Black Looks

Anyone regularly reading this blog will by now have a fairly good idea of the long hard struggle faced by the African LGBTI community against homophobic bigots, even in South African where LGBTI rights are enshrined in the constitution and where same-sex marriage became a reality in 2006. However we often imagine that things are much easier in the US and I guess relatively they are but there the recent passing of Proposition 8 [a constitutional amendment in California which bans same-sex marriage] is a wake up call that all is far from being OK.

The title of this post comes from Pam’s House Blend who thought of using the word “hysterical” but thought it “too serious a topic for snark“. But that depends how you interpret the word “hysterical” – as in “hysterically roll on the floor funny”or as in “hysterical psychoneurotic – marked by excessive or uncontrollable emotion – mad frenzied raving; “a mob of hysterical vigilantes”. Taking this interpretation the use of the word is very appropriate.

Contrary to much of the mainstream LGBT [white] media, Black voters were not responsible for the the passing of the amendment nonetheless I am hardly surprised at this racialisation of the outcome which has leanings of mob hysteria.

But here we are addressing ourselves as there is no doubt we as Black people need to step up and own up to the homophobia in our communities whether here in England or Nigeria, Uganda or the US. And as Pam writes it’s not just Prop 8…..

It’s been an strange month to be black and gay in America so far. First there was the gay bashing that killed Michael Sandy in New York, and the disturbing news of Tyrone Garner’s lack of a burial 37 days after his death with the possibility of a pauper’s burial in the end. Those depressing stories were balanced out somewhat yesterday by the news of the New Jersey Supreme Court decision and the fact that a black lesbian couple was among the plaintiffs whose willingness to take a stand yielded that historic moment.

Pam’s hard-line response to the “hysterical” bigots amongst Black people is powerful and particularly addresses the religious bigots that we all know too well in African countries.

When I was growing up, I heard an old legend that if you read the Bible all the way through from beginning to end, it would make you crazy. Now I think what makes you crazy isn’t reading the Bible, but reading it literally and to the exclusion of anything else. That will drive you insane as surely as sitting in a dark room and never allowing any light to enter it would make anyone insane. Let in a little light, and you see enough to make things out. More light than that, and suddenly the way you thought the world around you worked doesn’t make sense anymore. But not enough light and you either have to create stories to explain what you can’t fully see. Or you have to just not see it. With African Americans, it began with the first slaves who were converted to Christianity only to be confronted with the biblical passages that justified and even sanctified their enslavement, and for the sake of sanity had to “not read those parts.”

Also note that in the US like Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and other African countries, the bigotry stems from the same Victorian puritanical Christianity forced fed on Africans by the colonial rulers and speaks to the “unAfricanness” of Christianity itself. This was a religion brought by white people who claimed Black people were not human but savage animals to be controlled and fed literal interpretations of a bible that was used to confirm their sub-humanness.

I basically concur with his premise that the vehement homophobia expressed by many Blacks stems from a the history of so many Black slaves being converted to Christianity by conservative denominations that stressed biblical literalism, strict Victorian sexual morality that was prevalent during the same period as American slavery, and a reaction against the stereotypes of Blacks as insatiable sexual savages.

We have all had to put up with being at best marginalised and worse excluded and disowned by families, friends and community or forced to live in open and closed closets of hurt and anger. Coming from our own people who have been oppressed and treated like crap for the best part of 500 years – is particularly hard to take. How can people who have been through so much pain because of their Blackness then turn around and inflict the same pain on their sisters and brothers just because they have a different sexual orientation? It is shameful. Black people all over the world are celebrating the fact that a Black man has become President of the US and therefore the most powerful person in the world. Yet they cannot even begin to connect the dots and link that up with their own homophobia they are so blinded with the ink from their bibles.