I'm going to let you in on a little secret:
Sometimes, I think God talks to me.
No. Really. Like when I heard a little voice tell me, "Put away some money. You're going to need it." I did. The next month? BAM! Hit with major car repairs.
Or when Black Man Not Blogging and I were coming back from a day trip and stopped in a McDonald's in a South Stockton neighborhood. He went in, I stayed in the car. A little voice told me, "You need to get out of here." I called him on his cell phone to tell him to get out of the McDonald's, that we needed to get ghost. He did, and we did. The neighborhood just felt unsafe. If I recall correctly, the next day there was news of shootings that occurred in South Stockton.
When the Charleston shooting occurred, I was at a loss for words. I couldn't believe that someone would gun down church members at a prayer meeting. A PRAYER MEETING! Could there be anything more demonic?
Then, in an act of what can only be called amazing grace, the victims' families started to forgive the shooter.
And that's when I heard the little voice: "If you wait long enough, good things will happen." I smiled.
In what appeared to be a whirlwind of good things happening, people began calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state house and other government buildings. Ebay, Amazon, Sears, and Wal-Mart pulled Confederate flag merchandise from their shelves or stopped selling them online. Given Wal-Mart's southern roots, that's huge. The cynic in me says that it was the fact that black people were killed in a church by a racist who literally wrapped himself in the Confederate flag that moved people to reconsider the flag, but I'll take this reconsideration no matter how it comes, even if I think it would not have happened but for the murders taking place in a church. It forced white Southerners to choose between heritage and faith. They chose faith.
The Affordable Care Act was upheld, as well as disparate impact analysis for housing discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.
The President found his voice on race, using the n-word to explain that this country's racial atrocities hundreds of years ago are not yet forgotten, the wounds not yet healed. In the eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinkney, President Obama found his voice on race once again, saying that although those who fought for the Confederacy may have been honorable, the cause for which they fought was not. He then raised his voice in a rousing rendition of "Amazing Grace." And the church said, "Amen."
To top it all off, the Supreme Court declared bans on gay marriage unconstitutional. To some, this may not be a good thing. I don't see how equality under the law can't be. The southern states, and the Ted Cruzes of the nation, will stand in opposition, just as George Wallace stood in the door of the University of Alabama declaring, "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. Ted Cruz will be remembered in much the same way as Governor Wallace would have been had he not had a racial epiphany. The work of the LGBT community is not done, but there's just a little less of it to be done.
If you wait long enough, good things will happen. Sometimes you have to wait centuries, sometimes a generation, sometimes a decade. But if you wait long enough, good things will happen.
Amen.
Showing posts with label Gay marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gay marriage. Show all posts
Is Marriage For White People? Negro, Please.
Ralph Richards Banks' book, "Is Marriage for White People?: How The African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone," challenges black women to stop marrying down -- settling for black men who aren't as educated or accomplished as we are -- if we marry at all, and instead start marrying out -- that is, outside the race. Banks says that black women are the least likely of women of any ethnic group to marry outside of our race. He posits that, although we've stood by black men despite the fact that the number and quality of black men available to us is nowhere near equal, the best thing we can do for ourselves and for our race is to marry outside of it.
Negro, please.
First, some disclaimers. I'm not opposed to interracial marriage. There are many, many interracial marriages within my family, and I've always believed that sometimes love chooses you, not the other way around. All my family are all my family, regardless of race.
Second, I'm an educated black woman happily married to an educated black man, both of us Stanford alums, as is Professor Banks. My husband, Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB), tells me that at our last college reunion, somebody said that upwards of 70% of Stanford alums marry other Stanford alums. When we attended Stanford, I don't recall the number of black women outnumbering black men so much that black women felt they couldn't find a black man. Most of the black women I know who dated at Stanford dated black men, but that was during the '80s. In fact, interracial dating was so derided in the Stanford black community at the time that we had a term for it: Skiing.
Third, although I'm happily married to a black man, I married later in life -- five days before my 40th birthday -- so I've spent more of my life single than married. While I was single, I went on a date with someone outside of my race only once. It took only one date for me to decide this:
Interracial dating was not for me.
