If the black exodus out of San Francisco has taught us anything, it is that neglect has racist consequences. As it stands now, the African American population hovers around 6 percent, and nothing of substance is being done about it. With Black History Month upon us, the best we have to hope for is City Hall throwing some chicken and watermelon our way one of these days �" if some corporate entity hasn't already booked a private party there first. And speaking of our city's titans of industry, is there any point in asking how many African Americans benefit from Google-esque busing?
The situation is even worse for black LGBT progressives. Over my tumultuous career in San Francisco politics, I have noticed that hard-left LGBT circles passively refuse to hire, promote, vote for, and share power with black folks within those circles. Routinely.
Classism plays a major role in this of course, but there is another often-ignored factor: the opportunity chasm. Most black LGBT uber-progressives don't speak the language of opportunity because we rarely, if ever, are given any.
Merit and opportunity are two separate phenomena. Possession of the former does not always result in access to the latter, and vice versa. In this hyper-competitive field of SF politics, even progressive LGBT decision-makers often promote by default those who have warm and cozy heterosexual parents, degrees from fancy universities, and easy access to trendy living quarters. The rest of us tend to find ourselves as dark-skinned backdrops that need to be managed (and, if lucky, fed) every now and then.
Let's take a look at the recent history of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club board, on which I served from January 2011 until January 2013. In 2010, the Milk board was something of a mecca for black LGBT folks with nowhere else to go, including the late Jazzie Collins. In fact, at my first board meeting, Collins encouraged me to bring law and order to the club's horrific bylaw situation. Rules-related issues have been a calling of mine ever since.
My friend William Walker, elected in 2013, took up the I-am-the-only-black-person-on-the-board mantle as outreach chair, a perfect fit, or so I thought. As a former candidate for SF community college board, he brought a lot to the table, but boy was I surprised when at the Milk holiday party, he wasn't re-nominated. In all honesty, Walker did have time constraints, but with black people barely hanging on, why didn't the "decision-makers" try a little harder to meet him halfway?
The Milk club did recently elect African American Mahnani Clay to the board this year, but as this board becomes more professionalized (and dare I say, more opportunistic), I sometimes long for the Collins days.
I ran for the SF Pride board last year in a similar attempt to repair its ills, many of which run far deeper than the Chelsea Manning debacle. Last year was a horrific year to be black and part of that organization, but I ran in September anyway, in part to bolster my Accountability Slate's diversity claims. Nevertheless, almost all African Americans in elected or leadership roles were shown the door, candidates like myself included.
At the height of the pro-Manning protests, we saw left-leaning white activists carrying pitchforks at the pinkwashed doorsteps of the black status quo (then-board President Lisa Williams and former CEO Earl Plante). Little had been done then or has been done since by my slate mates to quell these concerns. The current SF Pride board, with its cult-like obsession with "civility" and paternalistic attitude toward appointing blacks or other outsiders if and when they get around to it, proves that this organization still needs structural reinforcement. I could have helped with all of that, if given �" you guessed it �" the opportunity.
President Gary Virginia is doing a great job with what he's been given, but to claim that SF Pride wants to "Color Our World with Pride" in any way other than by platitudes would be laughable if it weren't so intellectually dishonest.
As for my prospects in last September's SF Pride election shenanigans, all I have to say is Last Hired, First Fired. But despite all of that mess, Shaun Haines (another black candidate) and I became good friends. He lost his re-election bid to the SF Pride board the same night last year, and, like me, wanted to be reappointed to some of the remaining slots �" at first. I guess it would have been typical for us to fight each other for the scraps dangling above our heads, like something out of the Antebellum South, but instead, we bonded over our bizarre situations.
After giving up on the SF Pride appointment route and its incessant filibustering, he graduated to the board of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, no small accomplishment. I went to his Alice election, partly to show Haines my support and partly to count how many African Americans will be on Alice's board in 2014. (Short answer: many.) A friend there told me I got punked at SF Pride. Maybe we all did.
If blacks are to survive in this city in any politically meaningful sense, we have to form cross-ideological alliances, like the one I formed with Haines �" a Rainbow Coalition of the Willing, leaving no one behind to shiver in darkness, begging for a reservation.
At that January Alice club meeting, newly-elected Co-Chair Zoe Dunning (wife of ousted SF Pride board member Pam Grey) told us that if we are not invited to the table, we are probably on the menu. Truer words haven't been spoken so far this year.