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JASMYNE CANNICK: Whose Agenda Is It Anyway?
Where the Black Gay Community Is In Their Movement
*You may not know it, but there's a contingency of gay people conspiring on ways to organize Blacks. And not only do they want to organize Blacks to spread their message of marriage for everyone, but they want to do it through Black gays.
The relationship between Black gay organizations and some of the other gay groups is one where publicly they embrace us and applaud our efforts but behind closed doors they're figuring out to move us out of the picture and do the job that we are doing.
Did you know there are gay organizations that are meeting everyday to strategize on how to best mobilize Black gays for their purposes of "diversity?"
They've somehow gotten it into their heads that non-Black gays hold the key to breaking the cycle of homophobia in the Black community.
Let me get this straight, no pun intended. Individuals who are not from Black communities, know little to nothing about our community, and for the most part aren't even remotely interested in really working with our community know how to talk to Blacks about marriage.
Similar to the co-opting of Black pulpits to spread the white conservative agenda during the 2004 Presidential election, Black gay groups are being taken over by the gay agenda and nowhere is this more prevalent than in California where one of the more prominent gay groups is working overtime at telling Black gays what they need to say to Black people about marriage.
This gay group has now set their aspirations on Black politicians in California after hearing from other Black gays that they didn't have a relationship with them. As with everything else, they've bypassed the Black gay leadership and are now trying to get the Blacks in Sacramento on their team, using any method necessary which usually means money and lots of it.
This is the reason why Black politicians and Black leaders don't know anything about the Black gay leadership. Gay groups with more money beat us to the punch every time and take credit for everything.
Black gays don't need non-Black gays to organize them. We've been down this road before and it's not an effective strategy.
Black gays can handle the Black community on their own. You don't see us trying to message outside of our community on gay marriage with efforts to organize the overall gay community, so what the hell gives others the right to come into our community and try to undo all of the years of hard work that Black gays have put into fighting for our civil rights?
What is the use of having Black gay groups if the other gay leadership is going to trample all over us and use their money to overstep us at every point?
Every time I turn around, I'm hearing about coalition building, but coalition building for whose benefit? Black gays would be better off building coalitions with the larger Black community, but we can't because every time we turn around, the other gay leadership is using their money to get in good with the Black leadership leaving us out of the picture completely.
Marriage has never been number one on our agenda. Any campaign to win support for marriage in Black communities must start with an acknowledgement of that fact. Sure we want the right to get married, but we also want affordable housing, employment, universal healthcare, more funding for HIV/AIDS programs in our communities, and social security reform. We want to deal with the Black church and combating the homophobia that is spewed from the pulpit.
What some of the other gay groups fail to realize is that Black gays are in fact Black and because we're Black there are a myriad of issues that are facing us that may take precedence of marriage. Black gay men in particular are dealing with the issues of being a Black man in America, which includes an increased incarceration rate. As a Black lesbian, I am equally concerned about the lack of jobs with livable wages, healthcare, affordable housing, police brutality, gang violence, and the continued racism towards Blacks in this country. That doesn't mean that my civil rights as a lesbian take second place but it does mean that I am just as concerned about my civil rights as a Black and that's where many of these gay groups just don't get it. They want everyone who is gay to be gay first and race is a secondary issue. Race is the reason why you will find the majority of Black gays living in minority communities and not the self created gay enclaves like West Hollywood, Dupont Circle, and Greenwich Village. Because like other Blacks many of us are struggling to make it and most of us can't afford to live in these often times wealthier neighborhoods. Unfortunately, race is still an issue.
As for me, I will be always be, in this order, a Black women who is a lesbian and at the end of the day I believe that's how a lot of Black gays feel, that they are Black first.
Chosen by ESSENCE Magazine as one of 25 Women Shaping the World, Jasmyne
Cannick is a founding member of the National Black Justice Coalition, the nation's Black gay civil rights groups and is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. Based in Los Angeles, she can be reached via her website at www.jasmynecannick.com.
