During their quest for full civil equality most minorities have, at one time or another, given birth to factions that believe their group to be special for some reason or another. These factions may either have taken the idea seriously, or merely used it as a tool to foster pride in a communal identity.
The African American community most prominently had the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam; they had Malcolm X who, in stark contrast to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told them to take their rights "by any means necessary." The contribution of Malcolm X and men like him has since been glossed over in favor of the nonviolent methods of Dr. King, but his contribution to the Civil Rights movement is undeniable.
If we could, to a limited extent, say that Harvey Milk was the gay rights equivalent of Dr. King (in so far as he's endured as a symbol of hope and nonviolence), where is our Malcolm X?
Why is it that the best we can conceive of as a community is tolerance? Other minority groups have at least had the ambition to dream of statehood. Where is the dream of a gay state? This was, to a limited extent, attempted by the exodus to San Francisco on the 70's and the dream of "going West," but was quickly abandoned after a few simple rights were granted.
Why can we not conceive of ourselves as able to contribute something more to this world than a sense of fashion? I'm not a religious man, but if I were I would have to believe that God put us here for a reason. Is that reason nothing better than to compete on Project Runway and sing showtunes?
Might we not instead be something more? Something better?
Before you all get your feathers ruffled, let me say that I'm not promoting extremism, or approving supremacist rehtoric in any form. Still, I can't help but be worried by the fact that we as a community seem incapable of it.
I have a number of thoughts as to why this may be the case, but I'm nowhere close to providing a coherent answer about the matter.
Thoughts?
Posts
2 comments:
Whoa, that definitely never crossed my mind.
I think it has the most to do with the amount of group rage. Gays don't really have as much of a reason to be angry as the blacks did in the 60s and 70s because the systematic oppression of gays isn't as widespread/blatant as the systematic oppression of blacks was then. There was no gay slavery and straight-only waiting rooms. No law said gays had to sit in the back of the bus.
Look at the projects back then (and now): overwhelmingly black. There are serious links between poverty and race in the US (a whole dissertation right there), and not too many gays have had to watch their kid fail because they couldn't move out of the gay neighborhood with the inferior schools. That shit makes people angry.
But the battle isn't over. Black or gay. And if anybody says anything about Barack Obama's half-white ass...
Conservatives often accused ACT UP of being too militant, especially after the "Stop the Church" event of 1989. And the gay community has certainly had its "extremist activists," which is where we got the ubiquitous chant "We're here, we're queer, get used to it."
If you ask me, the biggest reason we don't have gay supremacists is because our entire fight for equal rights is predicated on the notion that sexual orientation does not connote superiority.
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