosecute. These are the same people who are pro choice and the same people who want to say "you owe me!" You got civil rights and the 14th Amendment and now you must support gay marriages.
There is no comparison between the two. Racist genocide and slavery, racial terrorism and gay marriages is not the same thing and anyone trying to place them in the same discussion is not deserving of an audience. It is not to say that people who are gay and in love don't deserve to be able to express their love for each other, or the oppression they experience when they do express their love and relationship publicly. But because they don't get their way to believe they not have license to beat black people over the head with verbal attacks calling them homophobic and worse does not help their cause.
If giving gays rights is going to unleash another NEOCON thinking political body upon the black community they it is better that they not receive any support at all.
I'm black and gay. My Danish husband and I were recently in the states. He was shocked by the still rampant racism in the gay community. Talk of rice queens and dinge queens and private clubs etc. Yes, my black brothers and sisters are homophobic, but how can I reach out to them when my white gay brothers and sisters keep me at arms length.
What a fix I'm in.
No, its true, having Hillary as the nominee probably wouldn't have made a difference, especially if she remained painfully silent on Prop 8 as Obama did. What might have made a difference would be if the nominee had spoke out more than once on the issue and appeared in even one No on 8 ad. I am so sick of the leaders of the democratic party behaving uniformly cowardly on this issue. So many people in california voted both for obama and prop 8- these people we have to be able to reach- and it would be a lot easier if are leaders displayed some actual leadership.
A few more gripes:
I don't want to disqualify that racism does exist in the gay community, but I also think that it's wrong to assume coalition building doesn't or hasn't already existed between gays and lesbians (white/of color) and blacks in urban areas. I think this is probably why some gays and lesbians (not just whites) feel so disappointed by their own respective ethnic/racial communities. The problem is, this geography is where the outreach always begins and ends.
Prop 8 has shown us that, as gays and lesbians, our "primary" allegiances are to what we consider our "primary" identities -- for most of us, this is about our race, because we think of our orientation as a non-issue. Prop 8 has ALSO shown us that no one cares if you are black, asian, or latino, TOO -- they only care that you are GAY. Herein lies the anger and the hurt. In whose family do we really belong? For me, to ignore that I am expected to sacrifice one aspect of my identity in order to regain membership into the other, is as dishonest as believing the gay community is a bastion of racism that has never allowed me to keep BOTH. The gay community is not perfect, but it has never required that I be half a person to participate (in fact, it's where I learned the importance of my own biracial perspective).
Umh, I think it's fair to say that race wasn't an issue in the vote, unless we're prepared to deal with whites, who at almost 50%, were less inclined to vote for gay marriage than they were to wait 20 minutes in line for a latte. Homophobia came from everyone, including our co-workers, neighbors, classmates, and even fellow church-members.
Gripe"
Why is the onus on the gay community to win everyone over -- to do all the outreach? Where was the outreach to us? Sound bytes from Hollywood stars took zero effort and made zero impact... The Civil Rights Movement had its allies (e.g. the Kennedy's, the Jews, and the AMISH!) ...where are ours? I will not accept that Prop 8's success was our "fault." Since when is loosing a constitutional right the fault of those for whom the law is meant to protect?
One cannot tacitly accept the existence of racism and prejudice within the gay community and then turn around and condemn the bigotry in other communities that people feel is blocking their rights to marriage. This was the point of my original post. Gays have long tolerated prejudice and injustice in their own community, so I see it as hypocritical for some gay marriage advocates to be up in arms about perceived homophobia in the black community, especially since there was no outreach to that community. I was not blaming gays for bigotry, but blaming marriage advocates for the lack of effort to convince enough people to vote for us, who if asked might have voted for gay marriage. Elections are about winning votes not about having them given to you. The Mormons understood that with their multimillion dollar effort. I absolutely believe those that are bigoted are wrong for their prejudices, but an assumption was made that every person who voted for Prop 8 is a bigot, most likely many were uninformed, misinformed or indifferent. Those folks are persuadable and we're just as wrong for not reaching out to persuadable people in all constituency groups. You can't expect people to vote for you if you haven’t asked them to. My simple point is that gay marriage advocates didn’t care about reaching out to black people (and other groups) before the vote, perhaps because of prejudice, so we can’t be mad with black people, who aren’t to blame, after the vote.
Seawally, you are very insightful and wise.
Excellent post.
Very good post seawally. I especially liked the line, "You can't expect people to vote for you if you haven"t asked them to." So true.
This year, I e-mailed over 50,000 people nationwide for Obama. I e-mailed at least 1,000 people per state - emails filled with articles and opinion pieces from HUFFPOST, TPM, THE ROOT, THE DAILY BEAST, and others sites. Yes, I could have mined the internet for emails to just African-American (being an African-American myself), but got e-mails to Latinos, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, Native-Americans, and Caucasians
Instead of scapegoating, the self-appointed leaders of the anti-PROP 8 should run a better campaign next time. Ask everyone in every inch of the state, and take no one's vote for granted.
