Oppressive structures
Okay, it's funny how often a comment I make at
pecunium 's blog turns into an actual post on my own...
Anyone who's been following the whole post-Prop-8 thing is probably aware of the huge blame game being passed around on a lot of levels, one dimension of which has to do with the black and Latino vote being overwhelmingly (say some...others say 70%-30%) in favor of passing it, and the whole "If all these people hadn't come out to vote for Obama, Prop 8 would most likely have failed and isn't it ironic" (dontcha think) kind of thing.
I'm not even going there; I'm not going to begin to address that, basically because I don't know enough. But the question of why at the very least there seems to be much less activism in the black and Latino communities regarding LGBT rights and discrimination is an interesting one.
My own take on it, oversimplified though this might be: IMO, any oppressed group has a limited ability to focus on more than one oppression at a time. Black and Latino communities are still struggling with strong racial oppression. Anglo-european communities, without other obvious oppressive structures, had the opportunity to settle down and deal seriously with gender inequality--there's a lot of deeply entrenched gender oppression (speaking in gross generalities, I know, don't shoot me!!!) in much of the Latino and AfAm communities, and I believe it goes largely unnoticed because the community as a whole is fighting the oppression AGAINST the community, and they simply don't have the resources to all-out deal with other layers of oppression going on within.
Back to the Anglo-European groups...after a fairly chunk of energy spent in the Catholics vs. Protestants wars (notice how forgotten those are?), we started dealing with gender inequality--it's not solved, but it's in retreat at least for the moment--so now we have the resources (inner as well as outer) to address LGBT discrimination, and are of course making a giant whoop-la out of it, because we CAN. (And should--don't get me wrong there! Let's keep working on the gender stuff while we're at it too, hmm? okay?) Latino and African-American communities just haven't gotten there yet; the oppression against their races as a whole are there, the oppression against women has barely been scratched, and there's the internal "culture of origin" stuff too, Mexicanos vs. Puertoriquenos vs. Salvadorans etc, African-Americans vs. Africans, and so forth. How much can a single community hope to address at any one time?
Hmm, this is the first time I've articulated this idea. Am I talking out of my nether orifice, or does this make a small amount of sense?
donning flame-retardant suit,
Jem