Response to Advocate cover “Gay Is the New Black”
December 6th, 2008 by Billy Curtis
A letter I sent to the editors of The Advocate after their recent “Gay Is the New Black” cover story.
Dear Editors
The cover of Issue 1021 while provocative had the effect of sprinkling salt into a wound that I had hoped was healing. I am a gay black male living in San Francisco. When I saw the white words “Gay is the New Black” against the black background of your magazine cover, the sick feeling in my gut that rose after the passage of Prop 8 but had since begun to settle, came back. If Gay is the NEW Black, then what are Black gay, lesbian, bisexuals and transgender folk — the NEW Gay? It was also distressing to see words I use to describe my identity twisted into a clever play on an old fashion cliché, thus minimizing the experiences of those who are black and gay–Me.
Michael Gross takes great pains in his article to caution readers who might want to draw comparisons between black civil rights and gay civil rights or who travel down the slippery slope of making direct comparisons between the oppression of black people verses gay and lesbian people. However, for all his eloquence he fails to illustrate the complexity of the two evils of racism and homophobia. I experience racism more frequently than homophobia but it does not make one worse than the other. Racism is a near daily experience for me, but these manifestations seldom ever carry the threat of the extreme violence that can sometimes accompany homophobia. Racism and homophobia take the same emotional toll but the painful experience of each is like describing the difference between bleeding to death from a thousand paper cuts verses a gunshot wound. Which would you prefer? Seeing the cover of your magazine was like receiving all those paper cuts and the gunshot wound all at once.
As we continue the conversations of how to reach out to other communities, let’s not forget that we have work to do within our own community. If we are still writing articles that unintentionally disappear LGBT people of color, how do we believe we can build effective coalitions with heterosexuals, particularly those from communities of color, faith communities and those who are economically disenfranchised? We might also want to avoid absolutes, such as the subtitle of your cover, “The Last Great Civil Rights Struggle”. Really, is it “the last”? I think some communities, among them transgender people, might have something to say about that. The passage of Prop 8 in Ca illuminated the work we must do within our community as well as across all communities. Let’s use this opportunity to enhance a more complicated and authentic dialogue across our differences.
Sincerely
Billy Curtis
San Francisco, CA
December 6th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Thanks for this, Billy. Seeing that cover was like a punch in the stomach. And what’s with “The Last Great Civil Rights Struggle”? Who came up with that crap?
December 9th, 2008 at 12:05 am
That’s very powerful - thank you for such a moving response to such an appalling article.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Thank you Billy. I wrote a piece in my journal called, “I’m a racist”, even though I’m as liberal and accepting as humans can be. Yet, I wanted to explore how in my life I say I’m accepting, yet my behaviors uncover hidden unconscious racism. I want to face the fact that I grew up in a city of about 20,000 people and there was only 1 black person in my school of 2,000. I grew up seeing black people not as role models and sexy people who could give me my romantic dreams come true. White people were reserved for these dreams as I grew up, and yet people think I didn’t internalize these horribly narrow visions of life? So, I wanted to bring these beliefs to my surface to see if I could remove and transform my internal racist beliefs I unknowingly internalized. In SF, I’ve read that the African American population went from somewhere around 36% down to 6% in the past three years. This atrocity is not talked about, and when I bring it to people’s attention they say I must be wrong for they see African American people all around, but I don’t what they say they see. Rather, I see in the Castro for every thousand non-black people I see five or six black people. This is enough to convince people that there is equality in our streets and in our private lives, but it’s just not true. The truth is that we have a very desperate black/white society even today, even and especially in the Castro in SF. So, thank you for speaking out to the Advocate.
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:39 am
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