"Gays have long tolerated prejudice and injustice in their own community"
Got any evidence of this? You certainly don't offer any. I've been an out gay man for about 30 years, and I can tell you that the gay movement has always been opposed to racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice. Obviously, there are prejudiced people in any community, but to generalize about all gays somehow tolerating prejudice and injustice is really unfair.
Besides, who are the "gays" to whom you refer? Gay people are of all races, ethnicities, genders, and religions. Obviously, what you're really talking about is white gays, which shows that you're just repeating a very popular, right-wing, anti-gay stereotype -- i.e., that gays are a group of white guys. Sorry, but we're not. And until folks like you learn to stop generalizing about one of the most diverse groups of people in America, gay people like me are not about to take your ridiculous criticisms seriously.
I don't think anybody owes the gay community a single thing. All this "Who Shot John?" mess is really entitled. The fact is, no racial group mostly voted against Prop 8. It's funny how the exit polls let the largest majority of the electorate -- white people -- off the hook.
White people are always off the hook. Their democracy has denied human and civil rights to every
"other" group of people for as long as, and before, this nation was in existence. From smallpox laced blankets Jim Crow laws, every legal and extra legal trick has been utilized to maintain degrees of citizenship.
I wonder how many of the "blame the Black folks" contingent's parents voted for those laws that maintained "separate but equal".
Black gay people need to organize themselves. As you can read some of the white gays don't want anything to do with black people. I will not vote for their agenda period. Until the gay communtiy as a whole repudiates their hate mongers their group will be an inherently racist organization in my eyes. I don't support racist or the organizations they belong.
I don't believe for one minute that white gays are any more racist against blacks than any other group of white people. In fact, I am certain they are much less so. As a rule, the more Liberal, well-educated and affluent a person is, the less likely they are to hold prejudiced views. Statistics show us that on the whole, gays are slightly better educated, more affluent and more liberal than the population at large, therefore one would expect them to be less likely to harbor bigoted views, and in my experience, this is the case. Furthermore, since white gays, having experienced homophobia all of their lives, personally know what it feels like to be discriminated against, I believe they possess greater empathy in this area and would be even less likely to turn around and discriminate against someone, than would a straight white person. And white gays overwhelming supported Obama in the last presidential election voting for him by a wider margin than whites at large. I don't know what circles you are running in but it has been my experience that white and black gays go to the exact same clubs, restaurants, entertainment events, churches and etc. Ever been to The Castro in San Francisco? One sees gay people of every color, happily elbow to elbow (and often hand in hand!) in every business establishment. Ditto in Portland and Seattle. Throw off your self-imposed yoke of restriction and limitation and branch out a bit.
The gay community has been repudiating the hateful people among their ranks publicly - on TV, internet, at rallies, etc. ever since the election.
There will be a lot more work done on this issue - as you can hear in this article it has already begun. Now is not the time for us to reject each other.
With all due respect, they need to do a better job of it. Because it's really easy to find every time someone comes out in favor of SSM, against Prop 8, or when someone wants to lambast another public figureas being bigoted and homophobic.
Why are all these repudiations of their hateful ilk so hard to find?
Dan4equality-after the election two white guys were on Bill OReilly and CNN "preaching" to black people about how are votes were bigoted. Wayne something was on Bill O. and the other a guy named Dan Savage was on CNN. Those two men were race baiting. If they can get on those shows to preach to black how we oppressed gays they can get back on to repudiate the hate the have brought. Are there any spokes people for the gay movement who can get on TV? The amount of hate I read on this website and others needs to be repudiated. I have seen none. Keith O, Rachel M. and Anderson C. all seem to be gay friendly. You would think someone in the gay community could get on one of those shows for a couple of minutes to stop the hate. I have seen coverage of gay musicals and other positive stories on gay rights. The only negative ones were the ones that show gay men acting crazy on Bill O show and the coverage of how blacks destroyed the gays chances of marriage. Bull crap!!!!!!!
My life is not an agenda or an organization.
There are very few other states where gay marriage has passed and many that have passed marriage is one man /one woman amendments to their Constitutions. They are not necessarily states with large black populations, so be consistent when you are pointing the finger at who's doin who.
personally i imagine LGBT is pretty low on the list of priorities blacks are concerned about. I mean there's poverty, poverty and poverty, there's crime, unjust incarceration,youth on drugs, poor schools and now massive foreclosur
And to equate it to Civil Rights is offensive to many because many LGBT can easily "pass", but you can't hide your face when you're applying for a job .So its hard to grasp the discrimination as equally damaging.
I think the LGBT community needs to make the practices around the world in which third sexes are accepted more widely known. People seem to think everyone sees it as the Bible does. There was a great article about Muxes in Oaxaca , in the Sunday NYT. Everytime I read these kind of reports I realize how narrow most of us have been taught to see the world.
Yes, so true about black gays, too.
I mean really, let's resolve world peace before we let the gays marry...I mean it's SOO much harder for me to accept someone else's personal business than it is for me to fix the world's problems.
Please, don't break your wrist filling in that "NO on gay marriage" while you're tirelessly preoccupied with ending poverty, and home foreclosures.
