How Not to Stay White

We talked in class yesterday about homosexuality in the black community, and the ways in which these stereotypes haven’t changed. In class, we mostly focused on the ways in which the black community is homophobic, but I had a hard time separating that homophobia from the white community's racism. During our conversation I was reminded of Allan Bérubé’s article, “How Gay Stays White and What Kind of White It Stays” which takes a very pointed and interesting look at the white, gay male community. In his article, Bérubé talks about San Francisco gay bars that triple card people of color (and not white people) in order to make sure that the bar doesn’t “get taken over” by black, Latino, or Asian men. He talked about how the Campaign for Military Service actively denied letting a black gay man testify for fear that other gay men wouldn’t be able to relate to his experiences. He talked about how comparing gay rights leaders, such as David Mixner, to black civil rights leaders by saying such phrases as “our own Martin Luther King” is problematic because it excludes all the gay people of color who already have Martin Luther King, and don’t need their “own”.
To me, it seems like until the gay community can become ‘unwhite’ and actively look at its own racism, then being gay and a person of color will also be a contradiction, and will always bring up accusation of ‘race traitor’. I have a hard time talking about the ways in which people of color, or specifically, the black culture is homophobic without talking about the specific reasons they have to be, and the specific ways that we white queers perpetuate and create an environment of racism and homophobia.
In his article Bérubé suggests that we, the white gay community, actively talk about being white, that we talk about why we’re at a predominantly white bar, or on an all white panel. He believes that intentionally examining our own whiteness and asking some hard questions about our beliefs, and not just letting our white privilege allow us to not see or talk about race will help create a gay community that is more open and more representative of the actually gay population. I think Bérubé is right. I think we need to start talking about our whiteness, our own racism, our own acts of seclusion. One place to start is by looking at our own classroom.