The Mercury News ran another article about how it’s all the Blacks/Latin@s fault that Proposition 8 passed.
Even as African-American and Latino voters were a powerful force in boosting America’s first black president to victory, in California they also were crucial to passing Proposition 8, a ballot measure labeled, “Eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry.”
Exit polls showed that 70 percent of black voters, and a majority of Latino voters, voted yes on Proposition 8, one likely reason why the measure won a slim majority in Los Angeles County, where pre-election polls had suggested it would lose, even though it lost by a huge margin in the Bay Area.
But like I mentioned yesterday, while I don’t deny that the Black and Latin@ communities have some big time issues with queer hate, I also think gay organizations have to confront their very real racism within their organizing strategies. For example:
Gloria Nieto had a sense of those demographic forces, too. When Nieto, a lead organizer for the No on Proposition 8 campaign in San Jose, wanted to distribute campaign signs in Spanish and Vietnamese this fall, she had to get them made herself because the statewide campaign only had signs in English.
What this suggests to me is that communities of color have their problems–but largely white organizations seem to not value those communities until the time comes when they need them for their own agendas, and even then not so much.
Will gay organizers do anything to confront this problem? Or will they hide their racism behind “They’re just conservative” excuses? The answer remains to be seen.
- Tags: elections, lgbt, Proposition 8
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2 Responses to More Prop 8 Black and Latino Blaming…
John Robertson
November 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Gays come in all colors and so do bigots. Black bigots are getting blamed for being the biggest bigots when it came to Prop 8, but truly they were only the most ironic. Does that make black bigots worse than white bigots, or Hispanic bigots, or Asians? Black gays are suffering too at the hands of this decision and so who do they get to blame? I guess the way I see it, what is bad for the few is bad for the many. Our country has suffered greatly for what it did to the black population ever since the first Christian kidnapped the first African and shackled them to a plantation in the name of Christ. Oppression of minorities in America has caused war, riots, poverty, crime, death, economic instability, civil unrest; and the list goes on and on. As long as majorities seek to oppress minorities, America will continue to reinact this legacy again and again. The white bigots haven’t said anything new, but the black bigots have proclaimed that their experience of oppression was unique, untouchable by any other, and therefore they are beyond accountability for anything unjust that they do. They also have been eager to remind us all that they suffered for hundreds of years. I would just like to remind black bigots that gay people have suffered for hundreds of years as well. At no time in our history have gays had more rights than blacks, and today blacks have about 3000 more rights than gays, largely in part to the way black bigots voted on November 4, 2008. And what about the Jews? Haven’t they suffered for thousands of years, starting with the Black Egyptians enslaving the white Israelites? Didn’t Jews go to the concentration camps? Yet you don’t see the Jews going around oppressing the gays and claiming immunity for it. The Jewish culture is the single most civil rights conscious culture in our nation, and it is because they have learned their lessons from their suffering.
With that said, I do not support a gay backlash which in anyway resembles racist behavior. Gays must strive to be beyond reproach if they seriously want to convince others they deserve equality. Therefore, gays must study the black model of the civil rights movement, and peacefully rebel against the black bigots, the white bigots, the asian ones and the Hispanics. Only if gays behave with dignity will they eventually be awarded it. Bigotry is bigotry whether it is gay on black or black on gay.
Much love.
John Robertson
Joey
November 13th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I live in Canada. We’ve had Gay Marriage for almost 5 years. Hasn’t killed the family here. Hasn’t killed marriage here. We still have lower divorce rates, lower teen pregnancy rates, lower murder rates, and a higher life expectancy that the USA.