The Black community and queers

Black Commentator celebrates the endurance of the "black consensus" in the face of the Republican-led faith-based assault.

"African Americans are approaching that future guided by a Consensus on core issues that has so far remained largely impervious to outside manipulation – although it is subject to diversions and distractions such as the ridiculous debate on gays emanating from a gay-saturated black church!"

Black Commentator (Glen Ford and Peter Gamble) cite political scientist Michael Dawson a lot in the article. They would do well to also read Cathy Cohen, another black political scientist who has conducted a careful study of how black communites, churches in particular, respond to the presence of lesbians and gays and to AIDS sufferers, she asserts, by drawing the "boundaries of blackness" in order to exclude them. The black church may be gay-saturated, but that does not mean black folk are ready to openly embrace their queer brothers and sisters, any more than the fact that the church is women-dominated means that it isn't a bastion of conservative and male-centered gender values.

Although we all celebrate the survival of the black consensus, the idea that queers represent a "diversion and distraction" conflates our actual existence with the right-wing manipulation of us. This is classic scapegoating the black community is all too familiar with. We need to build a new consensus that incorporates queers as fully fledged, and not just "provisional," citizens of black America.