Because I'm a Uniter, Not a Divider
I often cry myself to sleep on my pillow in sadness over the ugliness and tension between the disparate, often warring subgroups that make up the grand tapestry of American life. That's why my heart was so warmed by this recent headline:
Texas Gay Marriage Ban May Pass With Support of Minorities, KKK.
I'm bursting with pride at doing my little part to help Bring America Together!
Seriously, I think that what we have hear is a great example of what I like to call Lifeboat Syndrome. You see it in the anti-immigrant rants of second and third-generation Americans (I mean you, the 31% of California Latinos who voted for Prop. 187), in the easy homophobia of Black preachers, and especially in the nasty infighting and racism between minorities in Los Angeles. It's a sick zero-sum game.
There is some part of human nature that makes you want to kick the next man down the ladder. It's understandable, in a way; after the trauma of fighting racism and inequality to eke out a life in America, many still-struggling minorities have deep-seated insecurities about their place in our society, and one way to help further secure that place is to find some common link with those who are the most secure; as a Marxist analyst might say, to identify with the oppressor as a way of diverting your own oppression. See also Uncle Tom.
However you describe it, it sucks. Any minority in this country who chooses not to see the natural empathetic link between their own struggle, and the treatment of other groups also fighting for their own equal rights, is being willfully ignorant. They aren't quite Sondercommandos, but the same fucked-up principle applies. In the words of the most misquoted Rabbi in history, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethern, ye have done it unto me".
Texas Gay Marriage Ban May Pass With Support of Minorities, KKK.
I'm bursting with pride at doing my little part to help Bring America Together!
Seriously, I think that what we have hear is a great example of what I like to call Lifeboat Syndrome. You see it in the anti-immigrant rants of second and third-generation Americans (I mean you, the 31% of California Latinos who voted for Prop. 187), in the easy homophobia of Black preachers, and especially in the nasty infighting and racism between minorities in Los Angeles. It's a sick zero-sum game.
There is some part of human nature that makes you want to kick the next man down the ladder. It's understandable, in a way; after the trauma of fighting racism and inequality to eke out a life in America, many still-struggling minorities have deep-seated insecurities about their place in our society, and one way to help further secure that place is to find some common link with those who are the most secure; as a Marxist analyst might say, to identify with the oppressor as a way of diverting your own oppression. See also Uncle Tom.
However you describe it, it sucks. Any minority in this country who chooses not to see the natural empathetic link between their own struggle, and the treatment of other groups also fighting for their own equal rights, is being willfully ignorant. They aren't quite Sondercommandos, but the same fucked-up principle applies. In the words of the most misquoted Rabbi in history, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethern, ye have done it unto me".
posted by leftcoastbreakdown.com at 12:59 PM
6 Comments:
Franz Fannon describes the way in which the colonized can take on the culture of the colonizer - with a vengeance. Whatever the colonizer values, the colonized will try to excel at.
Similarly, in a society that (to the degree that this remains true) dehumanizes and disempowers blacks while emasculating (and paradoxically hypersexualizing) black men, it shouldn’t surprise us that some portion of the black community have adopted the religion and heteronormativity of white culture - with a vengeance.
I don’t think it’s exactly about pushing someone else down to pull oneself up. I think it’s more about fighting marginalization with the culturally available tools.
That said, I don’t believe that this trend is untempered by the experience of bigotry. Black social conservatives may be willing to vote for an anti-gay ballot initiative, but - unlike many of their white counterparts - they seem less willing to make issues like same-sex marriage a litmus test in deciding which candidates to vote for for office.
Wow, Franz Fanon references on my blog! Best. Readers. Ever.
All good points, especially about the fucked-up way American society deals with black male sexuality. It's got to be enormously hard to be open-minded in an environment where your sexuality is already punished once for being black. It's why black queers are my heros!
Spence
haha yeah i can't measure up to franz fanon quotes...but i CAN say i totally agree with you. i'm a second-generation American (i.e. my parents were immigrants) and i'm gay as well so I see a lot of ignorance sent my way. If its not white gays ranting against "those dirty immigrants" then its recent immigrants and minorities making fun of gay rights. either way, its really sad.
