Psychotherapist Matt Dempsey hosts a dinner party to talk to some of his non-white gay friends about their personal experiences with racism in the gay community. From social media to sexual preference, the conversation stays real and attempts to shed some light on what’s holding us back from finding unity. Hint: white people, the work starts with you.
Check out the worthwhile video, featuring Wilson Cruz, Alec Mapa, Justin Sylvester and Sachin Bhatt below:
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Yeah, nah, not clicking on that. Self-indulgent victim-culture wallowing, narcissistic virtue-signalling and self-flagellation is sooo 2016. Resilience and genuine, honest, humanly imperfect but trying is for 2017. Or we’re fucked.
Chambers
At least someone is talking about racism in the community. I have lived in S.CA and in Virginia. It so bad all over the country. Growing up, I thought being gay would make white people more empathetic to racism, but sadly it doesn’t.
Black Pegasus
I’m not watching that.
The fake altruism and narcissistic funk is too much to bare from these queens.
jhon_siders
Sounds like baiting to me ? Every one including gays are tired of the black community’s crying about being picked on by the police and the white man keeping them down Blacks are the most protected minority in the US Gays do not have near the protection in jobs or housing blacks do ! The 14% that does 76% of the violent crime needs to clean there act up if they want more respect ! Chicago is a good example Who is killing who !!!
NateOcean
Actually the video clip was an interesting conversation, and not overly self-indulgent. Perhaps it was too short, for while they discussed many issues, they supplied few answers.
crowebobby
@Chambers: It does. At least as much as being black makes black people empathetic to homophobia.
GayEGO
We of all people should not have racism as their is only one race, the human race. I see attractive guys of all nationalities.
JungleBoi
There are 4 races. One species, 4 races.
GayEGO
Whoops! I meant “there” is only one race.
BigG
Good video but I don’t think you have to force yourself out of the box and experiment. you know what you like. I have my preferences just like everybody else and if someone gets offended by my preferences that has nothing to do with me that’s them being insecure. It’s not racist when you don’t want to sleep with another race. I’m sure the intent is not to be racist, it’s just you speaking the truth and someone automatically yells racism it’s annoying as hell.
I think the point of the video is watch how you speak
MikeColling83
Lesson to take away, it’s completely ok to have preferences but don’t be a dick about it and don’t let your preference prevent you from meeting someone fantastic. As gay people the numbers are already against us. We would be crazy for making that number even smaller.
IDoNotHaveToAgreeWithYou
Why doesn’t he talk to them about the violent homophobia among blacks and latins instead?
Neonegro
Racism in the Gay community does not affect me. I am only into other black men.
Besides, racism is just a philosophy just as Christianity or Judaism, communism and others.
People should have the intellectual freedom to see the world anyway they want.
Discrimination that prevents any member of any group the ability to pursue health, wealth or happiness is where the state should get involved to protect everyone’s right.
Not to be offended however is not a right.
MacAdvisor
Justin can’t count. He is sitting there with three people of color, not four. There are four people of color sitting there, but he is sitting with three.
Heywood Jablowme
“No blacks.”
“That’s so rac!st!”
“Black guys are so hot! And they’re so hung!”
“That’s fetishizing!”
@Neonegro: “Racism in the Gay community does not affect me. I am only into other black men.”
LOL. No irony there.
@MacAdvisor: Not sure what you mean exactly, but I assumed the fourth guy identifies as Latino?
miserylovedme24
How much do you want to bet that those guys are completely closed-minded towards whole groups of people? Guys that are too fat, too short, balding, too feminine, whatever the case may be. Yet they get angry if someone doesn’t want to get with them for a particular reason. Bottom line is, places like Grindr are completely superficial, and that includes race. Pretty sure straight people are just as superficial. Doesn’t mean it’s right, but it’s incredibly common, and not just with white gays.
Xzamilloh
Virtueman… where are you???? I keep seeing the virtue signal, but no Virtueman!!! Please, Virtueman, regressives and narcissists looking to feel good temporarily need your validation!!!
eric_lauer
It’s really hard for me to believe that these men have any trouble finding dates.
ppp111
People shouldn’t have to apologize because they’re not attracted to some people. We’re all entitled to it. While I agree that everyone should always keep their options open about love, if we’re not attracted to someone there’s really nothing you can do about it.
