Prop 8 & Bad Assumptions

For the record, I voted No on 8 and donated money to the cause (which, lol, almost bounced until I caught it -- because I'm a broke, disorganized, but committed! grad student), even though my politics are a little ambivalent when it comes to gay marriage. My work to end homophobia and sexism in Black communities is an on-going project for me. Forward, Black queer feminism.

That said, I am simmering in frustration with some of the white queer discourse on prop 8 and Black people, which has been stunningly flat and simplistic. Here is a pretty good summary of what has gone down so far. In short, there is some race-based exit poll data about who voted for prop 8 (against gay marriage) and who voted against it (for gay marriage). Turns out, according to a CNN exit poll (which has been called into question), Black folks voted for Prop 8 at a rate of 70%, while 49% of white folks, 53% of Latino folks, 49% of Asian folks, and 51% of the mysterious “other” voted for Prop 8. So, we can see that of the small number of Black Californian voters, we disproportionately voted against gay marriage, which is troubling and should definitely be addressed. However, the discussion has been resembling more of an uproar about the Black "Bigots!" that hate gays and lesbians (because, let's face it, there is no such thing as a B or a T unless we're talking about a sandwich) who are clearly against fundamentally American things like love and family. Black people are no good, I tell you. No. Good.

I get that we're upset that 8 passed and the meanings that this carries, but the sudden move to blame Black people first and foremost is truly a disturbing example of poor analysis and white entitlement. I will not argue the numbers here, others have already done such a fantastic job at this. I am also not going to discuss how problematic it is that marriage has ended up becoming the defining issue of queer dignity and queer liberation, and how this marginalizes other issues that low-income queer people and queer people of color may prioritize over marriage, such as poverty and incarceration, undermining potentially amazing opportunities for coalition building. Again, others have already done such a great job at this. I also recommend Cathy Cohen's work, which has been brilliant on this score, particularly her essay, "Punks, Bulldaggers, & Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?"


Instead, I want to try to unpack the unhelpful liberal, individualist, rights-based framework in which this debate is being waged. It goes something like this: LGBT people should have the right to marry. Prop 8 takes away this right. Most Black voters in California voted to take away this right by voting for Prop 8. How could they when they "too" have been victims of having no civil rights? Racism should have taught black people more empathy for others who have no civil rights, "just like" they once experienced (a long, long time ago, you know, before Obama). In this case, oppression is defined as follows:

Black people not allowed to vote = lack of civil right = racism

Makes no sense why those people wouldn't be on our side, they know what "it's like." Therefore, Black people must be homophobes because oppression is defined as follows:

Gays & lesbians not allowed to marry = lack of civil right = homophobia

People are homophobic because they are hateful. Black people are more homophobic than others. Therefore they are more hateful than others, or put another way, morally inferior to white people (and, apparently, other people of color). That's the only rational explanation for why a group of people who have been the victim of oppression (read: having been denied specific civil rights), turn around and do the "same thing" to another group of people.

It's like trying to do analysis in a very tight and narrow little hallway of very bad assumptions. Here are some assumptions that this view makes which, I believe, are false:

1. How racist or homophobic a person is is measurable by objective and scientific means.

2. The only reason why an individual would make a choice to participate in oppression is because she is a VERY BAD PERSON.

3. If you disagree with (2), you do not believe that oppressed people are agents and should be held accountable for their actions.

4. Oppression is oppression. It is wrong to engage in "oppression olympics" and it's totally fine to think of one "civil rights" problem as being in the same category (at most, it's a difference of degree, not difference of a kind).

5. If you disagree with (4), you are just wallowing in your superior victimhood and you refuse to be accountable with your own complicity in perpetuating the oppression of other people.

6. Historical trajectories of oppression mean nothing. We only live in the present and only what's happening now counts.

So, over the past week or so, I have seen primarily rich white men (some gay, some not) operate within these assumptions. It's frustrating. And lazy. Let's take a look at the assumptions.

Assumption 1. How racist or homophobic a person is is measurable by objective and scientific means.

For example, Dan Savage takes a stand:

"I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color."

To be honest, I'm not even sure what he means here. Sounds like he feels brave somehow in proclaiming that there are only a "handful" of gay white men, but the numbers of homophobic Black folks are "huge." I'm not sure where he's getting those numbers, but if I had to guess, it's probably something about gay white men across the U.S. voting for Obama (flagging that they are not racist) and 70% of Black Californians who voted on Prop 8 giving it a yes vote (flagging that they are homophobic). There are so many problems here. First, Savage has no data, so the comment is just irresponsible and lazy outright. Second, trying to measure exactly how racist and/or homophobic people are is practically impossible, and it certainly isn't done by using how you voted as a measuring stick. Hell, even the Nazis got desperate enough to throw some votes Obama's way. Racism, homophobia, and other oppressions cannot be objectively measured.

