Black leaders and gay advocates march in step

[Blue_Tires]

Black leaders and gay advocates march in step


For years, gay rights organizations and major civil rights organizations viewed each other warily. African-American leaders often saw the gay rights groups as insensitive to racial concerns, and some resented the movement’s use of civil rights language to make the case for same-sex marriage. Advocates for gay rights, in turn, sometimes blamed socially conservative African-Americans for their defeat in crucial electoral battles.

But since the relationship reached something of a crisis with the passage of Proposition 8, California’s ballot initiative against same-sex marriage, in 2008, leaders in both movements have made an effort to bring their groups closer together.

Now, a series of conversations among leaders in the gay, black and Latino communities have borne significant fruit: On May 19, the board of the NAACP formally voted to endorse same-sex marriage.

And then, last Tuesday, representatives of several national gay rights organizations gathered at New York City’s Stonewall Inn, often described as the birthplace of their movement, to announce that they would march to protest the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice, under which the police each year have been stopping hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, most of them black or Latino, in an effort to prevent crime.

Some of the gay rights leaders specifically cited support from the NAACP for same-sex marriage as a reason they decided to oppose the stop-and-frisk policy.

“We need to find ways to strengthen our alliances and really strengthen our commitment to one another,” said Jeffrey Campagna, a national gay rights organizer who is coordinating the involvement of gay rights groups in the June 17 march against the stop-and-frisk practice.

Julian Bond, a former chairman of the NAACP and a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said he saw the association’s support for same-sex marriage as a way to acknowledge the contributions of gay rights advocates, most closeted at the time, in the civil rights movement.

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20120610_Black_leaders_and_gay_advocates_march_in_step.html

[Number23]

1. Great read. Really nice to read an analysis of this situation that goes deeper than

the kindergarten-esque "NAACP endorsed gay marriage because Obama used the bully pulpit and did the same and since all black people think alike, they followed suit."

I guess when Obama endorsed gay marriage, in the minds of some who obviously have as much a connection to the black community as an amoeba on the planet Neptune, he fired up the collective brain that all us Negroes use and we all just fell in step behind him. Glad to see an analysis of this that actually shows the work that's come from both sides on this issue.

[nofurylike]

4. Hear. Hear. well said, Number23!! nt

[Number23]

1. Dupe darnit

[nofurylike]

3. excellent! thank you so very much for posting that, Blue_Tires!! nt

[ZombieHorde]

5. I can't stand the stereotype which claims black people don't like gay people.

As if the good old USA would be a gay utopia if only black people would be cool. Blaming prop 8 on black people was just insulting to our intelligence.

[kwassa]

6. it was insulting ...

but it did happen, right here on DU. We all remember it.