Charges of Racism Continue to Mount Against Gay Community

Talk of discrimination is heating up in the city by the bay. Last week I blogged on allegations that San Francisco’s homosexual community is guilty of racism against blacks. (Story Here.)

Well this past weekend the San Francisco Chronicle ran a piece further expounding on the charges against the advocates of “Tolerance and Diversity”

They are among the most maligned groups in society, but when it comes to discrimination, many say, gays can give as good as they get.

While most of the accusations center around a particular nightclub, this racist sentiment reaches much deeper and is nothing new to San Francisco’s gay community.

"I was told that Harvey Milk would be rolling in his grave if he knew a black man was running San Francisco's gay pride parade. I was told Martin Luther King would be rolling in his grave. I was told that I was not qualified, " said Calvin Gipson, who was president of the parade committee from 1998 to 2000 and on the board of directors for five years. He is the director of human services for Glide Memorial United Methodist Church.

"I have been called 'big, black nigger bitch' while walking on the street in the Castro," said Zwazzi Sowo, a lesbian who has lived in San Francisco for 20 years. "I am 52 years old. Nowhere else in my life have I experienced walking down the street and someone calling me a nigger."

And there is even statistical data and studies to back up this anecdotal evidence of racism against blacks.

A 2002 survey of 2,600 gay black men attending pride celebrations, though unscientific in selection, found that 48 percent of respondents thought racism was a problem among white gays.

That survey was published by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, which in 2004 released the results of a similar survey of 125 mostly gay Asian Americans living on the East Coast. Eighty-two percent of respondents in that sample believed such a problem exists.

A national survey of Latinos will be published later this summer, said Jason Cianciotto, research director for the institute.

Teunis finds evidence of racism in the portrayal of minorities in gay media.

During 2003, the only photographs of nonwhite men published in Out magazine -- a leading gay publication -- were of Latino musicians and black men in advertisements for HIV and AIDS medication, he said.

This creates an interesting dichotomy when one considers how homosexual politicians like California Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) have used black political leaders to forward their own agenda. Instead of pushing legislation that forces Christians to be tolerant of the homosexual lifestyle, he should he should sponsor legislation forcing Gays to be more tolerant of Blacks.

Craig DeLuz

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