Mind you, it's not that I'm not physically attracted to men outside my race, at least younger ones. Were I single, I wouldn't kick Brad Pitt or George Clooney out of bed, so to speak, although when it comes to maintaining looks in old age, my money's on Denzel. Sorry, but black don't crack, and I like that.
The reason why interracial dating wasn't for me was because, in my brief and limited interracial dating experience, I discovered that what I prized, what I longed for in a marriage, was a cultural connection and a bond that comes from having grown up and lived black in America.
As I sat in some hoity-toidy bar in Palo Alto with my white date, an investment banker or stock broker, I don't recall which, his conversation was more about status -- and whether I, as a Stanford/Harvard/Princeton alum measured up to his -- than shared life experiences. It forced me to ask myself, "Was a shared cultural connection so important to me that I'd be willing to forgo marriage if I couldn't find that in a mate?"
The answer for me was an emphatic "Yes." So much so that, in 2000, I decided that I wasn't going to marry at all. I was going to move forward with my life by buying a house and adopting a child. I had been so disappointed by the black men I'd dated, BMNB included (we'd dated for seven years prior during the '80's and briefly again in the '90s), that I'd thrown up my hands and given up on the idea of marriage, period. If I couldn't have what I wanted -- a marriage to a black man -- I wasn't going to settle for what I could have. It was a year later that BMNB and I reconnected, hashed out our differences, and decided to move forward as a couple. I had even told him, though, that I had given up on marriage and I was done with men because I hadn't found a suitable black man. He basically talked me out of my position and later proposed for the second time in a decade. I'm glad he did.
What Professor Banks may not realize is that perhaps black women prize that cultural connection in a mate as much as I did, so much so that they're not willing to settle for anything different, even if it means not getting married. According to Banks, only 9% of black women marry outside of our race, while Asian and Latina women marry interracially at rates closer to 50%. Maybe black women value a shared culture more than Asian and Latina women. Maybe we don't want to get married that badly. I don't know.
What I do know is that when I describe something racist that happened to me during my day, I don't have to "prove" to BMNB that what happened was racist or that I'm not paranoid. When I use phrases and terms unique to black culture like, "If you don't know, you better ask somebody," or "I don't have to do anything but die and stay black," or "Aw, sookie, sookie," BMNB gets it without explanation. When I talk about the double standard of race -- that the rules for black people in a white America are different -- BMNB doesn't even question me about the truth of what I'm saying because he's lived it, too. I don't know if I could live the rest of my life with someone who wasn't similarly burdened, especially if he experienced white privilege and didn't realize or acknowledge it.
I also thought it would be unfair of me to marry someone outside of my race if I considered myself to be "settling." What person deserves to be a second choice? If culture is so important to me that marrying any man who doesn't share my culture would be a second-level choice to me, how would it make that man feel? What kind of marriage would it be if I married someone I would always consider to be lacking in something so important to me?
At the end of the day, black women need to be true to themselves and what they value, whether it's shared culture or whatever they value most in a mate, and choose accordingly, whether that leads to interracial marriage, intraracial marriage, or staying single. If they are open to marrying outside of the race, great, but I don't think they owe the black race anything by marrying outside the race for the purpose of preserving the race or black culture. As BMNB says, "Black women ARE black culture. The culture resides in them." Telling us that we need to marry outside of our race in order to preserve the race is a lot to ask of us if we're not inclined to do so. We owe it to ourselves to be happy, period.
And for me, that happiness was in marrying a man who understood the phrase, "Negro, please."
Negro, please.
First, some disclaimers. I'm not opposed to interracial marriage. There are many, many interracial marriages within my family, and I've always believed that sometimes love chooses you, not the other way around. All my family are all my family, regardless of race.
Second, I'm an educated black woman happily married to an educated black man, both of us Stanford alums, as is Professor Banks. My husband, Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB), tells me that at our last college reunion, somebody said that upwards of 70% of Stanford alums marry other Stanford alums. When we attended Stanford, I don't recall the number of black women outnumbering black men so much that black women felt they couldn't find a black man. Most of the black women I know who dated at Stanford dated black men, but that was during the '80s. In fact, interracial dating was so derided in the Stanford black community at the time that we had a term for it: Skiing.
Third, although I'm happily married to a black man, I married later in life -- five days before my 40th birthday -- so I've spent more of my life single than married. While I was single, I went on a date with someone outside of my race only once. It took only one date for me to decide this:
Interracial dating was not for me.
