More On Intersectionality
One of the things about this site is that it allows me to evolve and expand upon my thoughts. Sometimes that means that material on it appears to be contradictory, when examined as a whole. However, I like to leave old/dated material up because I think that it accurately reflects my state of mind at the time it was written, even if it doesn’t do the same today. I say this not as an excuse, but as an explanation for the following, which might seem to run contrary to what I have said in the past. The exciting thing about being human and being adult is that you are allowed to change and grow your mind as you receive new information and process that information.
All of this brouhaha over the decision of some people to blame some other people who don’t really deserve it for what happened with Proposition 8 has left me thinking, which is a good thing, because I am a fan of thinking. I have to say that I have felt very frustrated over what I see as a fundamental lack of communication between various groups involved, and I think that there has been a great deal of fingerpointing and namecalling on all sides, none of which is productive or particularly helpful.
The statement “[social/cultural/ethnic/religious/biological/political group], to which I do not belong, has experienced oppression and struggle, therefore they should understand the experiences of my [social/cultural/ethnic/religious/biological/political group] and support us,” is of limited value. It’s like saying that divers are qualified to be astronauts because they are experienced at using life support systems which include specialized suits and oxygen tanks.
And it seems to be at the heart of this butting of heads. I think that I, like a lot of LGBQT people, made the fundamental logic error of assuming that other minority voters would support our minority because they know what it’s like to be a minority. And, even if they weren’t members of our minority, surely they would see the logic of protecting our civil rights, and the civil rights of members of our minority who are also part of their minority.
That was a pretty stupid line of logic, in retrospect, because it falls back on the statement made above. And it ignores things like cultural and religious barriers which might stand in the way. Unfortunately, it seems to be a failing not just of individual members of the LGBQT community, but also of the organizers behind the No on 8 campaign. The organizers failed to reach out in any meaningful way to minority communities in Caliornia, even though the Yes on 8 campaign was sinking oodles of dollars into advertisements targeted at blacks, Latino/as, and Asians.
Why didn’t the organizers try to reach out? It’s a bit of a mystery. Did they make the logic error above? Did they make the fatally stupid error of thinking that minority voters just wouldn’t turn out, or would automatically vote no? What they ended up doing was creating a whites-only campaign, which probably ended up (did end up?) alienating a lot of people who might have otherwise supported the opposition to 8. In other words, the organizers basically screwed themselves.
It wasn’t until about a week before the election that the No on 8 folks did any kind of community outreach to non-whites in California. Sure, there was a scattering of ads in which the occasional person of color popped up, but that must have been almost more offensive, since those people were used more like props than real people.
I read a post earlier talking about the tendency of white progressives to use people of color when it’s convenient, and then abandon them. I read that and first I was kind of angry, and then I realized that if I was that angry about it, there might be some truth it. As indeed there is. White progressives led the no on 8 campaign, and they made a lot of assumptions about people of color (including the assumption that they, too, are progressive). The LGBQT community paid a heavy price for it.
And, now that the “my minority is better than your minority” battle has been ignited, it’s going to be difficult to extinguish. I think that a lot of parties have whipped up sentiment over this issue, from the media making misleading reports about voting statistics, to the pathetic scumbags who shouted anti-black things at the No on 8 rallies in Los Angeles on Friday. And the pathetic scumbags who did not step up and say “hey, that kind of shit is not going to be tolerated here. Go crawl back under the rock which apparently birthed you.”
A number of people have been credited with the quote “if we do not all hang together, then surely we must hang separately.” The identity of the author isn’t really important. What is is the fundamental idea behind it, which is that people must stop sniping at each other and actually engage. I think that one good thing has come out of this backlash, which is that white progressives have been forced to examine the racism which is never far from the surface of their movement. Honestly, and I never thought I would say this, if allowing Prop 8 to pass was the only way to get white progressives to think about the racism in their movement, then…maybe it’s a good thing that 8 passed.