Why Black People Are Homophobic

I do find it troubling that of all the racial groups polled, [black people] had the highest percentage approving the proposition. There is an incredible amount of racism here and now to work on; but equally there's a considerable amount of homophobia in the black community to work on.
- Anonymous Commenter

I must admit that, despite my call over the weekend for all people - especially all marginalized people - to come together and join in the national protests against Proposition 8, which occurred this past Saturday, November 15, I was angry about the latest cover of The Advocate, the premier LGBT magazine, which asserts as their headline: "Gay is the New Black: The Last Great Civil Rights Struggle." The headline article, by Michael Joseph Gross, did a fair assessment of current struggles for marriage equality and same-sex rights under the law, and how "race-baiting" does nothing to build meaningful coalition work among marginal communities. He rightly argues that the African American civil rights movement is one that other social movements have much to learn from (and to compare to), however I do take issue with this part of his argument:

On a deeper level, though, the gay civil rights struggle is about preventing
discrimination based on our proclivity to love, as distinct from the messier
foundation of racial discrimination, which primarily has to do with protecting
white privilege and wealth. No one would deny that fear of mixed marriages
significantly inhibited the progress of the black civil rights movement. (Blacks
won employment and voting rights a full three years before the Supreme Court
finally struck down miscegenation laws in 1967.) But love and sex were not, as
is the case with gay civil rights, unambiguously the heart of the matter. This
is the reason our progress has been slow: Love cannot be understood in the
abstract. You cannot understand it until it touches you or you find your way
into its orbit.

While Gross makes a provocative point, I'm inclined to disagree with the proposition that "love and sex were not at the heart of the matter" when it came to struggles for racial equality. You see, here's the thing. Slavery and Jim Crow Segregation were designed to exploit the labor of black people. In order to do this without mainstream moral outrage, one had to use Racism to justify why these people deserved to be held in chains or discriminated against or rounded up and confined to urban ghettos or rural shacks across the tracks. But, the story does not end there. In order to convince the populace that racism is an ideology worth supporting, sexuality was mobilized to ensure this ideology and underlying foundation of this nation would be supported. Institutional Rape ensured an increase in slave labor, and miscegenation laws enabled segregation so as to easily demarcate the slave/"colored" populations and the control of white wealth and privilege. White heterosexual patriarchy created a distinct hierarchy along racial and gender lines that punished white women who didn't align with the heterosexual ruling class by marrying and reproducing the white race; black men were brutally punished if they desired or got involved with or reproduced with white women; and black women lay open to all sorts of men (and women) who exploited their vulnerable positions. When I say sexuality was a tool and a weapon of white supremacist heteropatriarchy, I am refusing to use an euphemism like "love" when I want to talk frankly about "sex." Sexuality colored our collective oppressions, and our perception of sexuality is still preventing the LGBT community's access to equality with heterosexuals.

It's because of this complex, intersectional history why I'm still pondering a comment left by an anonymous poster on my What Will Whiteness Mean in the Obama Years? post. This poster rightfully commented that, no matter how wrong certain liberals have been in scapegoating African Americans on the Prop 8 vote, we still need to challenge homophobia in the black community. And, yet, I feel the title of this post needs some clarification and complication. First, I am not making blank suppositions that all black people are homophobic, when I know that is not the case. However, there is no denying that a prevalent anti-gay attitude does exist in black communities, and we all need to take account of it. We must also be able to distinguish such attitudes from the way they manifest in other communities since our sexual histories have shaped such attitudes. Yes, many black churches (and mosques) preach homophobic views, but religion is only part of the story.

Well before LGBT communities were targeted for violence, ridiculed, or deemed to be sexually "degenerate," well before they became organized communities, the label of sexual deviance was placed on black people. By virtue of the color of their skin, or being descendants of Africa - a netherworld to which Europeans attributed every exotic and sexual fantasy - black people were routinely eroticized and sexualized. This treatment was perpetuated under slavery, and while our brothers love to talk about how black women were routinely raped, it's easier to talk about black women's sexual victimization than their own. Yet, same-sex rapes also occurred, and I'm not just talking about the rape of black male slaves. Historian Nell Painter, in her biography of Sojourner Truth, mentioned that Truth, a celebrated historical figure, was sexually abused by both her master and her mistress. And, yet she did not have the language to name this outright. But, who did in the Victorian nineteenth century, an era which Gender Studies scholars recognize as the beginning of the invention of homosexuality? Fugitive slave Harriet Jacobs, in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, could only hint at the rape of a male slave (the same way she hints at her own), when she describes poor "Luke" who was "chained to the bedside of his master," who subjected him to "strangest freaks of despotism."

