Reply #23: You raise some good points [View All]

[Neecy]

I posted about this over in the GLBT forum, but I think it's an issue so I'll post it over here, too.

if you think that LGBT are mostly rich white people then you get all your info about LGBT people from FOX news and CNN and you're not really qualified to open your mouths about us.

I have to differ slightly from this. I understand urban life in California having lived in both San Francisco and Los Angeles and as in any part of America perceptions are important.

Example: there are two ghettos in San Francisco. One is primarily gay and one is primarily African American. Take a drive through Hunters Point and then take the same drive through the Castro. Can you understand why an African American in Hunters Point doesn't view us as particularly oppressed? What they see is white privilege and they see it in abundance, which is why a resident of Hunters Point might take umbrage when we use the term 'civil rights'. When you live in poverty in a crime-ridden neighborhood perhaps the greatest civil right of all is to live comfortably in a safe neighborhood.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying that economic perceptions means a lot, and our communities often exist within a short drive of one another. South Central and West Hollywood, for instance. And the economic chasm in our cities does exist. Granted there are working-class and poor gays and lesbians living in California but you don't see them much in our gay ghettos. They can't afford to live there.

So I understand why urban African-Americans would think that the LBGT community consists of mostly rich white people. It's because we show it to them every day, in real life and not on FOX News.

Two suggestions if we truly are to bridge our divides and start a process of healing: first, comparing our struggle to the civil rights struggle while we're barhopping on Castro Street won't fly and we're foolish if we think it will. Emphasize our human rights, our struggle for simple equality and stop comparing our struggles to theirs.

Second, if we don't join in the fight for economic justice in our cities we'll never form a true partnership with any minority community. The brute fact exists that I did well economically as a white lesbian - and I doubt that I would have done as well had I been born a black lesbian. Racism trumps sexual orientation, at least economically, in society. We need to fight that just as hard as we fight our own battles.