Heywood Jablowme
When racism is discussed out in the real world, it involves matters like who gets hired, who goes to what school, who gets voted for, who gets shot (or not) by cops, who hangs out with whom, etc.
When we discuss “racism in the gay community” it’s all just “who are white guys having sex with?”
Oh wait, it’s also about how can white guys make their “preferences” clear on Grindr “without being a d!ck about it.”
Um… if someone IS a d!ck about it, wouldn’t that save you some time and you just move on to someone else? Hard to take any of this seriously.
radagastthe3rd
So if I’m 50% white and 50% POC, does that make me a victim or nah?
Neonegro
@Heywood Jablowme: That’s right, no irony in my statement. Only one seeking others of other races would be affected by the race based rejection of such others.
Xzamilloh
Most of this crap I feel is just projection and hypocrisy. I personally don’t care about what white gay men prefer because I’m not predominantly looking for white gay men. Most of these guys want white men to fuck them which is why they find issue with it. I mean, if white gay men have to be held accountable for preferring only other white men, why shouldn’t people of color be held to the same standard and questioned as to why THEY only want white men.
Neonegro
@radagastthe3rd: it depends, what color is the POC?
barkomatic
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: Actually, this was a perfectly reasonable conversation where the guys simply want other gay men to be civil. That’s it. They aren’t trying to shame anyone into being attracted to someone they aren’t.
The wording of your comment evokes Milo and Paul Joseph Watson influences. It’s a free country and it’s fine to consider their ideas, but keep in mind that they make their living by being deliberately provocative and mean. That approach doesn’t work for long in real life outside of a YouTube video.
Xzamilloh
@barkomatic: “That approach doesn’t work for long in real life outside of a YouTube video.”
Out of context, that sounds like a threat. Or is that a threat? What, don’t make the kids mad or they’ll hurt you?
Me2
I definitely believe that everyone should have the inalienable right to be as discriminating as they want to be when it comes to who they sleep with. However, the gay community can be a little more inclusive and a lot less mean & hurtful, socially. A good amount of gays are only friendly and nice to other people who they are attracted to or to people who they deem hot. They only want to party with and be around other hot guys and will totally ignore and or look down on anyone who doesn’t fit into what their personal idea of hot is. I think that’s where the perception of racism, fat shaming, etc. really comes from.
Transiteer
Funny …. but I see other men of assorted colours and cultures and I find them hot in their own exotic way. Sounds like too many white guys (I am one) are restricting their menu. The World is your oyster boys – get off the bitchy seat and start sampling the wares from other places (ethnicity-wise). White only? So boring.
ErikO
@Chambers: Of course not, there are TONS of white gay men who are r a c i s t; but you have gay men of all races that are r a c i s t.
@miserylovedme24: That’s probably true.
barkomatic
@Xzamilloh: A threat to whom? You’ve been watching far too many paranoid Milo videos and I know he’s your inspiration but that’s a logistical stretch. Why don’t you counter me with an actual argument than trying to discredit me by suggesting I made a threat? Maybe it’s because you *don’t* have an argument.
Free speech is great but this new trend of being deliberately being mean to each other is not going to help anyone. I think that’s one of the general messages of the conversation.
girldownunder
Some people don’t always express themselves well.
To dismiss that?
🙁
Heywood Jablowme
@Me2: “Socially.” You hit on an important point. Until recently I’d have thought the vast majority of gay guys had a lot of gay male, NON-sexual friends who we don’t particularly consider “hot” (or as inevitable sex partners on some future, random druggy night). But maybe that kind of thinking is now old-fashioned?
Notice how these guys don’t expand the concern about racism to include non-sexual friendships, even though they’re in a setting conducive to exactly that. After all, they’re not having an orgy; they’re just talking at dinner. (With 3 bottles of wine, lol.) You’d think it would occur to at least one of them, in this SOCIAL setting, to expand the conversation a bit beyond “who are white guys having sex with on Grindr.” But no.
