In the postscript to the piece posted here last Thursday, I noted how the rights of LGBT people have been advancing as the rights of black people, Latinos, members of other racial groups and women have been either lagging or have gone into reverse. I noted that could well be because the media representation of LGBT people and, so the idea of us that most people carry in their heads is of white, middle-to upper class, white collar types, or, really, stereotypes, and so we have benefited from the racism of the media in some ways. I pointed out that other identities of white people who have been the subject of even grinding discrimination in the past have also benefited from the racism that is rampant in our media elites and ruling class.
But the particular facts of our identity as LGBT people carries its own advantage. The fact is that no member of the elite, the white, wealthy elite who really run the media and through that have an influence on the thinking of an effective majority of Americans, isn't related to someone who carries the LGBT identity. No family in the country, in its extended if not nuclear configuration is without lesbians, gay men, bisexuals or transsexuals. That has been made public sometimes by outing, sometimes by self-outing in even some of our most corrupt Republican-fascist political families as they have used hatred and fear of us for their political and financial gain. It is as true for the members of the media who have carried the poison of such political and financial elites. And the same can be said of those in other walks of life, the fundamentalist clergy and ersatz religious figures who do the same.
The extent to which the advancement of LGBT rights has benefited from our close familial relations with those who would deny us our rights is important to consider because it can account for why racial groups and other groups who are not in the families of those elite oligarchs have been subjected to hate campaigns in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The almost exact parallel lines going up and down in terms or rights form at the same period. What should have happened is that all of us should have gained in equality when that's not the case.
Another telling thing to consider is that the rights of women have also suffered in the same period and, so as to show that every group that has been oppressed has to work against its own particular dynamics, no family is male only. In that case economic class become even more relevant to what is happening. Look at the women who are in the media, especially the alleged news media. I'm old enough to remember when the only on-air role for women in news reporting was the two or three minutes Nancy Dickerson had around 3:00 on CBS. The white women on CNN, FOX, MSNBC and the broadcast networks have been the real beneficiaries of the same affirmative action laws which cover them, even as their networks and shows have promoted politicians who have attacked affirmative action for black people and members of other minority groups, and even white women lower in economic class to them. I'm sure some of the women in the media and in politics know that better than I could. I'm sure Nancy Dickerson realized that it was her social and economic class that allowed her to pioneer the role of women on TV as much as her abilities and work ethic, many women who were as intelligent and hard working never got the chance she did. Though I am just as sure that the women who work at CNN and FOX could care less about that or they wouldn't work for those organizations.
There is a class and a racial divide among women and among LGBT people which divides us and is used to weaken any attempt by us to rise as a group. The divide between black feminists and white feminists was a topic of serious consideration and discussion among feminists in the early 1970s and persists even today. It is a tribute to feminists that they confronted that to an extent that I don't remember ever even being discussed among gay men. But the issues of race and economic class which has weakened our attempts at equality won't be suppressed forever, anything which weakens us as a group is a potential opportunity for our enemies. And, more importantly, it's a matter of morality, a matter of the kind of people we aspire to be. I don't think that divide is surmountable without economic justice, which means, in the end, an end to the raging disparity of incomes among the rich, the middle class and the poor. Without that and the removal of class privilege full equality will never be achieved.
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