Tim Hardaway, homophobia, & race

Editor's Note : Tim Hardaway, homophobia, & race : aka : Why white is right.

Maybe it's me, but...

It's one thing to offer a thoughtful, weighty discussion of what Tim Hardaway's blackness has to do with his comments about gay men. It's useful, in fact, to point out how homophobia limits the agenda & activism of any organization. (In the above case, the blogger is writing on the N.A.A.C.P.)

It's another thing to bring it up flippantly, in passing, & with no substantive context...to accomplish what? Hell if I know.

One blogger writes,

... the African American community, including the churches, have not been exactly helpful to the gay community over the years. Religious beliefs play a big part in it.

Or, as one blogger points out, there's FoxNews (gulp!)

Hardaway's bigotry, while hardly unique, is particularly sad given that he played college ball at the University of Texas-El Paso, which made history in 1966 as Texas Western by defeating Kentucky in the NCAA final with an all-black starting five. When the Miners beat Kentucky, which was coached by the retrograde Adolph Rupp who refused to recruit black players, it was a landmark on the "glory road" to racial equality in college athletics. Presumably, Hardaway, an African-American, would reject Rupp's racism as immoral. But apparently he would have no problem with discrimination against gays.

Briefly, some thoughts on this :

• When a white person says something homophobic, we should relentlessly bring up white people's legacy of dominance over others as proof that white people just don't get it. That might make some sense.
• Is it surprising that religion might be involved in the production of homophobia amongst black people? Did we expect that all religious black people would be less homophobic than some religious white people?
  
• To suggest that a person who faces one form of discrimination should develop some radical ethos of equality is a bit daffy; in a way, it suggests that white racism might actually benefit black people. It'll help them get enlightened, or something like that.
  
• Sometimes, one's own experience of discrimination generates solidarity with others facing different forms of discrimination. Often, it doesn't. Which is why scholarship on African-American feminism or uneasy amalgamations of Marxism & feminism exists.
• Sometimes, the white gay & lesbian community have not exactly been helpful to the black gay & lesbian community. Again, there's no such thing as automatic & easy solidarity.
  
• Anyone else have thoughts on this? I'm just a little stumped & perplexed, though not surprised.
  

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett