The weekly has a regular column by a black man named Anthony Rucker. This week, under the heading, “Nobody Wins In The Oppression Olympics”, he writes about Dov Hikind, who says a Holocaust memorial in Brooklyn should not recognize non-Jewish victims. Rucker’s analysis, and how this story relates to discrimination in other areas, is very interesting.

Issues of Inside Out can only be viewed as PDFs. Here’s the link to the most recent issue:
http://insideoutnashville.com/assets/issues/iOut6-22.pdf

I have LGBT friends who are white Southern, black Northern, white Northern, Jamaican, Russian, and Hispanic. It’s amazing how in all our different cultures, we’ve all been treated like crap at one point or another in the name of “cultural authenticity.” (Okay, it’s more often stated as “you’re shaming your family” or “we don’t *do* that.”) Queerness spans the cultures, and so does homophobia.

Rita Mae Brown had a wonderful bit in her wonderful book “Rubyfruit Jungle” where her white lesbian protagonist, Molly Bolt, temporarily sleeps in a car along with a black gay man. They are both throwaways in their late teens. Molly’s friend observes, “White people don’t want their queers, black people don’t want their queers, I don’t even think the Chinese want their queers.”

I think that some of us may be better equipped to reach certain groups than others. I think it is *very* important for white LGBTs to avoid racism or xenophobia when we have an issue with homophobic acts by people who are black or foreign. But mostly, I think everyone has good and bad in them, in different places and amounts.