It is at significant levels that I am experiencing the dual emotions of embarrassment and anger as I reconcile myself with the full realization that legions of black Californians joined the vanguard in the vote to re-introduce discrimination – through the successful passage of California Proposition 8 – into the state constitution.
Shock, on the other hand, is not amongst those emotions. I have been gay and black since the day I was born and I have more than a passing acquaintance with the residual effects of the state of acute homophobia as it has coursed, unchecked, through the general mindset of black America.
Let me make it clear at the outset, however, that any assertion which suggests the 70 percent to 30 percent black vote singularly ensured passage of Proposition 8 – over and above any other demographic, as some quarters would have us believe – is not supported by a review of the vote returns. It is also not the central point. The central point is the rather strange dichotomy at the center of the collective bigotry that drove such a disproportionate vote as we saw rendered by black and Latino communities.
That rather strange dichotomy directs us to a time, in this country's not too distant past, when black and Latino Americans were also the second-class butts of de jure bigotry – put in place simply because the majority wished it so. The reversal of that paradigm came at an extremely heavy price – a price paid, in a series of defining moments, by many of this country's great humanists and civil rights champions who surrendered life, limb, and livelihood in successful challenge to the "tyranny of the majority."
On November 4, at another defining moment (to paraphrase our president-elect), I joyfully honored that sacrifice and joined in community with those legions of black and Latino Californians – by exercising that hard won franchise – as part of a righteous effort to secure Senator Barack Obama's history making ascendancy to the 44th presidency of the United States.
However, I did not join with those same legions in allowing myself to be co-opted by a distorted campaign of lies about children, schools, and taxes (promulgated by the proponents of Proposition 8) as part of an effort to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry – simply because those organizers wished it so. Instead, I actually read the proposition.
Prop 8 simply reads as follows: "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry" – nothing more, nothing less.
That point made, I must also consider that black and Latino Californians were not at all co-opted. I must consider that those Californians simply defaulted to the intense, pervasive homophobia that continues to plague our communities while, in the process, rendering great harm to its lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members.
It is highly ironic, from the point of view of this black man, to witness black people materially countenance the unseemly invocation of discrimination by voting away the rights of the minority LGBT community (of which I am also a member) simply because they wished it so – having proffered no other substantive rationale. Unseemly or not, however, that unfortunate, discriminatory fact is now a pernicious, and in many quarters, celebrated matter of law.
Am I suggesting that homophobia has secured a more comfortable home in black communities than in white communities? I am not and I know of no evidence to support such a suggestion. However, in the final analysis, it does not matter. This is not about a cross-demographic analysis of homophobia, however parsed. Homophobia is destructive no matter where it calls home. This is about the very real need for hard-core discussions regarding the very destructive attributes of homophobia found resonate as an integral and bigoted part of black America – a community of people who should know better. This is a family affair and there exists no excuse not to proceed.
It is for other communities to decide how they wish to conduct their own internal analyses and, in turn, how those resulting constructs are to inform the socio-cultural environment on a macro basis.
Black America can have that conversation without obsessing on the anti-black "outrage" that is stemming from white LGBT communities. We do not need to wonder, yet again, why, of all communities, white LGBT communities still reserve a chair for racism at their own table. There is also, in my opinion, no need to muse as to why white LGBT communities can cite an abysmal record of support on essential issues of importance to black communities generally, and black LGBT members, specifically, and yet, for reasons undetermined, expect a return on an investment not made. Better to celebrate the day when the good folks in the Castro, West Hollywood, and Hillcrest decide, of their own volition, to order in the metaphorical moving van to haul away those tattered racist relics from their inventory of antiques and queue up alongside all communities for whom issues of discrimination continue to resonate.
Neither is this the time to attempt to divert our attention to the Latino community, who recorded second place (53 percent) to black Californians in stripping away the rights of LGBT people. It is for the good folks in Latino communities to articulate the ironies of entering into complicit, discriminatory alignment with that sector of the political spectrum who gave us Proposition 187 – a sector that would celebrate mightily upon completion of the wall of outrage scheduled for construction (as advocated with great specificity) along the United States-Mexico border.
Moreover, for my part, I will not muse as to why black and Latino Californians would enter into that same insidious constellation of socially partitioning "geniuses" who have perfected both the art and science of impediment when it comes to black and Latino students entering the doors of California's institutions of higher learning.
At the end of the day, this needs to be about black folks and a long overdue family discussion regarding destructive, belief-driven behaviors that harm people in our own community; people who are simultaneously (and hypocritically) referred to as sista and brotha – a more egregious misnomer I am hard-pressed to summon. Let us make no mistake; we have plenty to talk about amongst ourselves.
Bigotry as a mindset and discrimination as a practice, on any level, are ugliness defined. That point made, one could logically conclude a collection of enfranchised black Californians would understand those concepts in the most fundamental terms. Unfortunately, that clearly is not the case and clarity continues to serve me as a most substantial ally.
So, let me be clear – and do so unequivocally. The fact is I must again reconcile myself with the reality that as a black gay American, I am a member of a community whose relationship with bigotry is so intractable that that community must continue to inculcate bigotry's sordid characteristics, adopt its essence, and participate in its invocation.
At this defining moment, I have again identified the enemy – and again the enemy is within.
At the end of the day, that exceeds toleration. I do not care who it is.
Stephan Oxendine is a community activist living in San Francisco whose principal interest is the sociopolitical and biomedical health and well-being of gay men.