Flawed Premise – There is No Unity of Interest between Blacks and Gays

A cluster of Black Baptist pastors are advancing the claim that the struggle for democracy and justice for black Americans is not identical with the similar quest for gays. He notes that gays could always vote, use public water fountains-accommodations and gays escaped lynching’s and mob violence.

This pronouncement occurred about the same time that a mysterious gay baiting letter from an unknown black minister started appearing in the mailbox with black voters regarding the sinister nature of the Mayor's Human rights amendment. Black Baptist ministers have historically constituted an endorsing class during elections and often money changes hands. Congregants know that there is frequently a marriage between market driven religion and racist- homophobic ideologues. Veteran operatives note that often the same persons that oppose affirmative action also promote the anti-gay agenda.

During my high school years in Southwest Bible Belt Louisiana, I served as junior superintendent of a local Baptist church. There was a great toleration for closet gays, especially among the musician’ class. No one had a dry eye when our musician sang “Lord, you have brought me a mighty long way and If you don’t do anything else for me, you have done enough”. This politeness and civility exists throughout the national black religious community as evidenced by the lack of rancor about closet gays in the pulpit, choir and pew.

The courage to love truth is one of the preconditions of thinking critically and practicing values of dignity and respect for all human beings.

In January of 1979, Tennessee Williams was a victim of assault as a result of a spate of anti-gay violence inspired by an anti-gay newspaper advertisement run by a local Baptist ministers. Yes, Ideas have consequences. In March of 1970, Howard Efland was beaten to death by the Los Angeles Police Department. This is the same police department that tried to beat Rodney King to death.

Much of the black existence in the United States has been about “existential absurdity.” In the land of your birth, constantly confronting an unsafe, unprotected environment- subject to random violence and being hated because of who you are.’ The deadly random violence perpetrated against Emmet Till in 1955 does not show a moral difference with the violence perpetrated against James Byrd in Texas and Matthew Shepherd in Wyoming. Congress was courageous in passing the James Byrd- Matthew Shepherd Hate Crime Act in 1975.Perhaps these members of the clergy did not know that Matthew Shepherd (1998) was a white student that was tortured and murdered because of his sexual orientation. Perhaps there is a significant moral difference in the torture murder death of heterosexual James Byrd, a black man at the hands of white supremacist (1998).

During the 1998 Dr. MLK Stop the Violence Rally and Workshop, the keynote speaker was Ms. Renee Mullins, one of the daughters of James Byrd. She supported the Byrd-Shepherd Hate Crimes Act that was signed into law in 2009 by President Barack Obama.

Recently (2014), it appears that two black girls in Galveston were allegedly murdered by the father of one of the girls for being gay. A few years ago, a 32 year old black man, Mark Carson was called vile names and murdered as he walked down a New York street, because he was gay. Often these gross violations are the result of religious biases preached and taught by heterosexual pastors.

I don’t expect black fundamentalist pastors to be politically savvy but I do expect them to consider the human cost of their pronouncements and to be morally magnanimous. My friend, Cornel says that Any God worthy of worship condemns injustice anywhere.

*Written by Omowale Luthuli-Allen*

The Help

Looking back, I should have followed my initial black feminist inclination to skip out on seeing a Tyler Perry approved film about race and gender in America. I feared that The Help would follow the trite “white person saves poor black person/people” storyline that characterizes too many Hollywood films. Ultimately, I realized that it wasn’t fair for me to critique a film that I had never seen before. Given that truth, I went against my gut. I caved in to the voices around me that were describing in the film in a neutral or even positive light and walked into Regal Cinema in DC Chinatown and took a seat.

The vast majority of movie goers in the theater that Friday night were white women, the target audience for the film. The trail of trailers shown before the film set the stage for the film itself. My friend described the previews as a sign that we were entering “romantic comedy Hell”. Lol.

Once the film began, I braced myself to see a white person rescue seemingly powerless black people from their miserable existence. Instead, I witnessed a 23 year old white woman, Skeeter, chronicle the stories of her own black maid and those belonging to her friends. As heroine of the story, she bravely picked up a pen and wrote down the stories of the oppressed domestic workers in Jackson, Mississippi during Jim Crow. Perhaps a full on rescue would have been too much for a genteel young white woman of those times.

