Letters from a Young Radical

I guess the title says it all. First the story is that homophobic blacks are to blame for the passing of prop 8. Now people are saying there's a backlash from the GLBT community of racism. My first reaction to all of this is and has been, "Are you kidding?! Don't you people understand that ALL bigotry is bad?" I mean can you say "hypocrite"? But as will all the rest of the spectacle we've seen during election fever, I'm wondering if these flames aren't perhaps being fanned by the paranoid or the media.

I have to admit that I'm one of the people who flipped over hearing that women who were once Hillary fans were deciding to support Palin. As far as I know, people like this did exist (I read a blog and heard about a fairly large/loud group), but it certainly wasn't everyone, and as my smart friend Carolyn suggested, spreading the idea makes all women look bad.

So I have to wonder, where is all this coming from? I still think it's really backwards that any black person could find themselves voting for the removal of another minority's equality, or that anyone in the GLBT community could find themselves spewing racial slurs. Surely on some level this happens, but perhaps it's not as big as it's being made out to be. The ideas certainly make African Americans and the American GLBT community look BAD, which is GOOD for some people. Who benefits? This is divide and conquer whether we're bringing it upon ourselves or whether it's being passed down to us by the media or some other group. We NEED TO WORK TOGETHER if we're going to liberate ourselves from any kind of oppression. I encourage anyone (including myself) to keep an open mind and attentive ears about this story, and not to denounce all blacks for their betrayal, or all GLBT for their betrayal. At risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist.... "because that's what they want us to do".