Almost Done With The Latte-Sipping Activist Crowd
TransGriot Note: Guest Post from Indigo Sage Morada discussing her frustrations with activists in her area focused moreso on the illusion of inclusion and talk about checking their privilege than actually doing the hard work to make both happen.
I
am seriously wondering if I should even deal with the latte sipping
"activist" crowd. White, young adult LGBT activists in the Michigan
area are some of the most privileged and undercover bigoted people I
ever met.
They sit there and preach about equality, checking
privilege and compassion, acceptance and open-mindedness. But their
personal lives are another matter. I've experienced intolerance,
bigotry, outright hostility and just douchy treatment from privileged
activists.
They are too busy going to their coffeeshops, drinking micro brews and congregating with clones of themselves to care.
Why was I often the only black person there? Why did black people who
went to groups felt unwelcome? Quite simply, the lot of them are too
absorbed in their hedonistic lives and pursuits to actually care. They
actively exclude people who are not like them.
I finally
concluded that people like me, who are truly diverse.....we are not
welcome in their communities. We are too different, too alien to them.
We are a constant reminder of their privilege, the suffering incurred by
us reminds them that the system they are part of does this to us, it
reminds them they they are involved and benefit from the system they
oppresses us all.
And instead of checking their privilege, they
just remove all sources of guilt and live in divine ignorance. They pat
themselves on the back and tell themselves they are not a part of the
problem. They hang in crowds of the same latte sipping clowns and tell
themselves they are pro diversity.
They are not. They are just as privileged as anyone else upper middle class, white and socially acceptable.
They just get a free pass because they are LGBT.
And I want nothing to do with them. They are a obstacle to equality. I am no one's token. Not anymore.
As someone who grew up in and lived in Michigan all my life until just shy of 2 years ago, I have to concur with the guest writer. Michigan, regretfully, in terms of social interaction between African-Americans and white Americans, and I'm including the LGBT commununity in this assessment, can be "the Old South Up North." This, I guess, should come as no surprise since Detroit was the scene of one of the worst racial uprisings in U.S. history (the July 1967 riot), and subsequent closings of the auto plants have exacerbated tensions. But what I as an African-American member of the TGBL community cannot totally process is the all-too-common arrogance, separation and racism exhibited by white gay males in the state toward African-American TGBL's; specifically trans females and same gender-loving Black males. Racism in the white gay male tribe is extant---and not always so subtle, either. The Log Cabin Republicans and their incomprehensible support of the past Republican presidential candidate and party, are hints of this. I smell the stench of anti-Black racism coming from white gay males, and its overpowering!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to see you tackle these issues Monica. A lot of people want to assume that oppressed people(lgbt) would not oppress (Black/Hispanic/Trans) but they do.
ReplyDeleteOnce when I was unaware of being transgender and thought for just a sec I was gay, I was so happy to go to a gay bar to feel, what I thought would be, a sense of comradery and a since of a community. What I found in South Carolina was gay bars with literal visible and proud defined lines of proud bigotry. Sadly nothing has changed. So many lgbt whites think being white makes them some how better. While they do receive privileges they need to remember by going to any white supremacy sites and really see that they are placed in the same boat. If not worse because they're considered an embarrassment to the white bigoted sect. The kkk will never walk in a gay bar,and if they could, stop at harassing POC but would most certainly eliminate whom they feel are the embarrassing gay whites of their race.