The black maids in the story were literate; however, they did not write their own stories. Instead, they spoke them to Skeeter, a white woman half their age, so that she could document them. Skeeter’s motivation to share the black women’s stories was born in her pity for her own black mammy from childhood, who was suddenly fired after 30 years of hard work because of an unwritten rule in wealthy white ladies superficial social club culture.

Looking intently at the screen, I patiently waited for a plot turn that included an act of serious resistance by one or many of the black maids. I thought that maybe the black women would stand up for their rights as workers and go on strike or maybe they would start a letter writing campaign to their state legislators. After all, acts of civil disobedience were central to the civil rights movement. Much to my dismay, the most powerful act of resistance involved a maid baking a pie for her white boss lady.

Once I heard about the lawsuit initiated by Ablene Cooper, the maid whose story inspired the book from which the movie originated, I became even more remorseful for buying tickets to this movie. The black woman who told this story is not receiving her fair share of the royalties gained from either the book or the movie. Cooper’s painful story has been appropriated to generate profits that she may never see.

My take on every tongue confess

Thanks to the wonderful discount ticket lottery at Arena Stage, I had the privilege of seeing acclaimed playwright Marcus Gardley’s every tongue confess starring Phylicia Rashad last night. Gardley graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 2004 with a Master of Fine Arts degree and has been showered with awards and recognition since. every tongue confess is the first performance on the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle Stage, a new stage built during the recent $135 million renovation of Arena Stage.

The play is set in a small Alabama town during a time of racially motivated black church burnings. On the surface, the setting seems trite for a black play, but the fact that it takes place in the 90’s adds an element of uniqueness. Most characters in the play are modern and anti-racist and one character even jams her headphones while rigidly adhering to a vegan lifestyle. This interesting contradiction of a seemingly outdated phenomenon happening in modern times ignites feelings of curiosity and confusion in the audience. (I was on the edge of my chair trying to figure out who the heck would burn down black churches in the 1990’s)

every tongue confess provides opportunities for both black and white actors to play complex roles that develop slowly over the course of the performance. A mute quietly evolves into a loud vocalist and a blues singer seamlessly becomes a savior. Phylicia Rashard’s character, Mother Sister, is a mother, preacher, widow and healer. She is by far the most captivating of the actors and eloquently displays her deep roots in live performance art.

Without spoiling the show, I’ll conclude by saying that the play really does a good job of demonstrating how hypocrisy fuels bigotry and how hate is passed down inside families. I definitely recommend this new play and hope to see it travel the country and maybe even get featured on Broadway. Be sure to use your imagination to embrace the magic realism in the show and don’t be afraid to laugh at the punch lines.

NAACP is slippin

Wow! I felt so disappointed to learn that the NAACP supported the Tea Party in their push to fire a black woman from her job for reverse racism. Of all groups, I would have thought the NAACP would be more critical of Tea Party and extremist right wing claims, especially those made against African-Americans. After all, it was barely a week ago when the NAACP called out the Tea Party for harboring racist elements among its factions. And for the record, anyone who's been near a Tea Party protest and seen their swastikas and heard their racist chants can attest to fact that some of their supporters are racist.

Why then, would the NAACP rush the Tea Party's aid at the expense of a hard working black federal employee? The answer is politics. The political pendulum is shifting to the right and conservatives are gaining popularity and credibility, even in the eyes of race-based social justice organizations like the NAACP.

During the late days of the Bush Administration, progressives had a powerful grassroots political voice and were able to succeed in securing the election our nation's first African-American president. However, now that Obama has been getting things done as president, conservatives have begun a spirited movement in opposition to his policies. The passage of health care reform legislation and other big government initiatives has fired up fiscal conservatives and the fringe elements that follow their lead.

Hopefully this incident will serve as a wake-up call for the NAACP and other progressive groups. Tea Party accusations may be hyped up by the media because of their current level of political hotness, but media coverage doesn't always equate with legitimacy so it's still important to investigate the validity of right wing claims before backing them.

