Sulaimon Giwa
Contributor
Canadian news media have provided heart-wrenching accounts of the string of suicides and homophobia-fuelled violence that recently occurred in the United States. The coverage identified the deep-seated hatred and violence to which lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-gender and queer people (LGBTQ) are subjected on a daily basis, just for being who they are.
The latest incident, in which two male teenagers and a 30-year-old man were brutally tortured by members of the Latin King Goonies gang, occurred in the predominantly Hispanic Morris Heights section of the Bronx, New York.
Only a week earlier, Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers student, leapt to his death from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate posted a live video of him being intimate with another male.
Considerable work needs to be done to address the bullying, hate crimes, harassment and suicide of LGBTQ people everywhere.
Advancements in legal rights alone are insufficient if the hearts and minds of those who wish us harm remain closed to our existence as human beings worthy of respect, love and dignity.
I was heartened by the CBC’s recent coverage of the U.S. anti-gay attacks and LGBTQ suicides on The National. Three members of the LGBTQ community, all white, were invited to appear on the show to give their perspective. They said the anti-gay bullying, harassment and suicide evident south of the border is present in Canada as well, but that challenges facing LGBTQ people, such as youth suicide, do not always receive the level of national attention they deserve. In this respect, Canada has much to learn from the United States.
As I watched and listened to the panel members speak, I was disheartened by the omission of race in their discussion. We know that the victims of the New York City incident belonged to a visible minority group, but this fact was not mentioned by any of the panel members.
The struggle and challenges faced by LGBTQ people of colour were not reflected except for a very brief reference to an Iranian immigrant whose family might not approve of his or her sexual orientation.
Why was the panel silent on the topic? Did they think that the anti- gay attacks somehow confirmed a prejudice of racial minority groups against their non-heterosexual members? They did not seem to be saying that. Rather, in my opinion, the decision not to address race fits the social and political agenda of the dominant white LGBTQ community.
Too often, LGBTQ issues as they pertain to people of colour are disregarded in favour of a monolithic, “community-wide” approach, a euphemism for white-only issues. But, as research has shown, the experiences of LGBTQ people of colour are qualitatively different from those of the dominant, white racial group.
The white-dominated LGBTQ community wants to present a unified front. Everyone is supposed to be the same and everyone is supposed to be treated equally, but as many non-whites in the LGBTQ community know, this idea of a unified, welcoming community is more of a utopia than a reality. Whites who are brave enough to admit it know this too.
Educators, social workers, politicians and LGBTQ organizations cannot effectively address the anti- gay violence, bullying and related intolerance experienced by LGBTQ people of colour without understanding how race works with other identity matrices to compound this experience.
Watching the three white guest speakers on The National left me with the impression that race does not matter.
In LGBTQ communities, race functions to render invisible the lived experiences of LGBTQ people of colour, silencing and marginalizing LGBTQ racial minorities while privileging the status quo. The National’s presentation reinforced this perception. It seemed to promote the view that to be LGBTQ is to be white.
LGBTQ people of colour are working to change this long-held perception because of the potential for such a narrative to inadvertently contribute to the violence perpetrated against them. Failing to mention race on this show could feed into, for example, a black nationalist discourse which, according to one author, perceives black men who engage in same-sex practices as “diseased, race traitors, femin- ine and sick.”
This kind of thinking creates conditions for violence.
If we are truly to understand the experiences of LGBTQ people of colour, we need to move away from a colour-blind approach and consider how race and other cultural identities factor into the equation.
It is unfortunate that LGBTQ people of colour were not given the opportunity to contribute to the CBC dialogue. In the future, I would hope The National would take care to reflect the diversity of the LGBTQ community in those it invites to its show, in order to achieve a comprehensive, balanced perspective on critical matters facing the community.
