http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/glbss/PDFS/BlackMenMasculinity.pdf
The key finding is that African American male attutides account most for the negative attitudes toward homosexuals. Religion although a factor was low. Female attitudes were more positive, but still low, the mean of 28 out of 100.
So, that finding certainly convinced me to go back and figure out why my experience and contact within the black community of Oakland was so different. That difference is still impressionistic, but does correspond to the nearly two to one defeat of Prop 8 in Alameda County with a significant and relatively powerful black population, and a very large non-white population.
And then there were these two posts:
``She presents several works which investigate the origins, styles and current forms of African American social conservatism. As usual, this quite solid information had little impact upon the debate which merrily rolled along without it (ideally, we'd all go silent on this topic, do a bit of reading, then return to the argument better equipped to do more than circle the same bleached, memetic bones)... .d. [addressed to Chris D.]
``...if you spent 1/10th of the time you spent reading up on neocons on reading up on the history of blacks in this country -- about the interconnections between racism, sexism; about the constant threat to black masculinity...'' shag [addressed to me, CG]
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Shag suggested in the above that I spend more time studying the intersection of race, gender, class in black history and communities and less time looking into neoconservatism. I'll write a post on why I studied the necons and how it was directly related to the intersection of race, gender, class in white male society that still seems to have the upper hand.
Together, these exhanges motivated me to do some reading. So I took a few days and did. I went back and read a couple of shags sources. I also looked up Angela Davis. Why Davis? Because she was the first person I heard to speak in terms of these intersections of race, class, gender, and power.
Reading through a few news reports of meetings I found this which more or less summarizes what seems to be the concensus in southern California:
``Black lesbian criticizes gay rights activists The passage of Proposition 8 has created tension between the gay community and African-Americans. Some gay rights activists are critical of blacks who supported the ban on gay marriage. Jasmyne Cannick is a writer, and a black lesbian. She says the No on 8 campaign ignored African-Americans.
Jasmyne Cannick: `It was a poorly run campaign. There was very little outreach into the African-American community. There was just about no work done with the black gay and lesbian community down here in Los Angeles to do that outreach work. And you know, so, you know you can't turn around then on November 5th and want to start pointing fingers, and blaming communities, and then attacking those people.' ''
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/kpcc/kpccnewsinbrief/2008/11/black-lesbian-criticizes-gay-r.html
At a guess, I would say very likely there was little outreach anywhere but up here where it wasn't needed as much.
In the Data post (top link), which was a survey of attitudes of African-Americans on homosexuality, the conclusion was that the primary source of poor attitudes were among black men. Homosexuality is perceived as a threat to male identity by most men I know. So that makes sense. That fear and threat of homosexuality works along similar lines in the black community doesn't surprize me---now that I think on it. Added to racism, discrimination, higher unemployment, crime and the prison industrial complex, life is pretty tough on the male (especially) the black male pysche.
Looking around for a recent interview with Angela Davis:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/08/usa.gender
The important part for this post is here:
``.... We used to think there was a black community. It was always heterogenous but we were always able to imagine ourselves as part of that community. I would go so far as to say that many middle-class black people have internalised the same racist attitudes to working-class black people as white people have of the black criminal. The young black man with the sagging pants walking down the street is understood as a threat by the black middle class as well. So I don't think it's possible to mobilise black communities in the way it was in the past...''
I've certainly seen the class/income stratafication. It's pretty stunning. There is also a lot of what I'd call black cultural diversity here in life style, art, music, interest, etc that combined to form a broad spectrum that makes talk of `the community' something of an abstraction. Besides income level, the other key factor seems to me, is where people are from. If they are not from here, then what were they looking for when they came here? In the 1930-50s it was jobs. Thereafter, jobs and escape from the social forces inside and outside of black communities in the rest of the US.
Since the sixties, this place has had the reputation of being more liberal, and that is true for both black and white.
The importance of that reputation goes to my impressions after reading some of shag's background sources. The idea of lady's clubs and social functions in the traditional black communities in the rest of the country certainly suppored the thesis that class stratification could account for a social conservativism of a black middle class. So to complete the thought. Black migration here took place after those developments. In a sense, the local black community was built-up later. This was a newer and less hide bound place.
I made several mistakes on the previous thread about social conservatism in the black community, and they all derive from my daily experiences with the mostly white gay-lesbian community and the generally defined black community. Most of my experience has been with lesbian professionals working on disabled civil rights. Most of their contacts (and mine) with the black community are through family services and disabled children. In their personal lives, several of these women are inter-racial couples and or have adopted inter-racial children. In this scene, the key bone of contention is that the `they' are adopting `our' children... So there is that tension, but for the most part that is pretty low. These combinations and permutations are ... disabled gay couples adopting non-disabled non-white children, non-disabled couples adopting disabled children of non-white heritage ... on and on. I think there are six, maybe as many as eight permutations when all the variations are counted.
As I can see now, taking into consideration all these circumstances combined, these are hardly the intersections to see the cross currents of tension and bigotry running between the black community and the gay-lesbian community, deconstructed by history, race, class, gender and disability.
And then as a last note. I will bet the key constituency who passed Prop 8 were able bodied white men. They are the problem. So I am going to explain why I studied the neoconservatives. These are the assholes, and it is important to know your enemy.
CG
ps. I have a lot of trouble trying to get back to the theoretical level and stop the just so stories. The trouble is that I can put names to the faces of a theoretical category, to people I've known, pretty damned closely. Since almost nobody comports with the stricture of history and theory, well, it's just tough to get out of that mode of thought.