Black America Shares Statistics with African Countries

The Black AIDS Institute has released a shocking new study comparing rates of HIV infection among African-Americans with those of the hardest hit nations in Africa. The study revealed that black Americans are just as likely to come down with the virus that causes AIDS as citizens of Uganda and South Africa. The Centers for Disease Control determined that black women are contracting HIV from heterosexual sex and injection drug use at 23 times the rate of white women and AIDS is the leading cause of death for black women between ages 25 and 34. The United States may be one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but this goes to show that money cannot buy good health and nor can it undo centuries of oppression against African people. There are many different theories as to why blacks are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS, but in my opinion, even all of them taken together cannot explain the dire nature of the statistics at hand.

Some people say that white people are just more responsible when it comes to sex than blacks, but somehow I'm just not buying that one. White people have plenty of unprotected sex. Others say that black men are contracting the disease in prison and spreading it to multiple women once they're released. I say that, yes, this may happen sometimes but there are not enough black ex-cons out there to account for a HIV rate among black women that's 23 times that of white women. Black men are only a few times more likely than white men to have a record. And others say that black men are more likely to be on the down low, but CDC research shows that closeted black men are no more likely to catch HIV than out gay black men.

I am no conspiracy theorist so I don't think the government is secretly infecting blacks with HIV. However, I do find some validity in new scientific research that points to a gene that makes people with sub-Saharan origins more likely to catch HIV when they are exposed. The gene in question is thought to have been developed as a natural evolutionary defense to malaria. It's just too bad that the same gene that results in an evolutionary advantage in the face of one disease can be a catalyst for infection in the case of another. As we all know, modern science is far from perfect and more research is needed to confirm these findings. Nonetheless I think this a very important and overlooked aspect of the worldwide black AIDS epidemic.

UniverSoul Circus

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending my first ever UniverSoul Circus. To say that this event exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. Highly trained performers from all over the world showcased their tremendous talents before an enthusiastic audience of African-American families. South African acrobats, Guinean contortionists, American mimes, and a Brazilian tiger tamer were just a few of the myriad of performers at the UniverSoul Circus.

The circus presented a special opportunity for African-Americans to gather together in a family oriented atmosphere and admire the talents that exist in the black community. Children and adults alike were astonished by much of what they saw. In the last act, the audience was carried away by a trio of dancing elephants who's choreography corresponded to the lyrics of popular songs. When the song "Bed" by J. Holiday played, the elephants all lay down as if they themselves were going to bed.

I would strongly recommend checking out the UniverSoul circus when it comes through your town.

CNN's Black Women and Families

Last night, I had the opportunity to watch CNN's long anticipated Black Women and Families segment of the Black in America series. Disappointingly, the documentary was framed through an entirely heterosexist and patriarchial lens. Simply put, it assumed that every black woman should be married to a man. This is an outdated view of the black family structure. Not all black women need to or even want to be married to a man.

Having children out of wedlock is not the cause of the health, education, and income disparities facing the black community. While many single mothers would like to have a committed intimate partner, most of them will tell you that not having a man is the least of their problems. What they need most is more along the lines of reliable child care, health care, quality education, enrichment programs, job training, transportation and a network of family members and friends dedicated to helping in brining up the next generation.

Simply being married to a man does not necessarily improve a woman's quality of life, and in too many instances, such marriages can be oppressive to women.

It's true that studies show that two parent households, regardless of the parents' gender, are generally better for children than single parent households. But this does not mean that single parent households, equipped with necessary resources and support, cannot be equally as beneficial for children. For example, many single mothers rely on family members and friends to give additional emotional support and guidance to their children. And middle and upper class single moms can afford to provide for their children's needs on just one income.

CNN needs to realize that this is no longer 1950's America when all women were expected to live as subservient wives and forgo their career ambitions to cook and clean all day. Times are changing and women are feeling freer to live their lives as they choose. Marriage rates and out of wedlock births are not the best indicators of the overall well being of black America.