As I noted yesterday when I posted my reflections about Jim Burroway’s Box Turtle Bulletin article “The NGLTF Study On Race and Prop 8: The Problem of Margins of Error” (www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/01/12/7953), Burroway’s statement was followed by a number of others at Box Turtle, carrying on the dialogue about the black and gay communities in the wake of prop 8. As I also noted, to assure that my treatment of Jim Burroway’s article is balanced, I want to note the other articles that appeared after his—some in direct response to his.Following Burroway, Gabriel Arana posted a statement at Box Turtle entitled “Why Can’t We Talk about Black Homophobia?” (www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/01/14/8062). This is a thoughtful consideration of the damage we do to the gay community, the African-American community, and our democratic society in general, when we suppress honest, open dialogue about issues that divide us.
Arana recognizes that the defensive response to those raising questions about black homophobia arises out of the history of ugly oppression people of color have endured in the United States. Defensiveness and closing rank are understandable responses when oppression has been so longstanding and so systemic.
“However,” as he notes, “turning a blind eye to broader cultural issues for the sake of comity is intellectually dishonest.” This intellectual dishonesty is also, Arana proposes, injurious to the many LGBT African Americans who report tremendous pressure to hide their identities.
Arana maintains that, “Among scholars, it is a well-reported and established fact that homophobia is more prevalent in the African-American community than in the general public . . . .” As he notes, Coretta Scott King acknowledged the prevalence of homophobia in the African-American community in comments she made to the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS calling for a national campaign against homophobia in the black community:
Homophobia is still a great problem throughout America, but in the African-American community it is even more threatening. This is an enormous obstacle for ever yone involved in AIDS prevention, treatment and research. … We have to launch a national campaign against homophobia in the black community.
Arana rightly notes that addressing the problem of homophobia within communities of color is first and foremost the task of African Americans themselves. As he observes, non-African Americans insisting that the black community deal with questions about sexual orientation are often perceived as intruders in a discussion that needs to take place intramurally—and privileged intruders, at that. Arana concludes, “I think it would be best for LGBT folk who are African-American to lead the discussion, no less so because they speak from a position of greater understanding.”
Gabriel Arana’s piece was followed by a posting by Jim Burroway entitled “Prop 8 and Race: A Rejoinder” (www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/01/14/8059). Burroway notes that he is transcribing a comment of Jaime Grant regarding Burroway’s statement about prop 8 and race.
Jaime Grant is director of the NGLTF Policy Institute, which published the analysis of polling data re: prop 8 to which Kincaid and Burroway were responding with their two essays on prop 8 and race. Grant notes the strong religious correlation suggested by the prop 8 polling data: African Americans voted at a higher rate for prop 8 than did the general population in part (and perhaps in large part) because African Americans are more religiously affiliated and more prone to church attendance than the population at large.
Clayton Critcher adds to the discussion of race and religion vis-à-vis prop 8 with a statement entitled “Prop 8 and Race: More Complex Than First Reported” (www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/01/15/8078). Critcher does a close reading of the statistical data to conclude, “Being religious was associated with increased support for Prop 8, but among those who were not religious, being African American or Latino was associated with support for Prop 8.”
Critcher notes that the use of religion as an explanatory factor to divert attention from race in the prop 8 discussion is perhaps misleading. As he observes, “If that factor [i.e., the cultural factor that is primarily predictive for homophobic attitudes] is religion, the question simply becomes, ‘Why do some racial groups show more interest in homophobic religious institutions than others?’, and I do not see why this would be any less troubling to those who seek to shift this discussion away from race.”
And, finally, Timothy Kincaid has weighed in to this discussion again today with a posting entitled “Racism in the Gay Community” (www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/01/15/8081). Kincaid notes that any attempt to address homophobia in the black community effectively has to proceed hand in hand with efforts to address and combat racism in the gay community. He concludes, “And perhaps it’s time to start the conversation and then sit back, listen, and learn.”
And that’s where I’d like to go, as well: conversation. Listening and learning. The discussion of these important but difficult issues of race, religion, homophobia, and racism has been too frequently a non-discussion, a shouting match across ideological lines in which those most directly affected by the issues never sit down at the table together and talk. And listen.
There are all kinds of reasons we might offer for the lack of conversation. There is the blinding effect of white privilege that makes white faces and white concerns iconic for “the” gay community, with the ultimate effect of invisibilizing LGBT African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities of color. There is the adamant refusal of many African Americans to entertain any discussion at all of these issues, either discussion urged on the black community from outside or generated from within its own boundaries.
Somehow, somewhere, somebody needs to move all of us beyond those refusals and blindnesses. But I do not see that happening. Coretta Scott King issued her call for a national campaign against homophobia in the black community in 2001. This was an African American issuing a call to the African-American community, and a distinguished civil rights leader.
I have seen little response to this call within the African-American community, even as homophobia has risen perceptibly within that same community in the period following Mrs. King's appeal. I have witnessed continuing silence among vast numbers of African Americans, including African-American leaders, following this call—silence coupled with punishment of those who seek to break silence.
I very much agree with both Jim Burroway and Gabriel Arana that the primary responsibility for addressing black homophobia lies with the black community itself. But I am also aware, in part due to my two decades of work within HBCUs, that the leadership for such an initiative is almost non-existent within the black community, and that there remains a strong intent to preserve silence and punish those who call for this discussion in the black community.
It is time to break silence. But who will do so, from within the African-American community?
I agree with Jim Burroway and Timothy Kincaid, as well, when they insist that dialogue and not “education” needs to be the primary frame for this difficult cross-cultural conversation. No group has a privileged perspective. None should enter the conversation as the teacher, in a way that places other conversation members only in the listening position.
It is also important, it seems to me, that neither the gay community nor the black community retreat into closed, intramural conversation about these issues. Even if it is imperative that the gay community lead its own discussion of racism within its community, and that African Americans spur the dialogue about black homophobia within the black community, it is still important for these two marginalized groups to remain in conversation.
And to find ways to foster conversation—if truth be told, to begin a conversation that has not yet happened.
It’s clear to me what needs to happen. What is not clear is how to make happen what needs to happen. I have spent years within HBCUs working quietly to foster this important crosscultural dialogue. I have had a conspicuous lack of success in that regard, and I eventually found myself expelled from the HBCU world precisely because I could not in conscience remain silent about the lack of dialogue around issues of race and homophobia. Nor could I do the job I was charged to do as an academic leader, and keep silence about these issues . . . .
Since my expulsion from the HBCU world, I have called on HBCU leaders and the leaders of the churches that sponsor them to encourage dialogue about these issues in the HBCU context. My appeals to HBCU leaders and to leaders of churches that own these institutions have, to date, been met with deafening silence.
The need is great. And it is growing. Where is the intent to address that need, as Barack Obama becomes president?