Mind you, it's not that I'm not physically attracted to men outside my race, at least younger ones. Were I single, I wouldn't kick Brad Pitt or George Clooney out of bed, so to speak, although when it comes to maintaining looks in old age, my money's on Denzel. Sorry, but black don't crack, and I like that.
The reason why interracial dating wasn't for me was because, in my brief and limited interracial dating experience, I discovered that what I prized, what I longed for in a marriage, was a cultural connection and a bond that comes from having grown up and lived black in America.
As I sat in some hoity-toidy bar in Palo Alto with my white date, an investment banker or stock broker, I don't recall which, his conversation was more about status -- and whether I, as a Stanford/Harvard/Princeton alum measured up to his -- than shared life experiences. It forced me to ask myself, "Was a shared cultural connection so important to me that I'd be willing to forgo marriage if I couldn't find that in a mate?"
The answer for me was an emphatic "Yes." So much so that, in 2000, I decided that I wasn't going to marry at all. I was going to move forward with my life by buying a house and adopting a child. I had been so disappointed by the black men I'd dated, BMNB included (we'd dated for seven years prior during the '80's and briefly again in the '90s), that I'd thrown up my hands and given up on the idea of marriage, period. If I couldn't have what I wanted -- a marriage to a black man -- I wasn't going to settle for what I could have. It was a year later that BMNB and I reconnected, hashed out our differences, and decided to move forward as a couple. I had even told him, though, that I had given up on marriage and I was done with men because I hadn't found a suitable black man. He basically talked me out of my position and later proposed for the second time in a decade. I'm glad he did.
What Professor Banks may not realize is that perhaps black women prize that cultural connection in a mate as much as I did, so much so that they're not willing to settle for anything different, even if it means not getting married. According to Banks, only 9% of black women marry outside of our race, while Asian and Latina women marry interracially at rates closer to 50%. Maybe black women value a shared culture more than Asian and Latina women. Maybe we don't want to get married that badly. I don't know.
What I do know is that when I describe something racist that happened to me during my day, I don't have to "prove" to BMNB that what happened was racist or that I'm not paranoid. When I use phrases and terms unique to black culture like, "If you don't know, you better ask somebody," or "I don't have to do anything but die and stay black," or "Aw, sookie, sookie," BMNB gets it without explanation. When I talk about the double standard of race -- that the rules for black people in a white America are different -- BMNB doesn't even question me about the truth of what I'm saying because he's lived it, too. I don't know if I could live the rest of my life with someone who wasn't similarly burdened, especially if he experienced white privilege and didn't realize or acknowledge it.
I also thought it would be unfair of me to marry someone outside of my race if I considered myself to be "settling." What person deserves to be a second choice? If culture is so important to me that marrying any man who doesn't share my culture would be a second-level choice to me, how would it make that man feel? What kind of marriage would it be if I married someone I would always consider to be lacking in something so important to me?
At the end of the day, black women need to be true to themselves and what they value, whether it's shared culture or whatever they value most in a mate, and choose accordingly, whether that leads to interracial marriage, intraracial marriage, or staying single. If they are open to marrying outside of the race, great, but I don't think they owe the black race anything by marrying outside the race for the purpose of preserving the race or black culture. As BMNB says, "Black women ARE black culture. The culture resides in them." Telling us that we need to marry outside of our race in order to preserve the race is a lot to ask of us if we're not inclined to do so. We owe it to ourselves to be happy, period.
And for me, that happiness was in marrying a man who understood the phrase, "Negro, please."
Are We Done Persecuting Gays?
Gay teen suicides. The military opposing the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." And perverts thinking it's okay to set up secret webcams to record their gay roommate/classmate having sex and then stream it over the Internet, as if setting up a secret webcam to record anybody having sex is okay.
When did it become acceptable -- even cool -- to persecute gays?
I support gay marriage and oppose "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on legal grounds -- equality. If the government's going to stay in the business of deciding whether people can marry, it has to treat people equally. Marriage stopped being solely a religious rite when the government got into the business of regulating it. Besides, if marriage were solely a religious rite, then atheists shouldn't be allowed to marry -- but the government allows them to.