That said, I think it may be fair to presume that if a person voted to end marriage rights for folks in same sex couples, she is probably homophobic -- that is frightened, in some way, of queerness. But I'm not sure it makes her a "bigot," a word that I never use, even though I tend to be an angry Black girl, because it doesn't mean anything to me. The reality is that racism (and other oppressions) is pervasive. It is like air, it's everywhere integrated into our social systems and subconsciouses. Just because a person hasn't called anyone a nigger this morning doesn't mean that all is right with her world as it relates to racism. But, because we can count how many times we've called folks names, or we can assess people's voting patterns, or we can count how many times we've had sex with a person of the same gender or a different race, we think these are the things that will lead us to an objective quantitative assessment of exactly how fucked up we are or are not. Part of the existential problem of oppression is that an objective measurement of who is fucked up and exactly how fucked up they are is not possible. Sorry. That brings us to...

Assumption 2. The only reason why an individual would make a choice to participate in oppression is because they are bad.

Assumption 3. If you disagree with (2), you do not believe that oppressed people are agents and should be held accountable for their actions.

I think Savage's quote implies (2) and I think many of the commenters in these blog discussions and rallies have reflected this assumption. When people say that someone is a "bigot" or a "racist," they are usually implying that the accused is qualitatively bad in a way the rest of us probably aren't. It makes them special, uniquely unkind and unjust. They are separate from the rest of the world. The individual alone is responsible for her beliefs and anyone in 2008 that has been found to harbor a racist belief is, somehow, particularly bad. That's why white folks freak out if they are accused of being racist, because, well, god, they're not Bull Connor hosing people down and stuff, they just feel a little uncomfortable when they're alone in an elevator with a Black or brown dude. (This was Obama's point when he talked about his grandmother's fears in his April speech on race.) Because "racism" and "bigotry" has come to signify some kind of absolute individual moral failing, it's been practically impossible to say that people are behaving racistly without folks totally freaking out. The accuser is the hysterical one who plays the ultimate card, the race card, in order to impugn a generally decent human being.

This is an error for the same reason that (1) is an error. Racism is pervasive and more complicated than a kind of absolutist moral model. However, instead of adopting a more complicated model of how to understand racism, we just use the same flawed model for other oppressions when other oppressed people feel attacked, in this case, homophobia. The intensity in which the the accusation of "Homophobe!" or "Bigot!" is being applied seems to call for some kind of renunciation of the accused individual. She is a VERY BAD PERSON and that's the end of that.

Except, in this case, the accusation targets a whole group of people instead of an individual. We're talking about the monolothic "Black people" instead of individuals, which can't be done to white people because white people aren't white because white is normative. But, the same kind of individualistic moral renunciation can be directed at Black people as if we were one unified individual. That we're only talking about one state, that many of us in California can't or didn't vote (and , therefore, we have no evidence that 70% of all Black adults in California support taking away the right of queers to marry, much less a percentage of all Black adults in the U.S.), that 30% of us that did vote actually voted no, makes no difference. All that cold water just takes away from the pretty drama of the irony of high Black voter turnout. When Savage uses the descriptive "huge numbers," it's not the much huger numbers of millions of "homophobic" white folks that voted for 8 in California. It's the "huge numbers" of Black people, in general, that he claims are "Homophobes!". (Despite the fact that we're now talking about a pretty small percentage of all those who actually voted yes on 8.) He deftly moves from a discussion of prop 8 to a generalization about Black folks everywhere. The generalization isn't caught by many, it's easy to accept, because {Black people} (the brackets signify a set, rather than what the words mean, a diverse group of people) are understood as a unified collective, one body, and, as such, we are all at once irrevocably guilty of an ugly moral failing that can't be explained away with our race cards and our manipulations of white guilt. Savage is DONE PRETENDING THAT {BLACK PEOPLE} AREN'T CAUSING A SERIOUS PROBLEM FOR HIM. Not only are we one person, but he frames himself as doing a brave thing because he's not afraid of the powerful race card because he's not a "Racist!" (who he says are "scum" so he can't possibly be one). He throws down the homophobic bigot card to the one {Black people} that suddenly seems (in a post-Obama age) to somehow hold the golden ticket to gay marriage, even if the same percentage of us had voted no as white people did, it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference. Does not matter in the face of the big black blockade to gay love and happiness.

