Quote from The Source, by Shay Marie: “During a shoot-around on a road trip before [Jason] Collins signed, reporters asked then-Golden State Warriors Head Coach Mark Jackson his opinion of several big men as possible additions. After someone joked about the signing of former Warriors assistant coach Brian Scalabrine to a 10-day contract, Collins’ name was brought up. Jackson, according to a source close to the team, responded: “Not in my locker room.
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As everyone knows by now, Jason Collins (basketball, Brooklyn Nets) and Michael Sam (football, St Louis Rams) join a small-but-growing brigade of professional sports and entertainment stars, and members of the United States military, who are “coming out” and announcing the fact that they are gay (homosexual if you prefer) to the world — or anyone who will listen.
It’s a triple-fisted drink in Black America, particularly since the general mood and consensus is that President Barack Obama lost quite a few African-American supporters after he announced his support of gay rights and the gay community in general; and since his wife, First Lady Michelle, also patted an openly gay man on the back for being “brave enough” to come out in public with his lifestyle partner.
Some have even said that just because they (the Obama’s) openly supported the gay lifestyle didn’t mean they had to keep driving ‘the knife’ in deeper by applauding it as well.
Let’s take a brief look at the corporate cringing, heaving and sighing that goes on whenever another Black man or woman announces their sexual preferences and lifestyle on the public airwaves:
1 Black people, in general, have never been particularly friendly and open toward the gay community, even though it was always considered something to be overlooked or totally ignored; something that is becoming increasingly hard to do in these trying times.
2 As to the Christian beliefs and principles that some of the churched people say they espouse [as Mark Jackson did], the only way for gays to respond to his comments is to react to them by what can easily be considered “hetero-bashing.” Many Black people will say that everyone is entitled to their opinions on the matter, hetero’s included.
3 The attempt to compare gay rights to civil rights, or to say that “we” so easily go in hard on admitted racists like Donald Sterling and Paula Deen, but allow a “gay-basher” like Mark Jackson to walk away unscathed, is sketchy at best.
There is no reconciliation on earth with gay rights and civil rights.
Gays were not transferred to the west through a “gay diaspora,” enslaved for nearly 400 years, then subjectively economically disenfranchised and racially marginalized for the past 150 years.
It simply is NOT the same type of experience, so using it is just one more stab wound that belittles the struggles of the real civil rights icons and what they truly stood for. Besides, no one ever has to “come out” of the closet of Blackness, for there is no place to hide.
No one has to ‘ask’ in order for others to ‘tell’ that we are Black people.
Also, the “Black civil problem” in America is not one of “agreeing with the lifestyle” of Blackness, it is one of simply being hated for BEING Black and having a certain color of skin and texture of hair, and even certain features that are genetically melaninated and DNA-specific.
Gays can hardly claim that they have been impacted in such a manner that they have learned to hate and spew venom at one another because of the way they have been treated by the whole world; and even if they could make and prove that case, Black people are highly sensitized to this issue and have been for a long time.
It also appears that man-on-man relationships are more frowned upon than woman-on-woman, a prejudicial subsection of the entire matter; but certainly not an all-call for a “civil rights case.”
The comments -be they thoughtful and sensitive or vitriolic and said in haste of anger- all appear to come together into one neatly packaged climactic point: The support of homosexuality, or the “gay lifestyle” takes something solid, eternal and everlasting away from the familial lifestyles of an already historically demeaned and marginalized people who can ill afford any more of these kinds of hits.
Mark Jackson, you’ve got some friends and supporters, a vast majority, amongst your own kind.
If it is bigoted, we all know for a fact that bigotry and prejudice and racism and hatred in America pays off big time – but only if further harms and damages and oppresses Black people and the mothers of our children.
Do YOU.
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