You "gay" people crack me up and piss me off at the same time, Anonymous 5pm. Watching you try to use the rhetoric of the civil rights struggles is like watching a child imitate his mother or her father.
What makes me angry is watching you white-bread brats try to take over the liberal agenda to hijack "rights" you already have and waste. You're not allowed, by strongly conservative employers, to have your "lover" covered by your health benefits. These employers mostly think that you're delusional for denying the sexuality you were born with, but they can't say that any more than they can call me nigger and get away with it. But having you try to bully your way into getting this privilege is 100 times more infuriating than having some kracker call me a coon!
How the hell can you honestly compare struggling for the right to live without the fear that someone will take my property with the help of the law? What about the privilege of a guy being married to some other guy makes you think it can command the same priority in American politics as the fight to make the lives of former slaves and their progeny equal in value and purpose to any other American citizen? You "gays" already have the rights and privileges of every American citizen: you even have the privilege to marry a woman if you're a man and a man if you're a woman.
That you want to add a third sex to the reality of life is absurd. That you want to force the world to acknowledge your delusion is more than laughable.
To call normal people ignorant because they do not accept your arguments for being treated as a "minority" is just insulting, and would hurt your cause if you had one. Why should I take seriously someone who doesn't respect my position and whacks every comment that disagrees with theirs with the term "homophobic"?
To force an entire society to define marriage in terms of the sex of the parties to it also feels insulting, but turns out to be harmless in the near term, as it satisfies and reassures the majority that the institution's ideal does not get perverted, which also works well for the long term future. Trying to force the dominant religion of that society to accept behavior it explicitly forbids is brewing a civil war that will make 1860-65 seem like a squabble between siblings after the lights go out and before the parents enter the room!
The megalomania that is the homosexual feeling of entitlement to these earth shattering societal changes can be measured by the growing outrage that is replacing the tolerant attitude of a society willing to integrate the allegedly aggrieved class into everyday life. On one side, the arrogance of this group shown in it's weak attempt to appropriate the methods and properties of the Black Civil Rights Struggle is met with contempt by those lived thru some part of it, and know it's history well. Another source of ill will for this group is the Christians who are privately apoplectic and publicly trying to live up to the ideals of their religion. Marriage is one of the foundations of Christianity, and this nation has enshrined it in the all social aspects of the government.
But the most glaring and offensive evidence of this disease is the idea that it is OKAY to have children corrupted by the abberant sexuality of their foster, adopted or "natural" parents. It is just as okay and normal for heterosexual children to be raised by a pair of men or women as it is for that child to be raised by a child molester, rapist, embezzler or Enron executive. Sure, the non-hetero "parents" may not be criminal, but their outlook on life is as abnormal as the other parents when it comes to the social education of those children.
Would anyone trust a rapist who insisted that he would not again rape a woman he had raped before if he were to live even next door to her? Who would trust an embezzler not to subvert the capital of a business that has the same financial controls as the one she embezzled before?
So why would you trust someone, who thinks that the human development process is so screwed up that it couldn't get their sex right, to educate a child in how to be heterosexual?
Most people will not admit this, but we think that "gays" are inherently crazy. While they can be very nice people in other aspects of social life, their belief that nature just didn't know what it was doing when their chromosomes made them man or woman is obviously a conscious choice and a willing delusion. That they believe their "struggle" for the privilege to rent asunder the foundation institutions of any society, much less this society, just points out the direction to the limis of their insanity.
As you can see from following the success of ballot initiatives redefining marriage in terms of the sex of those who take up the roles of husband and wife, America is not going to stand by and have marriage perverted by a bunch of brats. The compromise is civil unions, which is in no way equivalent or comparable to the "Separate But Equal" doctrine and methods that catalyzed the Civil Rights Movement.
I've been reading a lot of subliterate bigoted rants recently. What a refreshing change to come across a literate bigoted rant.
--concept14
I hardly see anything bigoted in that statement above.
You care to disagree on the status of the family? Debate the facts. Don't try to hide behind name-calling.
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