Similarly, if the government is going to decide who gets to defend our country (as if there's a rush to take up arms and get shipped to Iraq or Afghanistan), it needs to treat all these brave people equally. Last I checked, gay people are people. And brave, too.
And, quite frankly, I don't care about the sexual orientation of the men and women defending and dying for the freedoms I have. I do care that each and every one of them has the same freedoms at home as I do and that they are fighting abroad to defend. Need we look any further for examples of this type of hypocrisy and injustice than World War II, when we sent African American servicemen abroad to defend this nation only to have them be treated as second-class citizens upon their return? Besides, you don't have to be straight to shoot straight. I don't care if our servicemen and women are gay or straight; I just want them to be good at their jobs so they can protect our country and each other. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with the ability to shoot missiles, fly planes, or disarm an IED.
It saddens me to know that young people are taking their lives because they are being persecuted for being who they are. These young people don't have the benefit of the wisdom that comes with age and tells you, "It's going to be alright. Just wait and see."
Regardless of your religious beliefs, no matter what your faith is, this persecution of gay people has got to stop.
So, are we done persecuting gays?
When did it become acceptable -- even cool -- to persecute gays?
I support gay marriage and oppose "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on legal grounds -- equality. If the government's going to stay in the business of deciding whether people can marry, it has to treat people equally. Marriage stopped being solely a religious rite when the government got into the business of regulating it. Besides, if marriage were solely a religious rite, then atheists shouldn't be allowed to marry -- but the government allows them to.
Similarly, if the government is going to decide who gets to defend our country (as if there's a rush to take up arms and get shipped to Iraq or Afghanistan), it needs to treat all these brave people equally. Last I checked, gay people are people. And brave, too.
And, quite frankly, I don't care about the sexual orientation of the men and women defending and dying for the freedoms I have. I do care that each and every one of them has the same freedoms at home as I do and that they are fighting abroad to defend. Need we look any further for examples of this type of hypocrisy and injustice than World War II, when we sent African American servicemen abroad to defend this nation only to have them be treated as second-class citizens upon their return? Besides, you don't have to be straight to shoot straight. I don't care if our servicemen and women are gay or straight; I just want them to be good at their jobs so they can protect our country and each other. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with the ability to shoot missiles, fly planes, or disarm an IED.
It saddens me to know that young people are taking their lives because they are being persecuted for being who they are. These young people don't have the benefit of the wisdom that comes with age and tells you, "It's going to be alright. Just wait and see."
Regardless of your religious beliefs, no matter what your faith is, this persecution of gay people has got to stop.
So, are we done persecuting gays?
I Hope Elena Kagan Is Gay
It’s really none of my business. Really. But I hope Elena Kagan is gay.
The U.S. District Court in San Francisco struck down California’s Proposition 8 on the grounds that, among other arguments, it violated the Equal Protection Clause because there was no rational basis for discriminating against gays and lesbians. For those of you non-lawyers out there, rational basis analysis is the weakest test applied to discriminatory laws. If you were comparing rational basis analysis to limbo, let’s just say it would be ankle-high: not a hard hurdle to overcome. And yet the proponents of Proposition 8 failed to overcome it.
So imagine how lame Judge Vaughn Walker thought the justifications for Proposition 8 were that he ruled that they didn’t pass rational basis analysis, to wit:
1) Preserving the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman;
2) Proceeding with caution when implementing social changes;
3) Promoting opposite-sex parenting over same-sex parenting;
4) Protecting the freedom of those who oppose same-sex marriage;
5) Treating same-sex couples differently from opposite-sex couples; and
6) Any other conceivable interest.
Perry v. Schwarzenegger, (2010) No, C-09-0299 VRW (N.D. Cal.) at p. 123. So let me get this straight – you’re going up against Ted Olsen and David Boies, two veritable legal giants who have appeared numerous times before the U.S. Supreme Court, most notably against each other in Bush v. Gore, and this is the best you can come up with? I hope those Prop. 8 supporters didn’t spend a lot of money on their legal talent.
Depending on the patchwork of state and federal court decisions determining whether prohibiting gay marriage violates equal protection and due process under our federal Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court might be enticed to take this case to settle the law once and for all. Maybe.