The idea behind assumption (3) is that if you do not believe that {Black people} are (is?) bad for being "Homophobic bigots!" then you are exercising, shall we say, the soft bigotry of low expectations. That is, if you want to argue that there are more complicated reasons that Black folks voted yes on 8 other than that they are fundamentally immoral people, then you are not treating them like adults who should be accountable for their actions. Besides my argument here about the unsatisfying ways in which the accusations of "racist," "homophobic," and "bigots" are used, I will address this point while debunking...

Assumption 4. Oppression is oppression. It is wrong to engage in "oppression olympics" and it's totally fine to think of one "civil rights" problem as being in the same category (at most, it's a difference of degree, not difference of a kind).

For example, Keith Olbermann's "special comment" about prop 8. I know a lot of people were really moved by this video, and I am trying to respect that. However, besides generally being annoyed with Keith Olbermann's tendency towards self-importance, I was pretty taken aback with this excerpt:

"Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized. You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized."

Yeah, that comment is special alright. That shit is irritating. Do you really want to argue that the situation of non-marriage in chattel slavery is "just like" prop 8? Enslaved people were not "allowed" to marry because (1) they were considered to be animals, (2) they didn't own their bodies, (3) slave sexuality was seen primarily as potential for a free labor force, (4) they were subject to sexual and reproductive violence as a demonstration that they and their offspring and their families did not belong to themselves or each other... I could go on, but I can't believe I even have to make this argument. Olbermann needs to read a book or something about slavery and rape and reproduction and creating a slave labor force and "following the condition of the mother" and all that other stuff before he says something else really stupid and offensive. I mean, seriously, this is what passes as political analysis? His fucking Edward R. Murrow award should be revoked.

But, alas, I am not surprised at rich white man number two. A liberal individualist framework has a reductive view of rights, rather than a rich, multi-dimensional, historicized analysis of oppression. Slaves? Well, they simply did not have the "right" to marry. Just like LGBT folks nowadays. Both are equally evil. Unless you're being more generous, in which case the liberal might allow that slavery was "worse" than not allowing gay marriage, but she won't argue that there is a difference of a kind, just of degree, because a right is a right. This foul analysis gives us this assumption...

Assumption 5. If you disagree with (4), you are just wallowing in your superior victimhood and you refuse to be accountable with your own complicity in perpetuating the oppression of other people.

That is why we end up with claims like, "{Black people} know what it's like to be discriminated against. Why are they doing to us what happened to them?" White liberals are the first ones to utilize the history of racial violence to demonstrate why another oppression is also bad. "Just like segregation..." "Just like lynching..." Rights are like baseball cards that can be traded because their essential nature is the same.

But this shit is not the same. I don't have to argue that it's worse to assert that it ain't the same. The history of racial violence against Black people since we were brought to these shores to this very day is unique and wholly disturbing. There are lessons we can learn from that history that we can thoughtfully apply to other situations. There are connections between this and other trajectories of colonization and subjugation. But I'm noticing that there are some white folks that feel pretty entitled to rustle around Black history like some kind of curious anthropologist, picking out things that are convenient for them to use, often to legitimize their own experiences of oppression.

To be real, before this prop 8 stuff hit the fan, I was more tolerant of the parallel that some white queers drew between the Black Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the more recent LGBT Civil Rights Movements. I thought it might be a useful strategy. However, with all the sturm und drang of the past week, I'm beginning to see how this usage gets boiled down to a tit for tat strategy: We have your back (i.e. voted for Obama, sympathy to the story of the Black Civil Rights Movement), why don't y'all have ours? We (as of 2008) think that U.S. slavery was totally wrong, why don't y'all get that banning gay marriage is wrong? Or Jon Stewart's joke (third rich white guy) that as soon as Black people "made it" with Obama, it only took us 24 hours to use that brand new power against gay folks. Tolerance goes "both ways." "If {your people} want to call me a faggot, I can call you nigger." I'm not even picking on the fellow who gave us that last gem, I really think this is the essential point that Olbermann, Savage, and others are making. It's the same thing. A right is a right. A slur is a slur. There is no substantial difference.

While I have argued that this is the wrong way to think about oppression, I do not believe that just because something is different than something else doesn't mean that it doesn't have it's own moral weight. Just because I think not legalizing gay marriage isn't "just like" not legalizing marriage under chattel slavery (seriously, I can barely write that without making a face), doesn't mean that I don't think that prop 8 doesn't have it's own profound moral significance. I don't understand the "oppression olympics" critique that you can't argue that instances of oppression are worse than others. Of course, some things are different, and in some cases worse, than others. (It doesn't make sense to say something like, patriarchy is worse than colonization, because the two phenomena are much too broad, complex, and intersecting to draw a decent comparison. And it doesn't make sense to make a qualitative comparison about which of all the holocausts was the worst. However, I'm not going to argue that my experience with the racial profiling cop, though surely fucked up, is "just like" when Harriet Jacobs was sexually stalked by her slave master. That's obviously false and, more to the point, disrespectful.) You don't abandon the right to assert that other things are unjust by granting this seemingly self-evident point.

