hey – thanks for this great link. it would be interesting to hear about the experiences of black queer people over here on this blog.

I thought the piece was incisive and liked the way it was presented as a survey/reflection of past experiences. I could identify with certain parts such as being made aware of my race around age 6 when a kid on the block pointed it out to me in a derisive way, my family was the first black family to integrate an Italian/Jewish neighborhood back in 1974, people saying things that were supposedly kind in their warped minds "we don't even think of you as black", my college being predominately white but the students seemingly much more enlightened than the ones I endured in my formative years in elementary school through high school and then certain things that happen in the workplace that merit conversation/analysis among friends, boyfriends, family. What I have found extremely interesting however of late, are some of the postings of presumably non-black gays on this site. Save for Bill Perdue who shows a more aware balanced perspective, I am somewhat taken aback by flippant sayings (not precise quotes) like "google this for the answer, move on" "stop the victimolgy — my ancestors worked hard and even had it worse" "I'll bet they'll get all crazy crying racism because I used the word 'boy'" "just get over it" "move on" "it's all in your head" "just be thankful you live here in America" "the riots will start burn baby burn if HRC doesn't get the nomination" "I don't like his Southern way of speaking with anger in his voice" when the issue of race is interwoven into the conversation. I guess I expected better because I've always thought and perhaps naively so that gays would "get it" or understand better by virtue of their own marginalized experiences but clearly gays are just as oblivious as their straight counterparts. Substitute any of the aforementioned examples from straight people telling this to gay men and insert the appropriate gay labels in lieu of the race/cultural based ones, and I think some gays on here might be able to make the connection. One of my postings was misconstrued by some on here as advocating victimhood status, when it was in fact, my attempt to draw, compare and contrast historical issues which have present day consequences (so to the one who said "we're still talking about this, when does it end?") and why there is perhaps some degree of a schism between straight blacks and gays. All I can say is that it was quite illuminating (i.e., how quick even gays will take it there, whether out of sheer ignorance or malice).

Gays can be notorious racists, unfortunately I've seen it much too often… Just saying…
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Stop making generalisations about people, it's bigoted.