I think you misunderstand. Poverty and home foreclosures aren't things happening to other people. Within the black community it is tearing up families, ruining lives and gutting any chance at advancement these individuals hope for. It's not a "lofty liberal ideal" when *your brother* has a record and can't get work or when *your home* is being foreclosed because you took out a second mortgage to pay medical bills. There is an ignorance of what the poor really endure, just like there is an ignorance about what the religious truly believe and what gay couples really want.
Prop 8 in California and Amendment 2 in Florida prove two things to me. (1) There is still a Bradley effect in place. Many 'liberals' chose to vote against equal rights in the privacy of the voting booth. There was a failure in outreach. No one spoke to their misunderstandings, no one spoke to their fears. That failure wasn't the body blow, though. It was (2). There are two Americas: the America that believes in ONE. One God, one way of living, etc. Then there is the America that believes in, thrives in, the MANY; the melting pot where inclusion and fairness benefits all. The failure to consider that the ONE America could out vote the MANY America -- and plan to combat that -- leaves us where we are now.
There is a lot of work to do. We are in this together.
I'm sure if you ask black gays if they suffer more from discrimination being black or being gay- they could point out black children begin to be discriminated against even before they come out of the womb , with substandard healthcare resulting in higher death rate at birth, moving on to substandard schools, inadequete housing for the urban poor and the curse of low expectation no matter what income level.
There were 13,084,570 votes cast (on Prop 8). 6,838,107 (Yes), and 6,246,463 (No) (A difference of 591,644 votes). Black made up 10% of the vote (according to CNN exit poll). Which means they made up 1.3 million votes of all Prop 8 votes. 70% of Blacks vote in favor of Prop 8 which means that roughly 910,000 votes went toward Prop 8 and 390,000 votes went against Prop 8 (A difference of 520,000)
As I said earlier even if EVERY African-American voted against Prop 8, it still would have passed by 70,000 votes!
Prop 8 results from SoS of CA ( http://vot
CNN Exit Polls ( http://www
So everyone needs to STOP blaming African-Americans!
As a gay white man I am ashamed of the gay community at times. I will NEVER be ashamed to be gay, but to be a part of a community that displays the same bigotry that is espoused on others is what I find shameful.
thands dave for the clarity of this issue.....
It doesn't make too much sense to me either. The only thing that I can think of is that people who have been treated unjustly always needs someone to blame for that injustice, and because it was such a disproportionate number of African-Americans who voted in favor of it, then they simply assume that translates into a huge number of votes, when it truly didn't.
People shouldn't be blaming any individual group except for the CA Supreme Court. They should have thrown the proposition out when it was challenged. But they wanted to wait to see the outcome of the election before allowing it to go forward in court. Using the equal protection clause (in the CA Constitution), in conjunction with LGBTQ being a protected class (as is sex, race, age, religion, gender, etc.), the rights of a protected class should never have been sent to the voters.
This proposition will be struck down, but I think it is also equally important that the California LGBTQ should not forget the other 49 states once it is overturned.
I think that every time the media reports it, it is assumed that gay people said it. Not necessarily true. Fox News pushed this report as much as they could to get our communities at each other's throats, and the mainstream media picked it up.
Notice - in the context of the article above - people in the comments here believe what Caitlin Flanagan and Benjamin Schwartz write in the editorial, but they don't identify any sources. They are again just trying to stir the pot.
I worked with black people on the No On 8 campaign, and I signed up black people to get involved with the marriage issue - so I know that our groups do not have to be mutually exclusive. For the sake of our black LGBT brothers and sisters at least, we should work this out.
Dave01, thank you so much for writing such a thoughtful kind response. Not to mention giving the numbers to substantiate your reasoning. I am a black woman born and living in Texas. Had I been eligible would have voted against Prop. 8. I also signed the petition to try to remedy the injustice. Even after reading how the wording was written I'm sure that a lot of people got confused. It took me a minute to figure how the h&ll voting for it was actually against it! I also wanted to stress that the black population is now the smallest behind Latinos and Asians, so to heap that unfair assessment of how we voted...is so unfair. I admit that back in the day, I might have harbored what I would call "not-knowing" attitude about LGBT. I had not been around anyone in the LGBT community or rather I'm sure that I did, just didn't know it. It was when I began my professional career at a major airline that I came in direct contact with many persons in the LGBT community. I fell in love with most with whom I interacted and didn't like a few that were total a$$holes! Isn't that the way we all want to be judged..fo
What I'd like to know is where the lie that the gay community blames the black community for the passage of proposition 8 came from.I've never heard or seen a single time where this was so. I have seen however many posts and articles by others saying that the black community is blameless and the gay community is to blame for the bigotry exhibited against it as evidenced by the vote because they didn't do enough outreach. Puhleeze. All the bigots who voted in favor of proposition 8 are to blame for their bigotry, including 70% of the black community. Own it.
Hey Pam, the numbers don't lie. An overwhelming amount of Blacks and Latinos voted against Gay Marriage. Facts are facts.
The question is, what are you going to do to change that? Writing blogs to try to refute what is the reality isn't going to help anyone.
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