They don’t even expand the conversation a bit into what happens if, say, an Asian guy is interested in a black guy – do the same stereotypes come into play (or not)? No, it’s still all about the white guys, that’s the one and only focus. Strange!
And another strange thing. Notice the complete conflation of the two concepts of “serious dating” and “casual sex” (a la Grindr)… they call ALL of it “dating”! That’s ridiculous. I guess it’s possible none of them really understands what “dating” actually is! But it’s a semantic mistake and it leads to other semantic mistakes. “Fetishizing” for example is probably never a good thing in serious dating, but in casual sex it’s maybe inevitable, it kind of goes with the territory (and if someone is uncomfortable with that they should probably stick with serious dating).
Weird all around.
Ditamo
In my opinion most people tend to gravitate towards people that look similar to them, doesn’t matter if you are male/female, cis/transgender gay/bi/straight, black/white/asian/mixed, etc.
Because of this, most gay white men tend to gravitate towards other white men, especially since they are the majority and have less trouble in finding others similar to them.
However, since men of color are typically twice a minority and the pool of people they can meet is way smaller, they are more open minded to try and have a relationship with someone of another ethnicity, especially white men since they are the majority.
But since white people don’t have that same set of realities, they don’t see it the same way, which is then interpreted as racism by other men of color in the gay community, although in reality it’s just a preference and less of a hatred/superior-inferior complex.
The bigger problem I think, the actual root of most of these discussions in the gay community, boils down to a overemphasis in sex, especially casual sex. With men of all backgrounds, tending to look for idealistic physical features in others instead of a person worth beyond physicality.
Kangol
Personal r @ cism is one thing but the larger issue is structural and systemic r @ c i s m, which doesn’t affect whi te people the same way it does POCs. We’re all harmed by r @ c i s t attitudes and policies which many ahistorical whi te g a y people want to ignore, but the effects are all around us. Whi te g a y people can be as r @ cist as white stra i g ht people. BTW, I thought the video was OK, but these people of color really should go far beyond talking about dating. And I had no idea Sachin Bhatt was gay. YUM!
Ditamo
@Heywood Jablowme:
I think that, what you see in society at large, you will also see in the microcosm of the gay community. Depending on how diverse the neighborhood of a person is, so will the diversity of that persons’ group of friends will be.
On an individuals personal level, I have no idea if they are racist or not, but I don’t believe that a chunk of gay white men are r@cists. Although they could have subconscious biases, but everyone has that!
The reality of the matter is, when we talk about racism in the gay community, we typically mean racism when it comes to casual sex and openness to developing romantic relationships outside your own ethnicity.
But that actually has more to do with beauty ideals society has engraved in our minds. And also how most men tend to overemphasize physical traits instead of moral values when looking for relationships.
jesusbangedmybootie
I love that there are a multiple comments from people who didn’t even watch the video but felt the need to tell everyone else why it sucks. I think maybe those people might want to look at the aspect of the personality which drove them to think they had a valid opinion. The people that think that political correctness is out of control are usually the culprits of saying the most offensive crap.
Maybe you may want to see what others say, and if you can add something back, then add your thoughts. but telling a person that you are narefly
Ditamo
@Heywood Jablowme:
I think that, what you see in society at large, you will also see in the microcosm of the gay community. Depending on how diverse the neighborhood of a person is, so will the diversity of that persons’ group of friends will be.
On an individuals personal level, I have no idea if they are r @ c i s t or not, but I don’t believe that a chunk of gay white men are r @ c i s t s. Although they could have subconscious biases, but everyone has that!
The reality of the matter is, when we talk about racism in the gay community, we typically mean racism when it comes to casual sex and openness to developing romantic relationships outside your own ethnicity.
But that actually has more to do with beauty ideals society has engraved in our minds. And also how most men tend to overemphasize physical traits instead of moral values when looking for relationships.
Ditamo
This auto-flag system is a bit too sensitive…. Although it’s been a few years since Queerty changed it, I liked the old system so much more, where you could like and unlike comments, and there wasn’t an auto-flag system on comments for banal reasons. Tried to post a comment 2 times and the system auto-flags it, because of 1 word….
