The Paradox of Hope

It is said that a writer should never write angry, lest he write the best piece he will ever regret.

I have written numerous opinion pieces in both the UK and the US over the nearly two years of the US presidential campaign that lead up to the historic election of Barack Obama last week.  I watched the election coverage rabidly on UK television, with streaming feeds from the US on two different computers - I was enthralled enough to miss sleep for an entire night and not care.

The next morning, the view from my window in London was the same as it ever was: rooftops, the MI5 building, the London Eye. But as I scanned the horizon, cup of tea in hand and looked up at a rising winter sun, the whole world felt different...it felt better.

I admit I have been a staunch proponent of regime change in America for much of the last eight years and now it is here, in a typically American fashion, there has been an overnight rehabilitation of the US image in the eyes of the world. 

The first major "change we can believe in," a tiny hop to the left from the crass, the stumbling, the unintelligent and the decidedly undiplomatic to a more sophisticated, eloquent and nuanced take on the issues - with a touch of lofty rhetoric thrown in for good measure.

I flew to America on results day, convinced as I waited in line, that I could have skipped security and flown to New York under my own power, so uplifted was I by the result.  As I landed in the States, I noted that even the usually bellicose New York customs officers and baggage handlers were effervescing.

Sadly, all it took was checking my email to end my euphoria.

As the world rightly congratulated America for it's choice and Americans patted themselves on the back for "getting over the issue of race" and even "daring" to vote for a black President -- one in whom 27 percent of Americans in a recent Gallup/USA Today poll said they were already "afraid" -- America took a step backwards.

Three States in the US voted to ban adoption and fostering by GLBT people, and in California of all places, to ban marriage equity - the law allowing it had only been in effect for a matter of months.

As America supposedly ushered in a new era of racial harmony.  Quietly, insidiously, with a satisfied smirk of moral indignation, it took away the rights and equality of another minority.
As all too often happens, rather than tangible, quantitative progress in equality, a mere shuffling of the hierarchy of oppression and prejudice took place; one group ascended, another fell.  The advancing entities somehow foolishly blind to the fact that this dynamic will see them fall again in time.

What a surprise and a disappointment to see the exit polls record that while most whites voted against the ban of marriage equity.  Asians and Latinos were split and the black and African American electorate voted overwhelmingly for it!

In the middle of two wars with no end in sight for at least one of them; wars where people of color make up much of the cannon fodder - the marriage equity issue somehow seemed important?

In the middle of a financial crisis that is disproportionately punishing black and other ethnic minorities - a crisis that many have unscrupulously blamed on lending to these very people - the marriage equity issue resonated louder than the price of petrol or a carton of milk?
In a country where black people were once constitutionally considered 3/5th human and marriage rights were denied to slaves and interracial couples.  In a country where, in the 60's, my black father had to duck below a blanket when travelling in his white wife's car in parts of Boston for fear of attack. In this place, these marginalized minorities along with the righteous right, voted to make me and others like me, less than whole.

With this context, my mind can not conceive that marriage equity: my ability to have the public recognition, legal protection and private and familial satisfaction of having what everyone else is entitled, was an important right to crush?  With this history, at this time, I can't imagine why any right, any aspect of equality would seem a ripe target?

What a shock to consider this election and find myself at once buoyed by the fact that, apparently, I am officially no longer 3/5th human because of the color of my skin and dismayed at being declared once again 3/5th human because of how I feel.

As angry as I am by what most people call latent, but I call obvious racism within the GLBT community, laid bare at the recent unrest at some Prop 8 protests in West Hollywood and beyond, I refuse to be told by the ignorant on either side that I must choose my primary identity.  I am not a cereal box to reel off the percentages of my character, followed by some arbitrary recommended daily allowance.

I am black and gay and a myriad of other identities, inextricably fused.  Like the identities of all people, sophisticated, nuanced...gestalt by definition.  I can no more chose who I am intrinsically, than change any one part and I am tired of having to concede, compromise and apologize for it with all the latent bigotry and legal challenges and concessions that chip away at my humanity.

I am tired of people not learning from history...America not learning from the Empire building, country enslaving, rank stupidity that 'highlights' much of Britain's distant and more recent past, for example.

I am tired of minorities sparring with each other for title of 'top of the bottom of the heap;' watching us metaphorically bare our backs to decide whose wounds are deepest, most egregious and most meaningful, then, given the slightest reprieve - the slightest elevation - swooping to wield the whip we tasted so recently and for so long, when wronged turning immediately on our fellow oppressed.

So many of us have begged, hoped and prayed for change, but the anti-gay Propositions and the racist back biting that has followed are just more of the same.

And as you read this, your indignation rising, like the bile in my throat, don't let anyone dare cite God in their bigotry - let's at least force people to be brave enough to stand on their own prejudice.  The beginning of the American story is the premise of not having to live one's life by the rules of another's belief system.

For those who voted for legalized prejudice, let me be clear: God is not your personal henchman - some ultimate, indisputable authority to an empty argument based more in a 'yuck factor' than Leviticus.  I do not believe God is the ugly, crude, unsophisticated thug these people make him out to be when they smile, saccharin sweet, as they "love the sinner, but hate the sin" then raise a noble arm to strike again.

There is a reason Thomas Jefferson declared that the majority should not decide the rights of the minority.  He knew that the mob mentality and mindless hubris of the majority is as intoxicating as it is irreproachable.  Empathy is consumed by it; fairness and logic crushed underfoot.  In it's wake, a blindly justified, unequivocal status quo.

I have spent years charting this myopic path with shaken head.  In the NBA, as players and hangers-on adorned with 'What Would Jesus Do' bracelets talked proudly about the three women they slept with last night, none of whom were their wives; then in the same breath condemned homosexuality as first "nasty," then, with reverence, "a sin" to make sure God had their back.

In a moment of almost unbelievable triumph in the general election, never have I seen a more perfect example of a Pyrrhic victory forged through the various anti-gay propositions that passed in parallel.  In that 'moral' victory against the rights of fellow citizens, we have forever embedded a caveat in equality*.  With Prop 8 in California especially, the idea that rights once achieved can be easily undone makes all our freedoms*, all our hopes* and all our progress* now come replete with asterisks.

I hope those who voted so easily against GLBT equality* and those who screamed 'Nigger' in protest of their own oppression, rest easy in that knowledge they all worked to undermined all our freedoms.*

*Subject to change or revocation by whim, ignorance, cruelty, political expediency or just surge of public opinion.