Nothing, as in nothing, in American politics moves by 36 points in two months. We are a single-digit-spread nation. 31% of us are Democrats, 29% are Republicans. Obama beat McCain in 2008 by 53% to 46% nationally. We talk a lot about how polarized American politics are, but really, we are frozen in this nasty evil bifurcated state of affairs. The two sides may be getting ever louder about how correct they are, but the two don't actually gain a whit of advantage over one another, and no part of the electorate actually moves.
And then one part of the electorate packs up its bags and trucks off in one direction at a faster speed than anything we've seen anything in the history of, well, ever. The segment in question is the African-American population, and the issue they're suddenly all changing their minds on is gay rights.
Historically, and to me personally this is deeply upsetting, the black community and the gay community have not gotten along terribly well. This has been the last aisle we could not reach across, the last of our fellow minorities we could not wrap our arms around and embrace, the last that would not embrace us. Anti-gay sentiment has always run deep in the African-American community, in no small part thanks to that community's deep-seated religiousness. We can't truly hold this against them. As a community, when they had nothing else, they had their faith. Indeed had the Great Awakening never happened, the spread and crystallization of abolitionism may never have happened, either. It only makes sense that a community so steeped and so both owed by and indebted to its faith would find queers queerly upsetting.
Then there's the modern stereotypes of masculinity in the gay community, which run directly contrary to the perception of what it is to be gay. Never mind for a minute the wrongness of the gay stereotype, nor the pressure on gay men to not live up to it. Just look as far as black male celebrities. There is a loudly heterosexual machismo that radiates from that segment of society, that gives rise to concepts like 'pause', that flaunts its love of women and things traditionally masculine. What if that doesn't apply to the subject in question? What if you're black and don't like women? Worse, what if you're not the dominant or masculine partner? This has been for too long and for too many been a double prison, an exile from exile. Bad enough to be a member of a group visually identified as other, but then to open one's mouth within one's own group and immediately be castigated again?
Nothing we in the gay community have ever said nor done has ever made a dent here. We have never been able to win over the black community to our side. Gay liberation's blatant homage to the African-American civil rights movement has never, at any point in time, won us any quarter with them. It has always seemed that on this we shall routinely lose, and that nothing could ever, ever change this. Until now.
Since President Barack Obama opened his mouth on the subject, Jay Z, Chris Rock, Colin Powell and the NAACP have all come out in favor of gay marriage. And in Maryland, where gay marriage is headed to the polls, the state has gone from favoring gay marriage on an 8% span to favoring on a 20% span - and that's been driven by a swing among black voters of 17% opposed to 19% in favor, a thirty-six point swing in two months. And the only thing that's changed, the one and only thing that's changed, is the president, the man who captivated the African American community by demonstrating that truly in American you really can crash through the glass ceilings as a black man, spoke openly about his journey from opposed to in favor. Now, on top of it, we hear stories like the President of the NAACP talking about how back when interracial marriage was illegal, and he had to speak out that no one, no one should live that nightmare ever again of not being able to marry who they loved.
I'll be the first to admit I didn't see this coming. I saw a big fat nothing coming out of the President's interview on the matter. But now that it's over, now that the cat is out of the bag, could the President have bridged the gap between the LGBTQ and African-American communities? Of all the talk of politicians promising to unite us, did one of them actually do it? The mind boggles.
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