Y'all know I absolutely love me some Jasmyne Cannick because as the late Jack 'The Rapper' Gibson used to say, she tells it like it T-I-S is.Some white gay peeps already hate on her because of her successful efforts to shut down Chuck Knipp's odious Shirley Q. Liquor performances in the Los Angeles area and because of her blunt, no holds barred unapologetically Black blog.
In the wake of the passage of the Prop 8 same gender marriage ban she's been drawing increasing fire from white gays who took offense at her dead on commentary on why Prop 8 passed and her LA Times op-ed piece that appeared the Sunday after the election.
She's plucked some nerves out there and nationally, but that's the job of us activist types. We're not in it for popularity. If you like us, cool, but in our pursuit to make this a better society for all of us truth is an essential weapon in that struggle. Sometimes we have to bluntly state the obvious to the peeps enamored of denial, spin, sugar coating and outright lying.
Doing that and being unapologetically proud of her heritage doesn't make her or any person of color racist. I'm getting a little sick of seeing that tired comment being thrown out there because you don't like either her for whatever reason or the message. As Parliament-Funkadelic would say, if you don't like the effects, don't produce the cause.
Many African-American GLBT folks, if they haven't already tuned you out, are millimeters close to saying to hell with y'all after the naked displays of anti-Black racism that erupted in many GLBT communities, the racist comments from some white gay pundits, and the startling ease in which those comments freely flowed from your lips, pens and keyboards in the gay blogosphere and beyond.
Whether you like it or not, Jasmyne has the respect and the ear of the Black GLBT and non GLBT community in LA and beyond. She's just the messenger trying to get it through your thick skulls what it will take to fix the obvious problem you have in crafting a pro-GLBT rights message that will resonate with the African-American community.If you want to win, it would behoove many of of you trying to figure out what to do and how to approach the African-American GLBT community for help to listen to what she and other African-American GLBT peeps in Cali and elsewhere have to say.
But hating on Jasmyne Cannick for simply telling the truth is not an option.
4 comments:
Oh, this is great. I love it!
It goes without saying that there are racist gays and homophobic blacks. God did not bestow angelic purity on any group of people. Trying to figure out which subgroup is more numerous is crazy. Arguments based on anecdotes are arguments that can never end, since there's always another anecdote to cite...
... and even if you could figure out which group were larger, what would be the point? To justify breaking up the alliance? Hooray.
It does sound like Jasmine is announcing her withdrawl of support for LGBT political efforts, and that's sad. Nothing to get angry at her for - she has the same right to her own political decisions as anybody else - but sad.
It's also true that, for every person who is actually racist or homophobic, there are a lot more people who are manipulated or confused into making decisions as if they were racist or homophobic. That's where education comes in, and it's obviously true if she says "you failed to educate my community effectively". I hope she'll keep feedback coming in the future, especially concrete suggestions, instead of just writing the community off.
What a lot of fuss about a tiny number of people... if 7 out of 10 Californian blacks voted for prop 10, vs. 5 in 10 Californian whites, that's 2 in 10 "excess" pro-8 votes... of 6% of California's population... which is 12% of the U.S. population. The decisions of about 1% of Californians, or 0.1% of Americans, is really nothing to be yelling at each other over.
"Many African-American GLBT folks, if they haven't already tuned you out, are millimeters close to saying to hell with y'all after the naked displays of anti-Black racism that erupted in many GLBT communities, the racist comments from some white gay pundits, and the startling ease in which those comments freely flowed from your lips, pens and keyboards in the gay blogosphere and beyond."
This is so true... and it continues. Almost every day I read a blog post or a diary that makes me so angry I have to walk away from the pc or drink a beer just to calm my nerves. Of course to them, this is 'ally building' /snark.
I recently viewed the movie Milk and I loved it... teared up and everything, but this self righteous privileged attitude that *some* white LGBT's are expressing is about to make me wash my hands of it all and just concentrate on *my* communities.
It's becoming too much to bear. Honestly. They can't see the forest for the trees. *smdh*
Thank you for eloquently expressing my thoughts. That's how I found your *wonderful* blog... by being frustrated and wondering if there were any black LGBT's out there just as frustrated and I am.
Catherine,
You can drop the '7 in 10 Blacks voted for Prop 8' line. That's been thoroughly discredited and the math doesn't support that.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/7/34645/1235/704/656272
The 6% Black population in California lives in just 9 counties
It was white peeps who created the petitions, funded it and voted overwhelmingly for it.
It is the scapegoating of Black people as the reason Prop 8 passed and the racism that easily flowed from the mouths and keyboards of white gay peeps that has caused the severe damage to the GLBT alliance.
The point is that some serious fence mending needs to happen and if it doesn't, this split is dangerously close to becoming a permanent one.
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