feminist blogs

By far my favorite plenary at Creating Change so far, the Youth of Color Panel featured young leaders speaking to the priorities of the communities they represent. Kai Wright did an excellent job giving these folks space to share perspectives that are outside the mainstream of the LGBT movement. They articulated a vision that moves beyond marriage to the issues that actually impact their lives. Some highlights from the panel, which had the crowd whipped up like no other large session, after the jump.

The speakers and their organizations:

Juan Gabriel Padilla - Texas GSA Network, Austin
Cynthia Ruiz - Youth First Texas
Dashaun Williams - Vogue Evolution, NYC-based organizations
Charlotte Park - BAGLY
Jesus Motelongo - Youth First Texas
Ash Hammond - FIERCE
Rudy "Elegost" Rosado - FIERCE

Gabriel - Although we all self-identify as queer people of color we are in no way representatives of all queer people of color.

Ash - The very basic services that we rely on for our community are being cut. We sent out a survey that was released in the Summer of 2009. Problems such as homelessness, increasing HIV infection rates were actually increasing for youth across the country, it wasn't just New York.

Elegost - The youth felt their issues weren't being spoken about, they were going under the radar.

Ash - Recommendations: We need to really teach organizing skills so LGBT youth of color can organize themselves and address these issues.

Elegost - We need more organizing spaces more often.

Ash - We want to see more prioritizing of a youth-led LGBT agenda. And we want to shift the priorities of our agenda - so access to housing would be a big one, prevention of violence would be another one, and access to public spaces. We're the people affected by these issues so we're the people that develop the solutions.

Gabriel - The problems we find affecting folks mostly were things like homelessness... not Don't Ask Don't Tell and marriage.

Kai - What were the priorities?

Elegost - Anti-trans and gender non-conforming violence were big ones. Homelessness, and HIV/AIDS.

Charlotte - [During marriage organizing in MA] The youth saw a loss of funding. The mainstream movement was willing to use our bodies, like in canvassing, but we weren't getting supported back.

Gabriel also spoke against the prioritizing of hate crime legislation, and especially paying attention to queer and trans youth of color who are disproportionately targeted by violence.

Dashaun and Ash spoke about the house and ballroom scene in New York creating family and community spaces for queer youth of color.

Jesus - [Regarding homeless youth] We don't just offer housing, we also offer counseling, trans youth support.

Cynthia - Personally as GLBT youth I think we should focus on immigration. Because I was raised by my grandparents who emigrated from Mexico.

Gabriel - Growing up I was not only marginalized for being pansexual-identified, but for being a person of color and an immigrant. We sometimes dismiss the fact that we have people in the community who are immigrants. Groups in Austin aren't coming together on intersecting issues. I have to switch identities when I go to different organizations.

Charlotte - We have adult advisors and they're just there, they don't try to take a part, and we can go to them for support. And they check in with us in a way that doesn't seem overbearing, it's very caring. And part of that is that we're given the space to engage with them when we want to, it's not pushed on us. They give us the space to create the framework we function in.

Cynthia - I've noticed that some organizations only serve adults, and some only serve youth. we need some that intersect the two.

Ash - I think what it looks like when it's not working is an organization that claims to be youth organizing, but youth are there as the face of the organization but adults are really doing the work and making the decisions.

Dashaun - Adults aren't always open to accepting that there are different generations, and things shift.

Gabriel - Empowering youth is saying: we trust your voice, we trust your decisions, we're behind you, and we're going to give you the space and those resources to address these problems.

Ash - I think we could do a better job of doing intergenerational work. If you look at the things are movements are known for, they're known for certain things that affect certain age groups. And we need to not only prioritize youth becoming leaders and speaking for our issues, because our issues are real and serious, but we also need to prioritize the issues of elders in our movement.

Kai asked about where we're going to be in the next 10 years.

Jesus - I think in my community we're already taking the steps to work with different generations, cultures, and communities. I think in ten years I see us becoming stronger as a community and becoming more inclusive.

Gabriel - Radical queers are gonna fuck shit up!

Charlotte - We're not using a common accessible language. Organizations need to realize that marriage doesn't help queer youth. What do you do [before marriage]? You're young and you want to have fun and you can't do that if you're disenfranchised and homeless.

Ash - In 10 years when I'm sitting in a room of LGBT youth leaders I hope they're speaking about nothing that I'm speaking about today.

