Bayard Rustin and the convergence of civil rights and gay rights
From Killing the Buddha comes this essay by the Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is the Senior Minister of Lemuel Haynes Congregational Church (UCC) in South Jamaica Queens, New York:
Those who declare “Gay is the New Black” have outraged intellectuals, religious leaders, and politicians inside the black community. They have outraged, for instance, Rev. Irene Monroe, who identifies three cardinal sins of whiteness plaguing the gay-marriage movement: 1) exploiting black suffering and experiences to legitimate its own; 2) rallying against heterosexist oppression while remaining silent on its own white-skin privilege; 3) appropriating the content of the black civil rights movement but discarding the historical context. Rev. Monroe is right. If there is to be a black-and-gay coalition, it will have to listen to her.But it will also have to remember Bayard Rustin. Rustin, an openly gay black man, helped introduce Gandhian nonviolence to the African-American civil rights movement. His pacifism landed him in jail for refusing to participate in World War II. He was part of the first Freedom Rides in 1947, helped to found the Congress for Racial Equality, and was National Field Secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Rustin was among the most famous advocates of Gandhian nonviolence in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Mahatma once summoned him to a conference in India. Beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he served as key adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., giving him the chance to train Dr. King in the philosophy of nonviolence as a way of life.
and
Bayard Rustin’s authority to speak on the convergence of gay rights and civil rights is indisputable. He helped build the civil rights movement and suffered for being a gay man at the same time. Rustin’s 1986 speech, “The New Niggers Are Gays” insists on the connection between gay rights and civil rights.Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new “niggers” are gays. … It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. … The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.
To say that gays are the new niggers is not to say that black oppression has disappeared. The claim that black folks are fully enfranchised and free is simply not true. Stark racial and economic disparities continue to exist in the United States, regardless of who is in the White House.
I would suggest the real disconnect is between a black leadership still milking the civil rights movement (frequently forgetting their own indebtedness to Ghandi and the people of India) and their own GLBT folks. In New York City's Heritage of Pride celebration, 28 June, whites were in the minority. I would estimate that two thirds of the folks there were black or Latino. White mainline churches were well represented but mainline black church support was noticeably absent.
Two civil rights groups shouldn't be shouting at each other but both at the white, patriarchial power structure that seeks to keep both on the margins.
Posted by Paul Woodrum![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
|
June 29, 2009 10:47 AM
As the Iowa Supreme said in their marriage ruling, all similarly situated people should be treated alike. Equal protection means that nobody should be excluded for belonging to a politically unpopular minority--in constitutional language a suspect or quasi-suspect class. This is a question of logic and not simply a substantive one of which group is the most oppressed.
African Americans and LGBTs (whatever their race) need not be viewed as equally oppressed in order for one to see, as Gov. Patrick Deval of Mass. said, that the current denial of the right to marry to same-sex couples often relies on the same kinds of arguments which were used for denying the right to marry to inter-racial couples.
The rhetoric of exclusion is what should be studied.
The Bible and religious tradition can easily be used to justify discrmination. Very little in the tradition is of much help against discrimination.
Gary Paul Gilbert
Posted by garydasein![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
|
June 29, 2009 3:02 PM