That said, I wouldn't argue that this gives anyone a get out of accountability free card. Black people (like all people) have some work to do when it comes to getting our shit together around homophobia. But it does make the conversation about accountability a little more complicated. It's interesting, white folks can use our history to legitimize their own suffering, but then have a completely de-historicized way of thinking about Black people's choices and accountabilities. Which brings me to...

Assumption 6. Historical trajectories of oppression mean nothing. We only live in the present and only what's happening now counts.

Here's the thing about Black people and homophobia and patriarchy. Black people have been targeted with some shit that white people have not. Our ancestors faced sexual and reproductive violence as slaves, sexualized terrorism during the lynching movement at the turn of the century, forced sterilization during the U.S. eugenics movement, the 1965 Moynihan report that targeted Black women's reproductive and sexual integrity, more forced sterilization in the 1970s and 80s, the welfare queen debacle in the 1980s and 90s, etc. This is to say that Black sexuality has been on the fucking auction bloc since the get. We've been poked, prodded, raped, sold, and cut open primarily as a result of our sexual and reproductive capacities.

There's no real way to measure this, but a reasonable theory could go something like this: Black folks, in general, have a lot more to lose on the battleground of sexuality. Is there any wonder that, after our bodies have been brutally targeted for centuries, after surviving attempts of Black genocide, and even now, while experiencing more sexual violence in prisons (Black people of all genders, that is) because we're disproportionately incarcerated, that there's slightly more skittishness around what gets to be perceived as sexual normalcy. So, you might get a sexual conservative streak in a Black Christian tradition. Perhaps the desire to conform to a Western model of sexual normalcy is a move to prove that we are worth keeping around. Perhaps the possibility that Black folks are slightly more homophobic than, say, white folks, in general, could be related to this crazy history of sexual violence that is not shared by white folks. Folks may think they have more to lose. If we are just "normal enough," maybe we'll get a pass.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I just recently finished Paula Giddings' new biography of Ida B. Wells and now I'm working on re-reading Harriet Jacobs' Incidents In The Life of A Slave Girl. One thing that I find striking is Wells' and Jacobs' constant and urgent defense of the integrity of Black women's sexuality. I find it heartbreaking, this need to prove that Black women are not animals. To feel it a duty to assert the dignity of Black sexuality because it certainly is not assumed.

I know this can read like a messy pop psychology analysis, so I apologize for that. But, I don't really see how a conversation about Black homophobia can be had without considering the glaring context of hundreds of years of on-going sexual trauma and violence, and how that trauma and fear, gets passed along across generations.

So, what does that mean for accountability? I think it's critical to check ourselves and each other around homophobia, which will require addressing those generational wounds. The opportunities for Black people inherent in sexual liberation for all of us are rich and manifold. And, while there is a lot of homophobia in our communities (as there is in all racial communities in the U.S.), my sense is that things are getting better overall due to the work of Black feminists and queers and Black folks that are pro-feminist and pro-queer. I also believe that this history with its difficult consequences doesn't mean that we can't be morally culpable for our own behavior. But I don't think it's productive, or even true, for that to take the form of calling people "Bigots!". As I've said, I don't even know what that's supposed to mean except that you're A VERY BAD PERSON, which is too simplistic for the complicated realities of oppression.

However, in a liberal rights-based view on these issues, all this history is just a noisy deck of race card excuses whining away accountability. Except when Black history of violence can be used for the purposes of showing how oppressed white people are today. Then it's A-okay. Also, as I am editing this post, I just got an e-mail calling prop 8 a pogrom. That shit is not cool! We don't need to say that prop 8 is a pogrom (which means massacre), or it's "just like" denial of marriage under chattel slavery (which, not to belabor the point, but seriously, wtf?), to defend the position that the passage of prop 8 is a terrible event that should have a powerful response (if gay marriage is how we're going to do queer liberation, which, of course, is still up for some debate).

So, I move that if white folks, including oppressed white folks, want to take the time to assert histories of racial trauma and violence against Black folks for illustrative purposes, they can not do so to lecture or shame us (which, frankly, is how I took Olbermann's "special comment"), but should instead humbly reflect on how those histories (since they suddenly seem so interested in them) might have brought all of us to the place of struggle where we are today. I know that's a lot to ask, especially of rich white men who have felt morally superior this week like Dan Savage, Keith Olbermann, Andrew Sullivan, and, yes, even my favorite rich white guy, Jon Stewart. But I think this will help all of our movements step up our game a little more, so I make the motion anyway and sincerely hope it passes.