This post was written right after American missionaries were arrested and originally posted on the AWEARNESS blog. 

February marks the annual Black History Month.

In honor of the start of the month, I want to link to an article written by the always insightful Melissa Harris-Lacewell. She writes about the Obama she remembers.

During the election, Harris-Lacewell was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of then Candidate Barack Obama, but that has not stopped her from critiquing his policies. I always look out for her thoughts about his Administration and I trust her perspective.

I thought the words of one leading African-American feminist scholar on our first African-American President would be an appropriate way of honoring the beginning of this month.

I don't know Barack Obama personally, but I had a kind of political intimacy with him during the years I lived in Chicago. He is familiar in a way that makes it impossible for me to see the President through the same prisms of perfection or loathing that many employ when assessing him.

I distinctly remember the last time I had a personal interaction with him. We were both standing in line at the 55th Street Walgreens. He was wearing flip-flops, short basketball shorts, and an old t-shirt. He was buying ice for a family picnic. Hardly the icon of fashion cool he became within two years of that moment.

I remember the first time I heard him give a public speech. He was a last minute replacement for an ill Professor Cornel West during the University of Chicago's Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration. (Pause for irony) The address was adequate, but neither memorable nor particularly inspiring. Hardly the soaring rhetoric that he so regularly and effectively delivers now.

I remember the first time I saw him campaign. He was running against Bobby Rush for a congressional seat on the Southside of Chicago. He could barely fill a community center room with 25 people. Hardly the teeming crowds who now stand in lines for hours in inclement weather to hear him speak or who braved bitter cold to see him inaugurated.

These early encounters with Obama remind me that he is President not solely, or even primarily, because of innate gifts, but because he moves up a learning curve more swiftly and fully than anyone else in public life. My consistent support for President Obama, despite my real differences with him on a number of policy issues, is deeply rooted in my understanding of his openness to and capacity for learning.

Read more about Harris-Lacewell's work at her website, and the rest of the article at The Nation.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC: "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."

There will undoubtedly be a lot of conversation about Chris Matthews potentially well-intentioned, albeit totally misguided, attempt to talk about the ways in which Obama's leadership affected him last night. He's already attempted to clarify, talking about how miraculous he found it that race, Obama's racial identity in specific, wasn't a part of the analysis or interpretation of the State of the Union. He said: "I saw it almost like an epiphany. I hope it's true. I hope what I saw is true that we've gotten beyond it, at least at the presidential level...He's taken us beyond black and white in our politics."

First things first, race consciousness is not something you take on or off like a pair of glasses. Pundits may not have immediately followed Obama's speech with, "Well, he sure did talk about the economy well for a black guy," but that doesn't mean that their interpretation wasn't influenced by their own relationship to race, their subconscious stereotypes etc. There is no such thing as race-less political analysis, at least not in this country, at this time and place. (No such thing, I might add, as a gender-less political analysis either.)

What is important, and I think this is what Matthews was actually trying to articulate, though very badly, is that Obama's racial identity has become a more intrinsic part of the punditry's interpretation. There are great things about this...finally we are spending valuable airtime looking at his policies, his leadership styles, and his vision, rather than the campaign-era where every other thing out of a pundit's mouth was about identity politics (for the record, some of this forwarded a conversation about race in this country, although too much of it was inane and distracting). There are also dangerous things about this...guys like Chris Matthews can feign excitement over racism being over, when in fact, it is very much still at work in both our personal perceptions and our nation's most powerful institutions. Some might be attracted to the notion that if we don't say it at the beginning, middle, and end of every broadcast, than it's no longer an issue, but that's just not true.

At this point, in this country, there is no "beyond" race. There is the new capacity to background racial identity and prioritize other issues--the economy, healthcare, foreign policy--but all of these issues are inextricably tied up in race (and gender and class and...).

by Pam Spaulding

I could toss off some wry comment about this ridiculous comment by Chris Matthews, but the fact that he had no problem stating this on the air raises an interesting question—what is he really saying with a statement like that?

What it boils down to is that there’s something about being “black” to forget—such as um, being articulate, or educated, or perhaps in his mind, standing up there and doing the whole SOTU thing in the wake of a whole lot of white guys and guess what? He’s not all that different from any of them.

