The Endless Game Between Homophobes and Assimilationist Gays

By Clarence Patton, Movement Vision Lab. Posted January 26, 2008.

Back in the late '80s and early '90s, when I was just a baby activist in college, there was ongoing tension between two sects of "The Gays": those of us who felt it was important to be accepted given -- or even because of -- our differences and those who believed that it was important to emphasize the idea that we are just like straight people, with just a smidge of difference, and should be accepted despite our differences. In essence, the debate was between the "Queers" and the "Assimilationists." I was part of the first group. At one point, the tension between the two groups reached such a crescendo that the Queers copied images from lesbian and gay porn, bordered it with lines from the Declaration of Independence and wheat-pasted it all over campus with the tag line: We are not just like you. The Assimilationists were both incensed and mortified. We Queers were just tickled ...

As the LGBTQQI-rights agenda has shifted in recent years to closely mirror the assimilationist viewpoint, moving away from demanding "liberation" to a more pragmatic and achievable agenda aimed at political and social rights,. Is it possible that we have lost sight of a basic truth of our marginalization?

Historically, the marginalization of many communities in our country's history has been rooted in or justified by the need to maintain certain normative and oppressive sexual power structures.

For instance, the rationale among many for the subjugation of African-Americans after emancipation was to keep white women safe from the danger of black men. While most Americans have an idea that the nation has a history of lynching -- though likely no idea of the extent of lynchings, nor how far into the late 20th century they reached -- many are unaware that castration was often as much a part of lynching as the noose, a newly resonant image given events in Jena, La., at Columbia University and elsewhere recently. Every black man until recent decades knew not to look at white women for fear of being beaten or lynched and made an example of like Emmett Till. Lest he suffer the consequences, my own maternal grandfather left his home in Alabama for Chicago at age 12 after being accused of "looking wrong at a white woman."

Of course, the postslavery narrative of hysteria around black sexuality followed the antebellum/slavery history of white male subjugation and rape of black women (and by extension the emasculation of black men) contained its own schizophrenia around white and black sexuality. See: Strom Thurmond and others. Diane Roberts' book The Myth of Aunt Jemima does an excellent job of outlining the split personality way in which whites -- abolitionists and apologists alike -- reacted to and used black sexuality to their own ends.

By the 1960s, changes were on the horizon. Mainstream messaging and overt talk about the fear of sex between black boys/men and white girls/women went on the down-low. Instead, we developed new wink-and-nod codes to signify the same idea. There was the need to maintain "separateness" -- a drive that reached its crescendo around the unthinkable idea of black boys and white girls in school together. (Of course, no one was ever concerned about white boys and black girls together; see Strom Thurman and others.). There was the lack of integration on teen dance shows and at sock hops -- John Waters has managed to make a movie, a musical and the same movie again about this. By the 1980s this shorthand was so sophisticated that all Ronald Reagan had to do was go to Philadelphia, Miss., and declare that he was in favor of "states' rights." By the 1990s, Papa Bush had only to invoke Willie Horton. Whatever was said out loud, the subtext was always fear of black male sexuality.

See more stories tagged with: gay shame, assimilation, glbt, glbtq, glbtqqi, homophobia

Clarence Patton is the acting executive director of the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project.

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