It's not us vs. them

I keep meaning to describe election day here in Philadelphia, but I think this is more important--I feel very strongly about the recent "Black community vs. the gays" storyline that I have been hearing in the press. Yes, 70% of black voters supported prop 8. But you know what? That still means that a whole bunch of black folks voted no. We simply cannot afford to allow the seeds of divisiveness to overwhelm the "big tent" of the Democratic party, and the nation as a whole.

One of the wonderful things about the gay movement is that it succeeds (slowly) be sheer exposure. Research has demonstrated that knowing someone who is gay is one of the most powerful avenues through which homophobia is reduced. The more that being gay is in the mainstream media and in families, communities, and peer groups, the less resistence there is to gay rights. So what does that 70% tell us? I don't think it says much about intolerance or religiosity. I think it says something about unfamiliarity. The failure of the gay movement is that it has largely ignored the black community--either because they assume black people will not be receptive to gay rights or because they are unaware of this lapse.

Now, one complication to the exposure argument is that the black community sees gayness as a white phenomenon. Why? To some degree, this is because many black gay men and women are not out in their communities. But it is also true that the gay rights movement has a white face. The gay rights movement has not embraced the opportunity to diversify it's image and to talk about how to make the community a more racially diverse place as a whole. This, too, would help.

We need to think less about how to draw boundaries and more about how to reach across them. In doing so, white gays and lesbians need to think less about how they have been "cheated" by the black community, and more about how this affects black gays and lesbians. Last night, Alison and I went out to a gay bar with some friends, and one white gay male was speaking angrily about the black vote in California. Admittedly, I was angry initially about the black vote as well. But while we talked about prop 8, I turned my head and saw that nearly half of the room was comprised of black gay men. And I thought about how much harder this is for them, every day of their lives. I believe that we should not give up on working within the black community to promote gay rights. Because in truth, we have rarely tried, and that is our failure.