It’s almost a child-like expression of wonder, like that classmate of mine at Fordham who asked me if I could tan.  You just have to shake your head and think about how just how far we have to go when it comes to race, even if the person believes they are paying a “compliment.” That’s not a post-racial America, Chris.

UPDATE: He clumsily attempted to roll back what he said here. It’s clear Matthews meant well and thought the President’s speech was superb, but that’s not the point (and it’s not the time or space on TV to go into the deeper discussion); this is an example of how deeply embedded white privilege is embedded, even when no malice is intended.

The default view of successful leadership and its stature is presumed to be the domain of the white man, and when an accomplished black man rises to that position, he must have magically shed the negativity, ignorance and undereducated skin of the American black male to do so. That Matthews realized within moments what he said (even if he didn’t fully or deeply think about its origins) and tried to explain his thinking about that statement, it’s pretty clear that he couldn’t really go where the conversation needs to go on this matter.

by Pam Spaulding

A little laugh for your AM.

Mr. Homo-Toms is back for more after my gentle spanking of him for his last essay a few weeks ago (”Kaufman at Huff Post: misguided race-based rant on LGBT rights—and ‘Homo-Toms’”). David Kaufman is the multi-racial proprietor of Transracial.net, and for some reason, he’s 1) fixated and confused about why LGBTs might draw any parallels to the black civil rights movement and 2) angry that the LGBT online community isn’t walking in lockstep and happy with the rollout of the Democratic/Obama agenda.

Kaufman takes a crack at several bloggers, movement commentators, including yours truly, for our alleged cheering and crowing about Scott “Cosmo” Brown’s win in Massachusetts. I never supported Brown or cheered him on; in fact we ran fundraising links for Coakley. And note Kaufman links to nothing on my blog—he can’t find anything of the sort. From the Huff Post piece, ”LGBT Leaders and Spokespeople Undermining the Cause.”

The schadenfreude surrounding Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Senate win is the final confirmation of the current LGBT leadership’s betrayal of 50 years of progressive politics. It began within minutes of Coakley’s concession speech: A volley of ”I told you sos” by her haughty Carolina highness, Pam Spaulding. Mock-shock and caustic concern from the dirt-dishers over at Queerty. Dispassionate dispatches from those “just-the-facters” Towleroad, Joe.My.God and the AMERICAblog. And finally—a muddled, misanthropic, self-serving and—obvi!—Obama-bashing brief from David Mixner.

That Brown won should have come of little surprise to these LGBT “leaders” or their devoted fan base. After all, Spaulding, Queerty, Mixner and Co. practically cheer-led the former Cosmo-hunk to this critical triumph. Having officially turned on their president, these netrooters have conceded the greater good for their own shortsighted image-inflating. Well aware of the monumental consequences of a Republican win, Gay-stream media nevertheless continued their Dem-dissing and Obama-bashing with little concern for its election-day implications.

I like that I have earned yet another keen endorsement - “her haughty Carolina highness.” That’s NORTH Carolina highness if you’re nasty...

Anyway I’d love to see where Kaufman could find any pro-Brown posts on here, but why bother when you can generate incoherent pablum like that. What’s even more outlandish is that our criticism of the slow-go, no-go, run-from-timetables strategy of this administration and Congress when it comes to LGBT civil rights, is seen by Kaufman as endangering the entire progressive agenda.

Health care is at risk following the loss of the Democratic Senate majority. Additional Democratic senate seats are vulnerable to attack by an emboldened Republican party. Progressive White House initiatives may now be scaled back as Obama is forced to downsize his populist platforms. And—most crucially—the very LGBT issues these leaders triumph have never been more threatened by political rollbacks and the potential for voter-led regressive propositions. Our very economic, civil and physical liberties are imperiled—and all Spaulding can dish up is an “I told you so”. All Mixner can muster is yet another MLK-mooching missive on HuffPost.

What are we homos, 3%-7% of the population? And how many of us are bloggers of note? What in blazes is Kaufman smoking, because we all needed that to get through the eight years of Bush.

I do love that I’ve been endowed with so much power that I can topple prospects for a Dem-controlled Congress. Might Obama, Rahm and Nancy and Harry have a little to do with the state of things right now, David? The essay is again, so misguided that it’s not hard to imagine that Kaufman is either: 1) on the payroll of the Obama admin (btw, that would be a raw deal) or 2) has extreme hostility issues that he needs to deal with unrelated to the topic at hand.

