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Damn, I get tired of having to explain that black Americans are not a cult.
Here is a headline from the front page of the January 28, 2006 Washington Post (it's the same day's Post that contained
the topic of my previous blog; I'm getting a lot of mileage out of that day's news coverage. Anyway, here is the headline):
"Gay Unions Fracture Maryland's Black Caucus."
The story, by Post reporter Matthew Mosk, details how, following a ruling by a Baltimore circuit court that Maryland's
ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, an ugly conflict has arisen between black Maryland politicians (and constituencies)
who oppose the rights of gay Americans and those who support them. As reporter Mosk puts it:
"Maryland's African American lawmakers are deeply divided in the emerging debate over same-sex marriage, which forces
them to balance their communities' bedrock religious convictions against a traditional commitment to civil rights."
Mosk is right in the sense that black voters and leaders are fighting about this. The anti-gay-marriage factions, led
chiefly by prominent black pastors who claim authority from chosen passages in the Bible -- and some of whom see in the gay
issue an opportunity for demagogic self-promotion as moral warriors -- condemn same-sex marriage as a fouling of the church's
tradition as a bastion of black moral strength. Anti-gay feelings are also fed by a palpable fear among some blacks that gayness
constitutes yet another attack on black manhood, already under siege in a society that criminalizes and disempowers black
males. On the other side, blacks who support gay rights claim the moral high ground in supporting civil rights for all, and
denounce the hypocrisy of blacks who would fight for their own rights while turning their backs on the struggle of another
oppressed minority.
But where Mosk is wrong, and where many reporters who cover such black political conflicts make their mistake, is in relying
on fictional, meaninglessly broad phrases such as "their communities' bedrock religious convictions" in describing
black sensibilities. As a black American, I guess I qualify as a member of one of Mosk's alleged black "communities,"
and yet neither Christianity nor its claimed preclusion of gay rights figure in my "bedrock convictions," nor in
those of a number of black people I know. I am an African American who happens to have a very nice spiritual relationship
with the divine, thank you very much, and my "community" is not represented by demagogues who rail against the scourge
of gay marital rights. Nor is there anything remarkable about the fact that my position on this differs from that of, say,
one of my cousins or a black colleague. We're human. We differ.
And that's the rub with this "the black community is divided" bugaboo. I've heard it more times, on more issues,
than I want to remember, and it always puts me in mind of other ethnic voter-division stories I'd love to see on the front
pages of the Post and other newspapers but never do. Say, for instance:
WHITE VOTERS SPLIT ON PUBLIC TRANSIT ISSUE
"White voters in edge-city subdivisions are deeply divided over transportation issues, which force them to choose
between their bedrock need to decrease traffic congestion and their long-held community traditions of self-reliant transportation..."
or:
ABORTION DIVIDES WHITE COMMUNITIES
"In many white American communities, the abortion issue has opened up an ugly rift between two bedrock values: a
long-established cultural reverence for the miracle of childbearing and an equally long-held belief in individual liberty..."
I am still looking to see stories like these in major newspapers. They will never appear in print, however, and you know
why: To treat it as big news that American whites differ widely on public transit or on abortion would be absurd. It would
be nonsensical because we all understand that whites are a varied group of human beings with diverse experiences and opinions.
We respect the variety of white experience too much to make the ridiculous mistake of expecting a sameness of opinion.
So why is it front-page news that black "communities" and their political representatives differ on same-sex
marriage?
I'll admit that this is not an entirely fair question. Differences among blacks on the civil rights of gays do seem more
interesting than differences among whites on the same topic because the issue of civil rights itself has been so central to
the progress of blacks in America. It's a man-bites-dog story: members of a group who successfully fought to be treated equally
are now fiercely denying equal treatment to another group. I can understand why reporters and pundits are drawn to the irony,
and why self-righteous passions run so high among blacks on all sides of the issue. For a people whose very survival has hinged
on the question of civil rights, "bigotry" is a high-stakes word.
Moreover, the increasing upward mobility of African Americans into the white-dominated mainstream is creating more and
more diversity of opinion among blacks where once there was something closer to unanimity. Time was, during an era of legalized
lynching and segregation, that voting for a platform of aggressive federal government protections and services for the disenfranchised
was, for nearly all blacks, an article of faith as a matter of both principle and personal survival, especially on southern
back roads after dark. Not so, however, in the 21st century for many educated suburban blacks who drive SUVs, fear the urban
poor, and resent what they view as the wasting of their tax dollars to coddle the black underclass. Bill Cosby, take your
cue.
So I am not claiming that the "blacks on gay rights" flap is not a story. In fact, I would have no problem at
all with the Post story if it weren't the eleventy-millionth press account I've seen over the years trumpeting the "news"
that blacks embrace clashing opinions on some burning issue or other. I am sick and tired of the tendency to label diversities
of opinion as aberrations or fratricidal wars when they happen within black populations.
You'll recall the shocking 1980s "news" that some blacks voted for Ronald Reagan (my father, an entrepreneurial
store owner, was one of them, and man, did we argue). And the startling revelation that many of today's middle-aged educated
and prosperous blacks, having been born into middle-class life in the 1960s and 70s, feel little connection or loyalty to
drug-ridden black inner-city neighborhoods -- except when they want good barbecue or a beautician who knows their hair. Now
we also have the ostensibly astounding spectacle of a black Secretary of State, groomed by a right-wing political machine,
who happily shills for the agenda of that machine. Not to mention the all-too-common "black voters are conflicted"
silliness seen in front-page stories about black candidates vying against each other in mostly-black districts.
Once, when I appeared on a radio talk show in the Midwest discussing race, the white host asked me, with some incredulity,
how it is that when blacks assimilate into the mainstream they sometimes abandon liberal politics. "Blacks move to the
suburbs," he exclaimed, "and they get conservative! I don't get it. What's going on?" I told him, with as
much restraint as I could muster, that becoming more conservative and self-centered is what middle-class suburbanites tend
to do, period, regardless of color. It goes with the turf. He took this as a remarkable insight about black political versatility.
So, with probably more optimism than I am entitled to, I'll now put forward the following attempt at a rebuttal to the
stupidly pervasive idea of a lockstep black multitude:
We black folks do not all drink the Kool-Aid. We do not even necessarily drink from similar containers. We consume all
manner of political and moral concoctions from all manner of sources, and some of us refuse all proffered flavors in favor
of our own creations, and others simply do not imbibe at all. We do not line up at the barrel to drink the Black Juice, and
it is not news that this is true.
Got that, reporters?
We'll talk about this next year, when I'm sure I will write about it once more.
© 2006 Bruce A. Jacobs
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