Irene Monroe writes:

If you are African American and gay, and fighting alongside your white brothers and sisters for queer civil rights, the notion that “Gay is the new black” is not only absurdly arrogant, it is also dangerously divisive.

In a presumably “post-racial” era with the country’s first African American president-elect, it’s easy for some to assume that race doesn’t matter.

But when critiquing the dominant white gay community’s ongoing efforts to gain marriage equality and its treatment of blacks as their second-class allies in the struggle a reality check happens — both straight and queer African American communities bond together against their strategy for marriage equality.

Why?

Because race does matter!

Case in point: Proposition 8 and blaming the black community for its win at the ballot box.

The Proposition 8 debate has brought much consternation and polarization between white gay community and African Americans.

And with the expectation of a dominantly white Marriage Equality movement pushing forward a single — issue agenda, the movement arrogantly ignores vital ways for coalition — building within black communities, and honorable ways of connecting their struggle to those of African Americans.

But there’s an example that defused the tension in much of the heterosexual African American community when it was publicly arguing that same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue.

In commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia in the June 12, 1967 historic Supreme Court decision that advanced racial and marriage equality in this country, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., marked the anniversary by stating the following: “It is undeniable that the experience of African Americans differs in many important ways from that of gay men and lesbians; among other things, the legacy of slavery and segregation is profound. But differences in historical experiences should not preclude the application of constitutional provisions to gay men and lesbians who are denied the fight to marry the person of their choice.” And in April of 2006, NAACP LDF filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case brought by New York same-sex couples challenging their exclusion from marriage.

But the Marriage Equality movement neither extends its reach beyond its concerns within its community nor outside of it.

How the marriage debate should have been framed — in a way that speaks truth to various queer communities of color and classes — has not been given considerable concern.

And with no public language to adequately articulate the unique embodiment of queer communities of color and classes within the same-sex marriage debate, this has become contentious. The dominant white queer languaging of this debate, at best, muffles the voices of these communities, and, at worst, mutes them. In other words, in leaving out the voices of queer communities of color and classes, the same-sex marriage debate is hijacked by a white upper class queer universality that not only renders these marginalized queer communities invisible, but — as it is presently framed — also renders them speechless.

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