The one part of the essay that is actually worth addressing because of its offensiveness is Kaufman’s obsession with declaring that the LGBT community, which includes black gays, has no business even discussing the relevance, for instance, of Loving v. Virginia and how it will play a role when marriage equality goes before SCOTUS.

Unrepentantly racist and race-bating on the White side; complicit, silent and homo Tom-like on the Black. Steeped in anger whilst mired by impotence. And shamelessly borrowing from earlier civil rights movements with zero respect or understanding of what they were truly about.

In fact, it’s time to stop with the niceties and simply tell it like it is: Enough with the Loving v. Virginia references and its “Blacks got their rights too” reductivism. End the Mixner-styled “Gay Apartheid” hysterics and endless take-downs of the Black church. It’s boring, it’s tired, it’s obnoxious and it’s offensive.

Wake up, David - the homo-Tom jive is getting stale. Loving v. Virginia is relevant, and the homophobia of the black church is a political impediment that is worthy of discussion. Look no further than the loud, proud ignorance of carpetbagging NOM-tool Bishop Harry Jackson in his quest to stop marriage equality in DC as the black face of white fundamentalist groups like the Family Research Council.

There are mini-me Bishop Jacksons all around the country willing to shill bigotry from the pulpit with the backing of well-funded white evangelical organizations. And way too many of these pastors in the pulpit are not protecting the sanctity of their own marriages.

And as someone who is also a multiple minority, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at this bold ego stroke:

I am American, mixed-race, Jewish and Gay. I am, you could say, an ultimate minority.

And this means what? That opposing White House strategy—after promises Candidate Obama made, not something that was extracted out of him—and calling out for accountability, is tantamount to revoking your black and progressive cards? Wow, if you want blind followers, file over to the other side of the aisle. Yawn.

You need better aim than that, David. Try again, with a little less mood-enhancement.

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I've compiled a list of my favorite quotes said by Dr. King. Enjoy, and take today to remind yourself of the messages Dr. King's words sent, and also to think about what you can do to continue his work.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
-Strength To Love, 1963.

Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice.
-Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
-Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1964.

A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.
-Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
-Strength To Love, 1963.

Tweet/post your favorite MLK quotes.

By now, you've probably heard about the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill that initially threatened to execute gays, and now threatens to imprison them.

And you may also have read in Courtney's excellent piece on the subject that the NY Times, among other news sources, has reported that American right-wingers are on the forefront of this Ugandan homophobia, prompting and prodding it along.

What you may not have heard is that yesterday, Edwin Okong'o of New America Media contributed a heartbreaking but much-needed perspective in his article "Why Ugandans Embrace U.S. Christian Right's Anti-Gay Agenda," in which he puts forth the idea that Ugandans are amenable to embracing the anti-gay agenda of the U.S. Christian right because of a racial inferiority complex.

An excerpt from his article:

"Although they have denied it, evidence suggests that American right-wingers are in the forefront of this war on homosexuality...Africans take such filth without questions because they suffer from a severe case of inferiority complex. Even worse, they staunchly believe in the supremacy of the white man. Ill-informed Christians...place the white man immediately below the Holy Trinity, a belief with its roots in the colonial era."

Okong'o goes on to support this idea by relaying his own experiences encountering black self-hatred in Kenya.

"Growing up in Kenya, I heard stories about how supernatural the white man was. When we did well in school, our parents and teachers said we were as intelligent as white men. When you went to take a bath, Ma told you to come out as clean as a white man. If the white doctor at the hospital failed to diagnose your disease, death was imminent."

As heartbreaking and frustrating it is for me to read, I also think this is a mightily important take on the current legislation being put forth in the region. I'm so glad Mr. Okong'o has brought his experiences to the table in such a raw and honest way. Sometimes this stuff is extremely hard to talk about in a public forum- I know it is for me- and so I applaud his bravery first and foremost.

But what to think about his thesis? Well, for me, Okong'o's thesis rings true- in a way. As much as I wish I could, I won't argue against the basic premise, because in my experience, racial inferiority complexes certainly do exist and it is probably true that this has played a role in the circumstances surrounding the anti-gay bill in Uganda. (Of course, I can only speak to the African-American experience, having grown up in America, but I can say with certainty that black self-hatred is certainly not limited to the continent of Africa.)

