Sunday, July 19, 2009

GAY Will Never be the New Black !

Unless you are Black and Gay, you are marginalize from two communities! But like most White People in general, I don’t think the gay community really understands this. Several years ago I ask a Gay colleague that carpooled with me, about White and Black Gay relations, he advised that they were no different than straight race relations with Whites; they still adhered to White Supremacy, and believe that they were better than Blacks.

Despite the catchiness of the slogan, gay is not the new black. Black is still black. White Gays are a powerful influential group. To suggest that their plight is like ours is to discount the suffering of the million of Africans who died in the Trans Atlantic slave trade, and the historical legacy of slavery, segregation, and domestic terrorism, that Black people experience and are still suffering from effects in current day America.

Is reminds me a film I saw about five years ago called Flag Wars. Which is a candid, unvarnished portrait of privilege, poverty, and local politics that was taking place across many Black Communities across America!

Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras' Flag Wars is account of competing economic interests between two historically oppressed groups, seen through the politics and pain of gentrification. This story takes place in Columbus, Ohio. Black residents, working-class or poor and often elderly, fight to hold on to their homes and heritage. Realtors and gay home-buyers see the enormous, often run-down homes as fixer-uppers. The inevitable clashes expose prejudice and self-interest. http://www.pbs.org/pov/flagwars/video_talkingback2.php

Many of the White Gays featured in this film, didn’t see that they were engaging in the same exploitative and bias behavior, that they themselves are convinced that they are the victims of.

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