White Gays Need to Support the Black Lives Matter Riots
By: Drew Lor
Tags: Civil Rights, Injustice, LGBTQ, Equality, Race

It’s all in the privilege

Let’s admit to ourselves, queers of all kinds have all had some kind of hatred, but white queers, especially white, cis, gay men have had it the easiest. Not only does the patriarchy sympathise with cis men in general, clearly having higher positions of authority, higher pay, their genders recognised and generally more recognition, but cis gay men, in particular, have higher representation and respect from our straight counterparts.

Add whiteness to the mix, and we have a recipe for one of the highest amounts of privilege that LGBTQIA people can have. Having not only the privileges of cis-ness and masculinity, you know you can leave your house and do just about anything without being shot. Or at least, this is the case now.

Our history is rife with police brutality, just in reading white queer accounts of the Stonewall riots such as Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, one can see the amount of abuse, rape, and murder of white queers, however, this number exponentially grows when it comes to black queers who are targeted by something they can’t conceal by wearing some “straight” clothing or hiding a partner, but by the colour of their skin.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, Black LGBTQIA people are 1.3 times more likely to experience police violence, twice as likely to experience any violence, twice as likely to experience violence-based discrimination, and 1.4 times likely to experience hate crime. Black transgender women are the most murdered group within the LGBTQIA community, with 38% of black trans women who interacted with police experienced violence.

If our experience is so rooted in inequality, why do we ignore it when others suffer the same? There are many qualities that lead to this, but one of these reasons is unconscious (and sometimes conscious) racist classism. Of course, because of black history, black people have historically earned less and, of course, were originally paid nothing, the government targets them for the prison system, which has become increasingly harder to get out of, and are more likely to be targeted by lack of employment, lack of acceptment into universities and colleges and lack of pay rises.

So of course, white people, including the LGBTQIA community are more likely to be richer, have businesses, have a university education, and be treated better by police.

Then comes the endless cycle of capitalist politics. You have a business or a stable job, so you sympathise more with the Walmart business owners that have been looted, you have that friend that’s a policeman so can’t even fathom that it’s the whole police system, you also wouldn’t want to be caught rioting because why would you want to risk getting caught on the news by the boss?

All I have to say is boo hoo! At least you can leave your house and do anything you desire without being murdered by the authority that’s supposed to protect you the most. You won’t get the police called on you for running down a street. Your precious businesses, will get huge insurance payouts and survive through their multiple other stores when the black people being killed won’t.

Black people are part of us

Not only is this whole situation completely rooted in privilege but people often forget, when they’re in their expensive gay clubs listening to Lady Gaga surrounded by other white people, that black people are just as much of our community as you are. Not only that, but black queers have been the creators and establishers of a grand majority of queer culture.

A prime example of this is the one and only legend Martha P. Johnson, a black trans Drag Queen that threw the first brick at the Stonewall riots. Without her, and the countless other black queers that fought this fight, our queer community wouldn’t have half the privileges we do today.

There are so many other black queers that have helped fight for LGBTQIA rights worldwide, including FannyAnn Eddy that started the first-ever lesbian and gay rights group in Sierra Leone, Richard Bruce Nugent that wrote the first gay short story as a black man in Harlem, Stormé Delarverie who was a bouncer to many queer bars in New York pre-Stonewall and was on the front line of police brutality to protect lesbian women from police raids, James Baldwin, a writer that fought for civil rights of both black and queer communities. There are countless others.

Most recently too, another black LGBTQIA person was murdered at the hands of police brutality. Tony McDade, a transgender man was shot dead at the hands of police in Tallahassee, Florida.

To respect queer history and your own rights as a white gay, we need to support the fight our black siblings in their fight today. We need to be standing in between the police officers and black protesters so they don’t see harm just like Stormé did, we need to be fighting with them and throwing bricks just like Marsha, we need to spread the information and inform other whites of these injustices.

Black people have fought for us

Black people have always helped queer people and their rights throughout history. Yes, even straight and cis black people. This includes none other than Martin Luther King Jr. His advisor was Bayard Ruskin, a gay man that advocated for both black and queer rights, helped push for LGBTQIA education within and outside the black community, and fought for socialism and equality for all. Although Martin Luther King Jr never really expressed his support, he debated both sides of the argument and supported Ruskin highly on his beliefs.

Other notable straight black supporters include the incomparable writers Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, with more modern LGBTQIA campaigners including actor Michael B. Jordan, model Naomi Campbell, and footballer Thierry Henry. All of which have been known to campaign for queer rights, attend rallies, riots, and activist platforms, as well as frequent Gay Pride.

Additionally, the NAACP (the National Association of Advancement for Colored People), the largest civil rights group in the USA, passed a resolution in 2012 in full support of gay marriage.

It is clear that there are so many connections and black people fighting for queer rights, so now it’s time to fight for them.