“Open letter to white activists.”
UPDATE (11-11-08): Turns out I misidentified the source here. It looked like an imported note, but was really a shared item. I’ve removed all references to my friend, but am leaving the rest of the comments intact since the author doesn’t change the impact of the material.
I want to recommend a blog post that I ran across on Facebook today. The author is a little bit inflammatory, but also makes a lot of really good points if you can get past the flames.
p.s. Don’t give up in the first couple of paragraphs. The good stuff is latter.
Open letter to white activists.
Think about how you use civil rights imagery. There are parallels there, and they should be drawn, but to compare the passing of Prop 8 with lynching and Jim Crow disrespects Black history. … To my mind, this helped trivialize their desire to marry, particularly among older blacks who remember when being able to marry white people was the least of their worries.
But to speak of African-American religiosity as if it’s the same thing as your white neighbor’s homophobic Bible-thumpin’ Leviticus-quoting Rapture-believing denim-jumper-wearing young-earth anti-science women-get-back-in-the-kitchen 700 Club brand of Christianity is to shit on the people who brought you school desegregation and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Black churches are potential allies, and indeed many religious leaders have already come out in favor of LGBT rights, but those alliances aren’t going to get very far if white Leftists keep talking about them as if they are forces of institutionalized oppression when in reality their role in American history has been precisely the opposite.
I know when I hear someone say they won’t go into certain parts of the city, even someone else’s city, I feel like a wall just went up between us — even if I’d previously seen this person as a friend or ally — because that’s the kind of neighborhood I live in. And I’m white. So think about how that comes across.
November 11th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
That’s actually my wife’s writing there, not your friend Kevin.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Connor, you are 100% correct. I made a mistake and assumed it was something he wrote. Sorry for the confusion. I’ve updated the post to reflect the correct authorship. Please pass my apologies to your wife.