Gay is Not the New Black for the Same Reason that Depression is Not the New Freckles

While both might be hereditary, both are not directly physically manifested. A little joke comes to mind:

What's the difference between being black and gay?

You don't have to tell your mother that you're black.

It's both pithy and depressing. While both are historically and presently marginalized groups, neither seems to embrace their shared heritage; people who are black because, traditionally they are homophobic from the tight-knit, shared values of the Black Church, and people who are gay simply don’t have proper exposure to their own history. The very real phenomenon of the "Black Church" is a place, as detailed by Al Sharpton in "The Black List" (a documentary consisting of interviews of famous black Americans), where in a time where one might simply be a maid or a glorified servant (pre and civil-rights era) the church was where one could actually hold a title: "You were a deacon, or a father," he explains. Unfortunately for people who are gay, the Black Church, into which the entire black community is statistically entwined, has passed down a heritage all but accepting.

This is strange considering the rest of the documentary in which comedian Keenan Ivory Wayans explains how when people asked him if he thought he was marginalizing his own race by directing the 1988 movie "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," he replied simply, "This is a comedy. This is like Airplane. I grew up watching The Three Stooges and I never thought to myself, wow, white people are crazy." Other interviewees eloquently expressed the same sentiment of "Human first, black after" The contemporary playwright Suzan-Lori Parks explains peoples' apparent perception of her to be "I wake up in the morning and think to myself 'I am a black woman.' But I don't. I wake up and think maybe my dog has to go to the bathroom or about my husband. I'm a person first and black second." We all are.

Duh.

Since I haven't been watching many movies lately, the only other fresh in my mind was Milk. Thus I had to directly compare the two "communities."

What I realized is that not only does a direct genetic pathway make it easier for a "community" to exist, but a publicly acknowledged heritage of suffering helps too. I didn't know who Harvey Milk was until a year ago (This is pertinent because I only had access to an LGBT education through a private university). I am twenty years old; I knew who Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman were when I was six. I knew about the Holocaust, I knew Slavery; I even knew about Rwandan Genocide before I knew where Stonewall was. Jewish, Black, even WASP culture is passed down through a blood-line, or at least through the family; LGBT history is on lockdown, deemed inappropriate to teach in schools. We don't have a black church. We don't have a Synagogue. We don't even have public school. American people who are gay must wait until twenty-one to frequent a gay bar in most states (though I'll be damned if that equates to a "culture"). Sure there are youth centers, but not many adolescents who are heterosexual frequent gay-youth centers; there is no standardized awareness of LGBT issues; I even venture to speculate that there is a higher number of homosexuality-deniers than Holocaust-Deniers (example: Iran).

Recently, a previous editor for Poz magazine and currently the darling-DJ of the New York Gay scene wrote an article which expanded the scope of a different article from the New York Times detailing Stonewall-era harassment and police-raids throughout New York. For those of you who don't know, or have not seen the stock footage from the opening credits of Milk, policemen often raided known gay bars and establishments to write down names of patrons to then publish in papers and arrest on "indecency charges." Though "indecency charges" seem to have gone away, the sentiment still remains the same; the cops don't want us enjoying ourselves (Note; enjoying ourselves means getting just as drunk as people who are heterosexual, talking, laughing, criticizing, and sleeping with each other. Just like ALL people).

I see several elements lining up to create what I can only hope is a massive amount of rage necessary for the gay community to actually unite for once (despite its heritage being covered in cobwebs in the corner of a library, despite being continually marginalized by all groups of society wanting their own change, despite internalizing this antiquated shame that permeates all levels of society) and perhaps obtain equal rights. Aren't you still angry about Proposition 8?

Who knows? Mr. Milk might even get his own national holiday.

Post Script: The careful reader may have noticed that I used the “to-be” verb when describing people who are gay or people who are black. This is because, just like Mr. Wayans and Mrs. Parks would want, people who are gay are not just gay; they are people first, and gay later.