Black allyship for LGBTQ+ rights in the United States

Part 1 of "Questioning tropes about attitudes toward LGBTQ+ in communities of color"

Mar 02, 2024

Those of us who live in countries where the culture of European immigrants hold significant influence may often encounter statements like “Homophobia/transphobia is a problem in [community of non-European descent]” which prompts the questions, “Is anti-LGBTQIA+ bigotry provably a bigger problem in the named group than in all other groups in the same country? If not, then why specifically associate the named group with homophobia/transphobia?”

We are not suggesting that such a statement should never be made under any circumstances. It might be useful in the context of each racial/ethnic community - including white/Euro-[diasporic nationality] communities - having internal conversations about improving conditions for their LGBTQIA+ members.

We want to name that invisible, unnamed “default” against which all other racial and ethnic groups are compared, to question if this “default” is really less homophobic/transphobic than all other groups, as the common framing implies.

What does this “invisibility” of whiteness look like when discussing homophobia and transphobia in the context of Canada and the United States?

Count the number of times that you have read statements like, “It is difficult to be a queer person in a white community” vs the number of times you encountered statements in the media like “It is difficult to be queer person in a [Black/First Nations/Indigenous/Asian/Latine/Pacific Islander] community”, despite many non-European cultures being traditionally more tolerant of queer community members than Western European cultures.

According to Derald Wing Sue, a psychology professor at Columbia University:

“In our society, Whiteness is a default standard; the background of the figure-ground analogy from which all other groups of color are compared, contrasted, and made visible. From this color standard, racial/ethnic minorities are evaluated, judged, and often found to be lacking, inferior, deviant, or abnormal.” [1]

Greg Lewis, a professor of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University, studied the results of 31 surveys and found that while Black Americans expressed disapproval of homosexuality at a higher rate, white Americans supported antigay employment discrimination at a significantly higher rate than Black Americans. Black Americans were “markedly more opposed to antigay employment discrimination.” [2]

Could it be that different cultural groups manifest their homophobia and transphobia in different ways, but due to the invisibility of whiteness, white forms of anti-LGBTQIA+ bigotry aren’t explicitly tagged as “white”?

Lewis concluded that “evidence that blacks are more homophobic than whites is quite limited”.

Voters’ reactions to the antigay Initiative 13 in Seattle showed that Black people and other PoC can be better allies to LGBTQIA+ folk than white people were as a group:

In 1978, two Seattle police officers and their anti-gay supporters introduced Initiative 13 to repeal city ordinances protecting gays and lesbians from housing and employment discrimination. [3] Fortunately, Seattle voters rejected the anti-gay initiative, with the Central District, Seattle’s predominantly Black neighborhood, voting against the anti-gay initiative at a HIGHER rate than any other neighborhood in Seattle.[4] (In 1970, the Central District was about 74% Black, with some parts of the district having up to 36% Asian and Pacific Islander residents.) [5]

Anyway, revisiting the double standards with which homophobia in white communities and homophobia in Black communities are scrutinized, Code Switch’s 2013 podcast episode Crunching The Numbers On Blacks' Views On Gays is worth a listen:

…despite the contention that the NBA is a haven of notoriously antigay black men, the professional hoops universe has been nearly uniformly supportive of [journeyman NBA center Jason] Collins' decision to come out. (It's worth noting that no one has come out in any of the other major pro leagues, either, and it ain't exactly like the NHL is chock-a-block with black players or fans.)

There is a diversity of stories containing nuanced narratives that don’t necessarily lend themselves to easy black-and-white conclusions like “Group A is better than Group B across the board.”

The Black-led NAACP, the oldest and most recognized civil rights organization in the United States, has been part the fight against anti-trans discrimination. In 2017, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed an amicus brief for “Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.”, a key transgender rights case at the U.S. Supreme Court: [6]

“…the arguments offered to defend the discriminatory singling out of G.G. are painfully similar to those that this Court long ago deemed to be insufficient to justify discrimination based on race.”

In 2017, the NAACP also started a national economic boycott against the state of North Carolina in part over North Carolina’s transphobic “bathroom bill”.[7] The same year, Oliver Hill, president of the San Antonio chapter of the NAACP, spoke out against the Texas senate bill that sought to prevent transgender people from using restrooms that match their gender identity, comparing it to his own experience under Jim Crow. [8]

Numerous Black civil rights activists have stood up for LGBT rights:

Byron Rushing, former president of the Museum of African American History, took the lead in sponsoring legislation to end sexual orientation-based discrimination in public schools while he was serving as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. [9] During his 36 years in office, he repeatedly tried to remove antiquated Massachusetts laws targeting LGBTQ+ people.[10]
Coretta Scott King, who won the 2004 Gandhi Peace Prize, repeatedly used her platform to advocate for gay rights, linking the fight for gay rights to the broader civil rights movement.[11]
Ben Jealous, who was NAACP president in 2012, led the NAACP in its formal endorsement of marriage equality for same-sex couples, comparing legal discrimination against gay couples to the legal discrimination that his parents’ interracial marriage was subjected to. The moral weight of the NAACP endorsement helped shift the tide in favor of legislative gains for same-sex couples.[12]
In 2016, when fearmongering about transgender people in bathrooms was widely used for political gain by conservative American politicians [13], Black leaders in the South stood against the hysteria by publicly challenging the legalization of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.[14]

It might be worth asking why when non-white people engage in constructive acts of solidarity with other minoritized communities, their good deeds typically don’t get associated with their racial or ethnic identities in the same way that negative actions by individuals from those same minoritized groups are linked to a group image.

[1] The Invisible Whiteness of Being: Whiteness, White Supremacy, White Privilege, and Racism. (apa.org)

[2] Black-White Differences in Attitudes toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights on JSTOR

[3] Seattle voters reject Initiative 13 and uphold gay and lesbian rights on November 7, 1978. - HistoryLink.org

[4] A brief history of LGBTQ Activism in Seattle - Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project (washington.edu)

[5] How did the Central District become Seattle's historically black neighborhood? - The Evergrey

[6] NAACP LDF’s trans rights brief is a trenchant history lesson. (slate.com)

[7] NAACP calls for boycott of North Carolina over voting, bathroom laws | Reuters

[8] NAACP leaders equate bathroom bill to Jim Crow (ksat.com)

[9] Black History Boston: Byron Rushing | Boston.gov

[10] Massachusetts' archaic anti-LGBTQ+ laws under scrutiny, post-Dobbs - Axios Boston

[11] Coretta's Big Dream: Coretta Scott King on Gay Rights | HuffPost Voices

[12] NAACP President Benjamin Jealous Changed the Lives of LGBT Americans - Human Rights Campaign (hrc.org)