Blacks and the Prop 8 vote

I was listening to my podcasts at work today and I came across an op-ed interview with Jasmyne Cannick.  She wrote an op-ed for the LA Times about why blacks voted in favour of banning gay marriage 2 to 1.  While she repeatedly claims to be writing from the perspective of a black lesbian she really writes as a black who happens to be a lesbian.  The difference?  She complains about not being accepted by the gay and lesbian community simply because she's black and they don't treat her differently than whites.

One phrase that she kept pushing in the interview was referring to "our civil rights movement" in terms of civil rights being an exclusively black issue.  The movement doesn't specifically reach out to her as a black person, but has been treating her like everyone else.  Like a normal human being.

Her main argument about how the gay and lesbian movement has been campaigning his that they are calling for civil rights.  This, of course, triggers memories of segregation and blacks not being able to have inter-racial marriages or (in some states) marry at all.  Since that civil rights movement was mobilized by church-going members of the African American community they equate civil rights with church and gay marriage doesn't mesh with that.  She goes on to state that civil rights, to blacks, strictly means in regard to the black church and will continue to mean this "til the end of time".  Finally, Cannick declares that in order to reach the black community about gay marriage it needs to be addressed as a religious issue.

Excuse me?  Why does the black community get exclusive claim on all civil rights?  Why do civil rights need to be argued in relative terms of religion?  HINT: key word is civil.  It seems that she's trying to take this concept of a basic human right and say that white gays and lesbians need to not use black words and then pander to a religious mentality.  This is absurd to the extreme.

The real kicker was when a caller from Arizona phoned in.  He stated that he is gay and Hispanic and does not see the logic of her argument at all.  From his point of view it seemed she was advocating one minority oppressing another.  He mentioned how it was absurd that she was saying it is fine for the blacks to argue against it in terms of biblical interpretation when whites justified slavery with the same argument.  Here's a bullet list of her response to these statements:

• She's "heard it all before"
• Voting for Obama is more important than gay marriage
• gay marriage is a "secondary issue"
• Neither the caller nor the gay and lesbian community can tell black people what their priorities should be unless they are black

My favourite line was when she admitted she was ashamed of the black response to proposition 8 but it was a "conversation for black folks amongst black folks".  Really.  But then she goes on.

• activists should have tried to get black people registered to vote and then brought up prop. 8 (one presumes in a religious argument)
• why didn't these activists go to non-gentrified neighborhoods like Watts and Compton?

Are you shitting me?  Cannick, did you not just bitch about people telling you what your priorities should be?  Are you now dictating other people's priorities?  Are you then challenging these people to canvas to people you have stated are motivated by biblical texts to be against their lifestyle?  Are you not worried that these people who want civil rights might be attacked for using the term civil rights and living "sinfully"?

My mind has been blown by this woman.  Civil rights can only be doled out to one ethnic group, homosexuals can't argue for civil rights unless they are A) black and B) base their arguments in terms of Christianity.  Gay rights activists have their priorities out of order but cannot confront you about what civil issues should be addressed because that would infringe on your priorities.  And while these activists have been arguing for gay marriage as a basic human right they really should have changed their entire perspective to make it about race.  Not only that, but their canvasing about the human right should also have really been about... race.

I think something in my head popped.  Because looking back all I see is someone arguing that they should be treated differently (and better, at that) because of their skin colour, that anyone talking to them dare not speak in anything other than statments revolving around their own religion and that civil rights don't apply to all people but only people with their own skin colour.

And that is how white people neglected to win over the black vote, according to Jasmyne Cannick.