I sent a link to this blog post to a gay friend — a parent, blogger, and Democrat who supported Obama. In the post, Radley Balko notes that black voters were in favor of a ban on gay marriage at significantly higher rates than were other ethnic groups. In California, the “Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage actually failed among white voters, 51-49. It was the 70 percent support from black voters that put the measure over the top.”
Gay people overwhelmingly vote Democratic and it is fair to assume that many were rooting for and some were even actively working to encourage high black voter turnout, so Obama would be elected and the Republican would not, (partly) because of the view that many gay people have that the Democrats are their best hope for legalized gay marriage. Yet that high black voter turnout is the reason that in California gay people cannot marry. It also didn’t help their cause in other states. But something troubles me aside from the irony that Balko discusses.
It is this response from my friend: “I was contemplating writing a blog very similar to this but was worried I would come off as racist, so I shelved it. This statistic is infuriating.”
We will soon have a black President. If you thought that this would make for better race relations and a more open dialogue among ethnic groups, consider people like my friend, who, despite being gay and being parents and having voted for Obama, are too worried about being perceived as racist to risk discussing something that is not only infuriating but has real consequences in their lives.
People have to get over this fear of being labeled racist, especially now.
Yes, we will soon have a black President, and he won a lot of electoral votes. But fifty-five million Americans voted against him. Many don’t share his views. Even the people who voted for him are going to disagree with him from time to time. There can’t be any walking on eggshells, any political correctness, any fear that dissent will get you labeled racist. You can’t be afraid to criticize a politician or fellow citizens, whatever group they belong to.
We all must be free to speak our minds. We must refuse to be paralyzed by political correctness and the imagined possibility of accusations of racism, which perhaps were not going to come at all. We must refuse to be cowed if those accusations do come. And we, all of us — black, white, Latino, other, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, libertarian — must leap to the defense of anyone who is falsely accused of racism.
Otherwise we’ll have a President — even if he’s the one you voted for — who can do whatever he wants, with the opposition too frightened to speak up. And then he’s not just a President any longer, is he?
Tags: his & hers, race & culture
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