Prop 8 - Black v Queer - critical analysis - 0 views
-
The rhetoric, once again, masks racism through comparative oppressions - the prevailing misrepresentation of how the black vote, and also the Hispanic vote, supported anti-gay policies on the day that black history would be irrevocably altered.
-
Gay is the New Black
-
Offense #1: It presumes that, because we made significant racial progress through the election of Obama, somehow racism has been conquered while homophobia has not been. Obviously, racism hasn't been conquered, or that slogan would have never emerged in the first place.Offense #2: Such a slogan is designed to pit two marginal groups against each other, conveniently ignoring the fact that certain fundamental religious organizations whose congregations are overwhelmingly white were instrumental in enacting Proposition 8 in the first place.
- ...1 more annotation...
-
Offense #3: Presumed whiteness. The very fact that "Gay is the New Black" can position gayness in opposition to blackness is to completely erase and exclude black gays and lesbians, who include people like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. "Gay" is supposed to represent whiteness, and, suddenly, as Baldwin wrote, "They require of me a song less to celebrate my captivity than to justify their own."