Monday, March 23, 2015

We Black LGBT Peeps Only Care About Gay Rights? Ignorant Fool Please!

I saw this meme on Nephew's AKA Jaison Gardner's FB page that some fool with too much time on his hands created that I am compelled to call out.

It levels an old charge in Black non- SGL circles they aim at the Black TBLGQ community that Black gay people are 'not loyal' to the Black cause because they are 'only loyal to gay rights'.

Which is straight up bull feces.

SGL, bi and trans folks first up are Black people.  We have to deal with the everyday microaggressions and macroaggressions of just navigating life in a Black body just like straight Black folks, with an extra heaping helping of transphobia, biphobia, and homophobia dropped on top of that.

In addition to having to fight the conservative movement tooth and nail just to avoid being dehumanized, we have to also deal with the same crap coming from people who share our ethnic heritage uttering the same loud and wrong BS at us.

We in Black TBLGQ World are sick and tired of being 'too Black' for our gay counterparts and 'not Black enough' for some of you peeps regurgitating that anti-gay propaganda you've been fed by sellout ministers and FOX Noise

The reality is that Black LGBT issues are Black community issues and vice versa.

I guess the ignorant creator of this meme didn't learn anything about Bayard Rustin in school, who not only created the concept of the Freedom Rides so skillfully used by Diane Nash and SNCC two decades later, also was a brilliant movement organizer, leader, and advisor to the Rev. Dr MLK Jr. 

If it weren't for Rustin, the 1963 March On Washington wouldn't have been the spectacular success it turned out to be.   And yes, Rustin was a Black gay man.

Lorraine Hansberry, the creator of the play A Raisin In The Sun, in her brief life was a civil rights movement warrior who was also concerned about the African liberation struggle.

Guess whoever created this meme (and I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone in the National Organization for Marriage)  also forgot about James Baldwin and Angela Davis

This meme may be part of their well documented plan to drive a wedge between the African-American, Latino and SGL community, and if the fool who created this is Black, then I pity him for allowing himself to be hoodwinked and bamboozled by NOM's propaganda.

And as Coretta Scott King pointed out in a March 31, 1998  speech:
"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery and Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the civil rights movement. I salute the contributions of these courageous men and women who fought for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own."
It's not just in the civil rights era that Black LGBT peeps handled their human rights business on behalf of the Black community, it's happening in 2K15 America as well.  

The Black Lives Matter movement founders, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometti rep the L.   Black TBLG  peeps in Houston including yours truly busted their behinds to get the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance passed last May while being opposed by Black ministers and Black people on the loud and wrong side of this human rights issue.

We have the common goal along with our non-gay Black peeps of eradicating the anti-Black societal attitudes that deleteriously impact all of us.  Black BTLGQ people are not only concerned with advancing human rights for our own community, but simultaneously uplifting the Black community we intersect and interact with.

And there are many times we are doing Black community uplift work, but you just aren't aware that the person involved in your local civic club, chapter of the NAACP, or community leader is also part of the Black BTLGQ community.

While there are moments that the Black non-SGL community pisses us off with the internal homophobia that expeditiously needs eradication, the fact remains that we Black LGBTQ peeps are and historically have been an undeniable part of the kente cloth fabric of the African-American community. 

Our fate as Black TBLGQ people in this country is inextricably tied to the rest of Black America, and Black folks wishing to divide the Black SGL and non-SGL communities would do well to remember that.

So to say that Black LGBTQ peeps only care about gay rights is not only a blatant lie, it is a narrative contrary to the historical evidence.

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