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Why would it puzzle you that a member of a "degraded" group - your words, not mine - would take another persecuted group's struggle so lightly?
I am not talking about the comparative episodes of discrimination, such as your examples of ID checking, the predominance of white men in personal ads, and so forth. I was thinking of the episodes of kidnapping and murder, which have little precedent as far as racial groups in the United States outside of the treatment of Indian Nations. I said it before and I maintain it: the history of the Jim Crow era (not necessarily the history of slavery, but you can include that if you like) produced a generational fear, the harshness of which eventually gave birth to the civil rights movement (see Litwack, Taylor Branch's trilogy, Eugene Genovese). In turn, I do not think it is unacceptable, let alone racist, to think that black people could look at the episiodes of gay people being kidnapped and murdered - for being gay - and feel indifferent or disconnected from them
specifically because of their familiarity with the same treatment - kidnapping and murder for being black.
As a teacher in a public high school years ago, I would routinely attempt to make connections between historical events to students in the class and their own personal experiences. I did not think it unusual, far-fetched, racist, or insensitive to link the stories of Emmitt Till and Matthew Shepard. I took a lot of heat from parents, in fact, and some students as I recall, for even
discussing Shepard, but in the face of Fred Phelps, et al, hogging the headlines at that time, I wanted to illustrate that, in a strange way, our country had already been through a similar era with another group, and look how far we had come in just 50 years with them, and it would be possible to do the same with gay people. I asked the black students if they could see what example Till's death would have had on giving rise to generational movements for change, and they could. In one pretty important moment, a student told me, while discussing Shepard's police report, "how they always treat our people". That moment and that lightbulb meant a whole hell of alot more to me than many supposed "enlightened" comments here.
Now it's your turn to bash me for being a closeted racist, a typical white liberal saddled with white guilt, a white homophobe, or whatever. I stand by what I said a few days ago. In answer to your question, I was puzzled by a black man taking the gay struggle so lightly because Mr Hardaway, as a black man, should be familiar with the history of kidnapping and murder during Jim Crow, and its eventual impact on his personal ability to live a relatively good life, and the similarities between Jim Crow and what gay people have similarly had to endure. But what is more shocking to me now, I guess, is this: in an atmosphere when the most homophobic public comment I can ever remember being uttered by not just a sports figure, but any public figure at all, we can't find common ground. That is sort of sad. But I will try.
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A gay person making racist statements or acting in racist way - which happens all too often - is no better or worse than a black person - likewise happening all too often - making homophobic statements.
I agree with you. But that's not what I said initially. I said that a black person making homophobic statements is "worse" (your words, not mine) than such statements made by others because of a historical familiarity with genocide. It isn't unreasonable or racist to think that way. And I stand by it.
