Myth Number 1: black Americans are more homophobic than white Americans
Myth Number 2: President Obama lost support among black voters when he came out in support of gay marriage.
The claim that African-Americans are more homophobic than white Americans is one of those head-scratching, what could possibly be the purpose of such a white lie kind of claims. When
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Myth Number 1: black Americans are more homophobic than white Americans
Myth Number 2: President Obama lost support among black voters when he came out in support of gay marriage.
The claim that African-Americans are more homophobic than white Americans is one of those head-scratching, what could possibly be the purpose of such a white lie kind of claims. When Prop 8 was passed in California, some white leaders in the gay-marriage movement blamed it on black voters. A simple calculation of how few black voters there are in California should have nipped such a flowering of untruth in the bud, but alas, there it was, out in the world, flourishing. This despite the fact that the very white Mormon Church spent a ton of money making sure marriage rights were not extended to same-sex citizens of California. About 10 percent of all contributions to the pro-Prop 8 campaign came from Utah).
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This white lie that somehow blacks were to blame for Prop. 8 was consistently debunked by a variety of people and seemed to whither on the vine of lies that grows so vigorously from the compost of American politics. But then Obama spoke out in favor of gay marriage and the compost hit the fan once again. This will cost him voters, especially black voters, said the compost sellers.
But that too turned out to be yet another myth. According to an NPR story,
a Washington Post/ABC News poll found African-American support for same-sex marriage at 59 percent, compared with 41 percent before Obama’s announcement.
Interestingly enough, this shift seems to have everything to do with the fact that Obama is black. According to a study by Melissa Michelson, a political scientist, when black Americans were read a statement in support of gay marriage by Coretta Scott King, they were far more likely to support gay marriage if the person reading the statement were black. In other words, it appears that if Obama were white, his support of gay marriage would have had little effect on black Americans.
Perhaps this is a response among black Americans to Myth Number 1: that black Americans are more homophobic than whites. Perhaps after a decade of being accused by primarily white gay-marriage activists of being the problem, black Americans are far more likely to play the role assigned to them with a white researcher.
While homophobia in the black community is certainly an issue we need to address, blacks of all sexualities experience the reality that many white gays and lesbians think that because they’re gay, they “understand” oppression, and therefore could not be racist like their heterosexual counterparts. Bull____. America is first built on the privilege of whiteness, and as long as you have white skin, you have a level of agency and access above and beyond people of color, period. White women and white non-heteros included.
And so although gay marriage is hardly a white/black issue, it is often made one in a (white-controlled) world of political punditry and a (white-controlled) world of the gay-marriage movement.
Hopefully the recent surge in black support for gay marriage will put this myth to rest once and for all. But old habits die hard, especially the habits of white blame, to paraphrase Sarah Ahmed. It will be no surprise if the next time a gay-marriage measure fails, blacks are once again “to blame.”