Black people are REALLY homophobic?

CNN's charming anchor Don Lemon's coming out AND Black homophobia

The fact is, when I hear the host of homophobic slurs hurled at me, it's perpetrated by people who are Black like me. it's Black boys, girls, men, and -to a noticeably lesser extent- women. Sure, from what I can see, PC-culture has made it implausible in most circumstances for whites to hurl any slurs at me, save for when they are in mobs. Of course there are the slurs we never hear, which might easily convince us that whites are more liberal when it comes to gender and sexual differences. So, that skews the imagine and makes it appear to Black queer people that other Black people are more homophobic than other communities, just as Mr. Lemon implied. While I take the author's point about the 'It Gets Better' project directed at the wider/whiter community as reflective of their homophobia (not to mention the CONGRESS and ALL pre-Obama presidents!), we must also recall the numerous ways of soul murder in our society, and in our community in particular. This includes that slow death that leads to all manner of self-destructive behavior like unprotected sex, criminality, drug abuse, toxic relationships, and the general disillusionment that leads to rage. No, these are NOT Black issues, but as Black queer people, it does seem that we too often take the fall on the level of pedophiles, to whom we are still implicitly and explicitly compared, regardless of the fact that in our families we can all point to a queer relative who shares more than their share of care.

This post was prepared in response to an interestingly reflective article on the Root.com, Did Don Lemon Throw Black People Under the Bus, in response to comments made by CNN anchor Don Lemon upon his coming out. In case you missed the basic point: YES, it matters that folks come out. In some ways, it really, really matters that public figures come out if only to provide families an external stimulus to consider and discuss homophobia and other impediments to developing a positive view of the gay self. Hate feeds on our fears, and nothing fuels those better than isolation. Unlike growing up Black, I did not grow up in a 'gay' family, full of folks dealing with their racialized identity in various ways, accompanied by the healing language we learn to distance our internal selves from the external racism we almost inevitably encounter in life. No matter how loving, few southern Black families specifically teach a positive queer identity to adolescents in the very basic ways that we prepare youth to deal with a world that bluntly rejects blackness. And often the least homophobic voices are drowned out by the vocal minority of staunch homophobes, not to mention the self-hating homosexuals who turn into predators who indulge in all manner of hypocritical and self-defeating behavior leading to soul murder. Coming out is a matter of life or death. hence coming out is a gesture of love, something we all need in abundance.

Diepiriye: Constructing Global Citizenry