It’s really time to stop dancing around the fantasy of a post-racial America, particularly with the exposed nerves around Prop 8. Here’s another example of jaw-dropping color arousal and unhelpful ruminating, this time in an op-ed by Caitlin Flanagan and Benjamin Schwarz in the NYT, “Showdown in the Big Tent”—asserts most blacks are homophobic, apparently due to race itself.
Christian teaching on marriage is not the only reason so many blacks supported Proposition 8. Although it has come as a shocking realization to many in this community, a host of sociological studies confirm that many blacks feel a significant aversion to homosexuality itself, finding it morally and sexually repugnant.
None of these studies is cited by the way, and besides, if we run with that ludicrous statement and take a look at general demographics in this country—many
whites
feel a significant aversion to homosexuality as well, or we’d have marriage equality in quite a few more states. Homophobia has nothing to do with race; religious beliefs, levels of education and class are much better predictors—and that applies across color lines.
A blanket statement about blacks and homophobia overlooks black LGBTs, secular blacks, those with high levels of education—those who did vote against 8. Did these folks turn in their Negro card when they lost their homophobia? It’s absurd thinking.
But acknowledging this that would render this op-ed’s hysteria useless, facts and logic are inconvenient. It’s amazing how intelligent people can so easily fall prey to their own biases, and display them so publicly.
Again, it’s clear there are unique cultural factors that make homophobia in the black community worth exploring and combating, but this op-ed is unbelievable, even suggesting that
Many gay activists have begun quietly to suggest that had Hillary Clinton been the Democratic nominee, Prop 8 would not have passed.
Why will this zombie meme—that the black vote was the cause of the failure to defeat Prop 8— simply not die?
Left-leaning California’s horror about this newly revealed schism between two of its favorite sons is a situation that cries out for a villain, but the one that liberal white Hollywood has chosen for the role probably won’t make it all the way to the third act.
“It’s their churches,” somebody whispered to one of us not long after the election; “It’s their Christianity,” someone else hissed, rolling her eyes.
Their churches—those black churches did it. Have they forgotten who bankrolled Yes on 8 and exploited the cultural conservatism of a slice of the religious black community— white evangelicals and Mormons. Gee, aren’t the vast majority of those folks white?
More after the jump, including the unsettling news delivered to me on Saturday just before I had to go onstage to moderate a panel about building coalitions.