And if it does, I hope Elena Kagan is gay. I wonder how many gay people the Justices know. I wonder if they know that gay people aren’t trying lessen the meaning of marriage for others; they’re just seeking equal rights under the laws. If states hadn’t gotten into the business of regulating marriage in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this position. Everyone would just go to their church, synagogue, supreme leader, open pasture or whatever, declare themselves married, and prepare to get screwed by the IRS. But nooooooo . . . . the states had to get all up in our business and license and regulate marriage. Well, guess what? The state doesn’t get to play favorites, even if a majority of people want it to. That’s what the Constitution is for – to protect the rights of people who happen to be in them minority, no matter what you think of them. Once the government got involved in marriage, it ceased to be just a religious rite. Now it’s an individual right. And that, in a nutshell, is why you shouldn’t be able to discriminate as to who gets to enjoy that right.
If Elena Kagan is gay, I want those Justices who think it’s okay to discriminate based on sexual orientation to look her in the eye and make that argument.
And then prepare for the legal smackdown of a lifetime.
We’ve heard similar arguments before, folks, and so has the U.S. Supreme Court -- in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), where the State of Virginia had the audacity to argue the constitutionality of its anti-miscegenation laws. In holding Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law up the Court had this to say:
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 at 12. If gay and lesbian people love their mates half as much as I love Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB), well, then, their right to marry is worth fighting for. I wish them well.
And I’m hoping against all hope that Elena Kagan is gay.
The U.S. District Court in San Francisco struck down California’s Proposition 8 on the grounds that, among other arguments, it violated the Equal Protection Clause because there was no rational basis for discriminating against gays and lesbians. For those of you non-lawyers out there, rational basis analysis is the weakest test applied to discriminatory laws. If you were comparing rational basis analysis to limbo, let’s just say it would be ankle-high: not a hard hurdle to overcome. And yet the proponents of Proposition 8 failed to overcome it.
So imagine how lame Judge Vaughn Walker thought the justifications for Proposition 8 were that he ruled that they didn’t pass rational basis analysis, to wit:
1) Preserving the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman;
2) Proceeding with caution when implementing social changes;
3) Promoting opposite-sex parenting over same-sex parenting;
4) Protecting the freedom of those who oppose same-sex marriage;
5) Treating same-sex couples differently from opposite-sex couples; and
6) Any other conceivable interest.
Perry v. Schwarzenegger, (2010) No, C-09-0299 VRW (N.D. Cal.) at p. 123. So let me get this straight – you’re going up against Ted Olsen and David Boies, two veritable legal giants who have appeared numerous times before the U.S. Supreme Court, most notably against each other in Bush v. Gore, and this is the best you can come up with? I hope those Prop. 8 supporters didn’t spend a lot of money on their legal talent.
Depending on the patchwork of state and federal court decisions determining whether prohibiting gay marriage violates equal protection and due process under our federal Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court might be enticed to take this case to settle the law once and for all. Maybe.
And if it does, I hope Elena Kagan is gay. I wonder how many gay people the Justices know. I wonder if they know that gay people aren’t trying lessen the meaning of marriage for others; they’re just seeking equal rights under the laws. If states hadn’t gotten into the business of regulating marriage in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this position. Everyone would just go to their church, synagogue, supreme leader, open pasture or whatever, declare themselves married, and prepare to get screwed by the IRS. But nooooooo . . . . the states had to get all up in our business and license and regulate marriage. Well, guess what? The state doesn’t get to play favorites, even if a majority of people want it to. That’s what the Constitution is for – to protect the rights of people who happen to be in them minority, no matter what you think of them. Once the government got involved in marriage, it ceased to be just a religious rite. Now it’s an individual right. And that, in a nutshell, is why you shouldn’t be able to discriminate as to who gets to enjoy that right.
If Elena Kagan is gay, I want those Justices who think it’s okay to discriminate based on sexual orientation to look her in the eye and make that argument.
And then prepare for the legal smackdown of a lifetime.
We’ve heard similar arguments before, folks, and so has the U.S. Supreme Court -- in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), where the State of Virginia had the audacity to argue the constitutionality of its anti-miscegenation laws. In holding Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law up the Court had this to say:
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 at 12. If gay and lesbian people love their mates half as much as I love Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB), well, then, their right to marry is worth fighting for. I wish them well.
And I’m hoping against all hope that Elena Kagan is gay.
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