Nobody but us: Saving our own lives from black homophobia

by Todd Shaw, PhD

About a year and half ago, when the prospect of same-gender marriage in America seemed like a possibility, there were many in the L-G-B-T community who were encouraged. Well, what a difference an election makes, huh? Derrick Bell, who is a courageous, black, law professor at Harvard University, and gay ally, once wrote a book entitled Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. To be sure, there are many of us in African-American L-G-B-T communities who feel that this past November’s presidential election confirmed that both institutionalized homophobia and racism are here to stay given President George Bush’s reselection upon a rising tide of anti-gay loathing. In a variety of Northern and Southern states including Michigan, Ohio, Mississippi, and Georgia, electorates by overwhelming majorities voted into law specific statues that ban same-gender marriages, and in some cases prohibited civil unions or most other human rights for lesbians and gays.

What is most distressing for those of us who belong to black L-G-B-T communities is that there essentially was no light between white and black voters on these questions – with as many as 80% of both races voting to enshrine these bans. Strangely enough, a fear of same-gender marriage is the one issue upon which African-Americans and whites agree. On the other hand, a majority, or about 52%, of whites voted for Bush, the Republican candidate, and 88% of blacks voted for Kerry, the Democrat. Whereas the African-American church has traditionally served as a/the central place of spiritual and cultural refuge for the community, black ministers – shockingly civil rights leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. and Walter Fauntory – provided invaluable support for anti-same-gender marriage ballot initiatives and ministerial coalitions. They vocally objected to any comparison between the human rights struggle of African-Americans and the human rights struggle of citizens who are L-G-B-T. For those of us who live in the intersection between the two, such an absurd division – black or gay – reminds us of Essex Hemphill’s poignant analogy – do I prefer to cut off my left boob/ball or my right?

Thus the state of black L-G-B-T America appears grim, but I believe the founders of the Kick organization are correct by implying that, when it comes to the specific issue of our human rights as L-G-B-T persons, we are not a part of the same African-American community that refuses to acknowledge our right to be spouses, parents, clergy members, teachers, etc. Until we gain more influential allies (and there are many more than we suspect in the larger, black community), we have got to recommit ourselves to a process first begun by the late 1970s and the early 1980s heroines and heroes. We have got to (re)build, (re)educate, and (re)mobilize our own institutions and organizations that speak to and defend "our" interests.

I am not saying that anyone of us should not identify as African-American, for personally I so fundamentally love my blackness that I literally cannot conceive myself any other way, but until our unsympathetic black sisters and brothers (some of whom are self-loathing gays) stop blotting out our existences and agreeing with religious conservatives and white supremacists that we should be oppressed (however nicely they put it), let us assume there is no such thing as the inevitability of gay rights in America, especially in black America. Let us assume just for the sake of argument, that homophobia is guaranteed to be permanent if we wait for the majority of our unsympathetic brothers and sisters to change, and ain’t nobody going to save us, but us. Okay?

True happiness has no schedule, and often no agenda. ■