And, yet, despite this sexual oppression, can we imagine that enslaved black lesbians and gays did exist? That, despite such humiliations and suffering, they still found a way to love? Can we imagine such love taking place across color lines? Or, as James Baldwin once wrote, is this impossible since "love between unequals is always perverse"? When sexuality becomes a weapon to justify racism, which further justified economic oppression, how does this complicate our worldview and the way in which we can articulate a social justice movement that honors same-sex rights?

I am certainly not offering history here as an apologia for prevalent homophobia in black communities. But, I do think we need to consider the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality to begin to dismantle attitudes, roadblocks, and barriers that have kept marginal groups divided. After all, post-emancipation, there was a reason why the first thing freed slaves wanted to do was reunite with their families, forcibly separated during slavery, and why they married in droves. There's a reason why the romance of the heterosexual family, who in turn serve as a powerful symbol as the backbone of every community, is so powerful. So powerful, in fact, that it has become imperative for LGBT communities to fight for marriage equality today. The romance of marriage and family is the romance of acceptance and respectability, and every marginal community has fought for that acceptance and respectability because of the belief that this is the key to equality. And, there must be some truth to this for why were white supremacists so opposed to black families that they worked hard to keep them broken down? There must be some truth to this, for why are heterosexists working overtime to prevent lesbians and gays from gaining full access to marriage, and all the economic, social, and cultural benefits that accompany it?

Black people's sexuality has been attacked for so long, that church, family, and community have been a refuge. It's a difficult thing, then, to give up the romance of the heterosexual nuclear family by supporting what has been preached to them as "sin." This "family" is supposed to protect our respectability and our acceptance. A significant number of black people whom I've come across, keep harping on how proud they are, not only that Obama was elected, but that he had his black wife and children with him. I am quite sure that unified heterosexual family portrait signaled something else for LGBT communities in California, Florida, and Arkansas (where they also lost the right to adopt children), who lost their right to marry the same night this First Family was embraced and celebrated.

And, yet, this same First Family has been on the receiving end of many death threats, despite this acceptance, which suggests that certain privileges and power - which are preserved for white heteropatriarchy - are now being powerfully contested. What is a powerful symbol for one group is a threat for another.

Somehow, if we can begin useful dialogue on this subject, we must acknowledge the complicated histories and realities of our present. As I've already said, love and sex are at the heart of the matter, and while queer communities have made several strides in helping us, as a nation, to talk about sexuality in the open, to recognize same-sex desire in our culture, and to even discuss life-and-death issues, such as safer sex and condom use in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, less strides have been made in black communities. Whenever sexuality is policed in our society, black people are the barometers on which sexuality is discussed or regulated. Black sexuality is what gets mobilized to address our sexual fears or desires. The silences around sexuality in black communities are staggering, which account for high STD and HIV rates and ignorance around same-sex issues. The romance of the heterosexual nuclear family has been as powerful a symbol today as it was for our newly freed slave ancestors. This symbol promises freedom and protection, while never really offering it. You see, that's where feminist theory would tell a different story, when it comes to marriage equality. Yet, our earliest feminists were not listened to when they proclaimed that "marriage was slavery," or, later, that "all heterosexual sex is rape" (a heavily circulated misquote by Andrea Dworkin, who really was only trying to deconstruct the problem of sex and sexuality as an arena for liberation when so much of our systemic oppressions begin with the sex act). Had they been listened to, both straight black and white LGBT communities might have to rethink what marriage equality really means, but that's a different subject altogether. Especially when said feminists never made the right intersectional connections to complicate our views on marriage.

In an essay, "The Last Taboo," Paula Giddings wrote that, collectively, black people never had a sexual liberation movement of their own. That, had we taken sexuality as seriously as we do race relations, we would be much further ahead in tackling the different gender and sexuality issues plaguing our communities. This would also mean viewing issues like same-sex desire from a different perspective.

There is still so much work to be done, and at some point, all groups will have to begin talking about sexuality as one more link in the chain of oppression, shoring up the power and privilege of certain groups while denying access to others.