That being said, I do want to throw some additional thoughts into the mix. I don't doubt that the phenomenon Okong'o names has merit- racial inferiority complexes are real. But the issue is complex, and I'm not sure if that's the primary factor in driving forward the current Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill. If it were, would we see so much critical rhetoric surrounding Western morals and influence being used in Uganda to promote the anti-homosexuality bill? In a speech delivered yesterday, for example, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni cautioned those advocating for the anti-homosexuality bill to "go slow", saying the matter was "a sensitive foreign policy issue"- the suggestion being not that the bill is bad, but that pesky Westerners disapprove of it, so you have to be careful moving forward if you want the bill to be successful. In the same speech, he boasted of having "informed" Hillary Clinton that people come from Europe with money to woo young people into homosexuality. These kinds of comments aren't rare in the country, either; proponents of the bill in Uganda have consistently used anti-Western rhetoric to drive its support, blaming promiscuous and immoral Westerners for the rise of homosexuality in the country, and even rallying support for the anti-gay bill by pointing to its low favorability with the Western "human rights" audience.

So what to make of all this? How can we reconcile all of these factors to form a straightforward narrative about the rise of homophobia in Uganda?

See, now it's not entirely fair that I pose that question, because the point of my post is that I don't believe that we can create a simple narrative about the phenomenon of global homophobia- and I don't believe we should try, either.

Homophobia in Uganda- just like homophobia in the rest of the world- is a complex and multi-faceted beast that doesn't just originate from one person, place, country, or emotion. While there are certainly trends in how it originates, how it's practiced, and especially how it's carried out, I don't think we can boil down those trends to point to any one cause (like religion, or racial inferiority). In fact, I argue that it would be wholly dangerous to do so, and would underestimate both the ubiquity and vibrancy of today's brand of homophobia.

In short, it's just as important that we recognize the complexity of the origins of homophobia in Uganda (and around the world) as it is that we unequivocally fight against its practical and horrific implications for queer Ugandans; in fact, the former is crucial to be successful at the latter. Okong'o's article certainly provides an important piece to the puzzle, but it's not the whole story.

Gender Across Borders (http://genderacrossborders.com) is planning a series about hip-hop, resistance, and feminism to run February 5 and 6. The deadline for submitting has been extended to January 29. Hip-hop can be a powerful tool for resisting gender and racial oppression and occupation. Gender Across Borders is seeking articles that tie together an analysis of race and [...]

What are everyone's thoughts on this Harry Reid controversy? For those of you who don't know, a new book revealed that Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, made "racist" comments towards Barack Obama, calling him a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Reid issued an apology, and President Obama has accepted it. Prominent Democrats, as well as the nation's first black attorney, have defended Reid. Republicans are calling Democrats hypocrites, accusing them of applying a double-standard by calling out others on racism, but not their own. They are also calling for Reid's resignation. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement that Reid should step down, calling his comments "embarrassing and racially insensitive."

Except, um, remember when the GOP and conservative activists were constantly guilty of distributing horrific materials attacking Obama for his race?

Methinks the Republicans aren't criticizing Democrats because they are genuinely offended by Reid's racist comments and by racism in general, but because they are using this as an opportunity to call us hypocrites.

Also, blogger Brian Montopoli of CBSNews.com made a good point. Look carefully at what Reid said. Reid didn't seem to be criticizing Obama, but instead describing how certain aspects of himself will work in his favor for election. Montopoli wrote:

On NBC's "Today" show Monday, Matt Lauer asked PBS' Gwen Ifill this question: "Isn't Harry Reid implying that a dark-skinned African American who speaks in a way that some would consider more stereotypical would not be electable?"

Ifill's response? Well, yes. Because it's true.

While Reid could have done a much better job structuring his comments, I don't find what he said racist. I find it true. The fact that Obama isn't very dark-skinned and speaks in a manner that Americans don't associate with the stereotypical person of color helped him win. We have said it time and time again: Obama's victory was a step in the right direction, but racism continues to plague America. Obama was an "acceptable" African-American, just like there are "acceptable" queer figures and "acceptable" feminists (see: Sarah Palin).

It is immoral to condone offensive remarks simply because they were made by an ally instead of an enemy, and I do think we should urge Reid to better exercise sensitivity and morality in the future, but asking him to step down as Majority leader? That is far too extreme.