While we’re on the subject of Martin Luther King, we’d like to point you to an article by our old friend, sappho-journo Jasmyne Cannick.
In said article, Cannick uses King’s his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to scold black leaderes for their Tim Hardaway-related silence.
Cannick insists that black leaders’ muteness only proves that they’re just as complicit in homophobic oppression as their white predecessors. By eschewing the inflammatory issue, black leaders are derailing King’s dream and creating a nightmare for queer blacks.
She writes:
I often feel that the biggest hindrance to Blacks is not the white conservative right but the people that look like us that are too afraid to disrupt the order of things to do any real meaningful work towards my civil rights as a lesbian… [These] Black leaders aren’t willing to rock the boat in the fight for equality and would rather settle for being good Negroes assuring people like me that it will come one day, not today, but one day.
It seems to us that she’s got a point on this one. She’s right when she says that America’s most prominent leaders have yet to come out against Hardaway – something they certainly would have done had it been a white player talking about black people (remember Michael Richards?). Where are those typically reliable media whores, the honorable Reverends, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson?
How about we take this to the next level?
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Maybe they’re on vacation or maybe, as Cannick seems to think, they just don’t care. Either way, we hear them loud and clear. And so does Cannick:
…The silence from the Black leadership hurts even more. Because from that silence, I was told very loudly that my life as a lesbian has no meaning to them and that it is morally just to hate gays, even if I am Black. Just don’t go on a tirade in a comedy club about hating Blacks because then we’re coming for you.
Sounds to us like she means business.
johnosahon
it is just like how the gay community shut their mouth during the shirley q issue.
like i said every community ONLY care about themselves
werdna
Not to deny that there’s racism in the gay community but johnosahon’s remark seems overly simplistic. First off there’s been plenty of criticism of Shirley Q. Liquor from within the gay community, and (making the situation rather more complicated) some defenses of the character from members of the black community. E.g., RuPaul featured Shirley Q. Liquor on a record and has said “she’s not racist.” Have any gay people leapt to Hardaway’s defense and made any similar remarks on his behalf?
Secondly, Shirley Q. Liquor is a satirical character, Hardaway was speaking as himself in a non-ironic forum. One may legitimately conclude that Shirley’s humor is offensive or racist, but there is at least some room for discussion about its intent and its success or failure in that regard. There doesn’t really seem to be any room for that in Hardaway’s case. He was spouting unambiguous hatred.
As for “media whores” (to use queerty’s glibly insulting characterization) Sharpton and Jackson, do you really think they’re the people Cannick was complaining about? They may not have jumped to the front of this particular issue (which was really pretty trivial and if anything seems to have demonstrated how unacceptable it is to publicly hold such virulent anti-gay views) but they have been long-time supporters of gay rights and have addressed the issue of homophobia in the black community in other contexts. It seems like the issue with Sharpton and Jackson is queerty’s own and is, frankly, a little out of place here.
Here’s a Sharpton quote from a year ago: “The black church must not be refuge for those who want to scapegoat and use violence on any community, including the gay and lesbian community.†In the same speech he encouraged his audience to challenge anti-gay statements from black clergy saying, “Turn up the heat in the black church. Make these people sweat.” Jackson’s been less clear of late, with his statements against full marriage equality and criticizing the comparison of gay rights to black civil rights, but come on, he’s been a supporter of gay rights for years. Do we need to attack our friends for the sins of our actual enemies?