[lbo-talk] Why Blacks opposed Prop 8 -- and a simple way

Philp Pilkington pilkingtonphil at gmail.com
Fri Nov 14 10:19:02 PST 2008


On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 5:59 PM, James Heartfield < Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


> So far, I am sticking to my theory that the black exception is at least in
> part a working class exception. I see from the numbers that though blacks
> poll more hostile to gay marriage, whites are still hostile on the majority.
> I suggest working class people will tend to be more morally conservative,
> because the prospect of social and family disintegration is a closer reality
> for them. Blacks poll more hostile to propospition eight because more of
> them are working class.
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I'd tend to agree and add one or two supplements to your theory.

Firstly, that the lower-classes will generally have a tendency to favour more assertive, yet arguably more superficial attempts at constructing typical "masculine" identities. These tend to exclude/repress homosexuality quite vigorously from the outset due to their implicit reliance on homosexual libidinal ties (in the Freudian sense of the term). A similar dynamic operates under the institutional conditions of the Army.

Secondly, due to their being a minority group which has been savagely discriminated against and humiliated over the past few centuries (and I would say continues to a certain degree today, when asked are you racist I believe the only genuine answer is: depends what neighbourhood I'm currently standing in...) I'd speculate that the formation of identities for blacks is more difficult and haphazard than for any other group in the US - all the others, even the lower-classes, Mexicans, Latinos, Koreans, Irish etc. have a stable ontological ground to fall back on - this difficulty in identity formation, as is regularly recognised by psychologists, both social and clinical, can lead to shakier sexual identities which often manifest themselves as... you guessed it... gay-bashing.



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