Xzamilloh
@barkomatic: You vomited a lot of bile with that “retort”, but you’re the one trying to curb someone else’s speech because it sounds too much like Milo’s or Paul Joseph Watson, two people you apparently must be well versed with to assume that anyone is mimicking their speech. Being “provocative and mean” is a throwaway comment, that is ironic, coming from someone who said I need a logical counter to come at them. Well, if you can just pull things out of your ass with nothing to support it, why can’t I? Hitchens’ Razor: that which can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
But, you tried it, boo boo… I’ll give you that.
Xzamilloh
@barkomatic: “Free speech is great but…”
That “but” indicates that you do not think free speech is great. People say mean things all of the time. Hell, I had to report an regressive troll on here because they were masquerading as me because their feelings were hurt. But their free speech wasn’t the problem…it was the fact that they were attributing words to me that I hadn’t said. Milo feeds on attention and feeds on controversy, and people like you give the queen what she wants. If you think Milo is saying messed up things, come at him with arguments, not with chants to shut him up, because that only bolsters his claims of a anti-free speech left.
How’s that argument? Is that up to your standards?
Shimata
Half of these comments amount to nothing more than childishly plugging up your ears with your fingers and yelling, “LALALALALALALALALALALALALA.”
That being said, I think the video was too short and would have benefitted from focusing not only on white gay men’s treatment of gay POC, but also gay POC treatment of themselves. For example, it would have been interesting if they’d expounded on the rice queen/potato queen phenomenon wherein a very large percentage of gay Asian men prefer white men, even to the exclusion of other Asian men. To go further, why does “mixed-race couple” so often mean “white guy + any POC”? Though I know they exist, I’ve rarely seen a mixed-race gay couple made up of POC from different races.
Brian
Some of these incidents of “racism” are simply rejections based on sexual preference. They are not forms of prejudice that exist at the intellectual level.
Is there racism in the “gay community”? Of course there is. But it’s not institutionalized.
Kangol
@Shimata: Excellent point. I mean, I have to say I was not surprised to learn that beautiful Sachin Bhatt was with a white man. In the late 1980s Joseph Beam, the editor and writer, wrote that “Black men loving black men is the revolutionary act,” by which he meant looking inwards, learning to love oneself and others like oneself, and to decolonize not just minds but hearts and desires. This did not mean that black men or any men of color could not love white partners/spouses, but rather than seeking validation in whiteness would always lead to heartache. You’d never think that we had several waves of liberation–black, ethnic, LGBTQ, women’s, etc.–given how retrograde thinking about race is, but that’s the effect that systems of oppression like r@cism, sexism, homophobia, etc. all have.
mawbinatl
@Neonegro: Your comment is totally contradictory to what is trying to be accomplished by opening the dialog.
I have a relative who only dates thugs. They have to appear “street” and hypermasculine to even get his attention. If a Black guy were in any way less masculine or spoke proper English instead of street slang, he considers them less than. If you were any of those things, you could not date him or many of his friends because they all think similarly.
He often tells me that I don’t sound black enough and to this day, I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
Langston Hughes, Paul L. Dunbar, Roscoe Lee Brown, Laurence Fishburn, Malcolm X, August Wilson and James Baldwin all were black men with good diction and are/were very articulate and I strive to be like them. Because I pronounce car or here correctly or say ASK instead of AKS does that mean that I am not black enough? FUCK NO!
You, my friend, could have a perfectly fine and content relationship with another Person of Color outside of the African American enclave, even a Caucasian male but you believe that black is better which makes you no less racist or better than those Caucasians who say they “don’t do black guys or Asians”.
Diversity, in my humble opinion, is better.
Nekobot917
stop associating/talking to white men, racism in the gay community ends, Problem solved.
Nekobot917
I still don’t see why black people are letting themselves to brainwashed to adhere, suck up to, or think white men or somehow a better standard, simply because they say so? The Indoctrination is real.
Nekobot917
stop associating/talking to white men, racism in the gay community ends, Problem solved.@Ditamo: This is actually a good explanation, I myself would never give certain people the time of day at all in even in a slight conversation if I could find more people that looked like me.