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Mental Health Services
“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
These wise words resonate with me on so many levels. There are those who breed hate and those who become the target of such hate. How does one tolerate the experience of being hated for some innate trait or characteristic? More specifically, how do LGBT individuals cope with their experience of belonging to a frequently vilified group?
The distortions Dr. King described above are not simply the perverse workings of bigotry—they are also the twisted manifestations of internalized homophobia. It causes closeted individuals to wince at expressions of same-sex love. It produces self-loathing politicians and clergy who work against our causes yet engage in the same behaviors they publicly denounce. In short, it validates the very hate that is at the heart of the problem.
Minorities experience stress whenever they are confronted by prejudice. This is sometimes referred to as “minority stress,” resulting from the characterization of various categories of people as flawed or inferior. This engenders feelings of isolation and helplessness. Such stress can increase the onset of depression, anxiety and substance abuse. One’s vulnerability to minority stress is magnified when an LGBT individual is a member of more than one ostracized group. This is a very real dilemma for the African American men and women we work with every day here in the Mental Health Program.
In considering programming to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday this year, I was struck by a review of a biography on Bayard Rustin, the openly gay adviser to Dr. King. Critic Kai Wright wrote that Rustin’s homosexuality made him “an odd sort of exile—often positioned at the civil rights movement’s center but never having the security to call it home. Rustin could not bring himself to relinquish his membership in the black community’s political circles—after all, where was there for him to go? His homosexuality was readily accepted as long as that required only a passive tolerance. Trouble arose only when Rustin’s colleagues were forced to choose between defending him and tossing him aside. And that’s a second-class membership that remains all too familiar to black queers today.” This sense of identity conflict, of being deeply connected to yet somehow divorced from one’s racial group, is something my African American clients do not allow me to forget.
Social and political pressures often force persons of color to view identity in a hierarchical manner that ultimately involves choices about their primary affiliation. However, Beverly Greene, PhD, reminds us that “because African American lesbian and bisexual women have multiple identities, we cannot make arbitrary assumptions about which of those identities is most salient to a given individual. Moreover, we cannot even assume that one identity is ever more important than the others. Furthermore, identities shift in salience depending on the social context a woman is in at any given time and during different developmental periods of her life.”
In January 2006, Rev. Al Sharpton blasted black churches for perpetuating stigma against LGBT African Americans. “There is latent homophobia in our community,” said Sharpton, who sees this as a critical factor in the alarming number of new HIV/AIDS cases in the African American community. Phil Wilson, the executive director of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute, believes a lack of discussion about the disease and its transmission in faith-based organizations, combined with a growing belief in the black community that homosexuality is wrong, has led many LGBT African Americans to disguise their sexuality for fear of being turned out of their churches. It should come as no surprise that in a 1999 study of 238 African American men who have sex with men, 62% reported attending church services at least weekly and 68% are involved in church or religious activities. Small wonder, then, that some members of our community experience intense conflict and self-hatred in the very place one would expect support, acceptance and encouragement.
But no one should be fooled and think that the black community holds some sort of patent on homophobia. Anti-gay sentiment is alive and well across our land, as evidenced by the recent rash of gay marriage bans and other political setbacks for LGBT individuals. A far more troubling reality is the presence of racism in our historically white-dominated gay community.
San Francisco-based activist Calvin Gipson gave painful expression to this reality recently when he declared: “I did not expect that I would be in such a strong battle of fighting against discrimination within the LGBT community. It feels no different than the struggles I experienced in the Deep South. There is something wrong when we as an oppressed people in the LGBT community are oppressing our own that are also fighting in the struggle of equality and freedom.”
So important is this issue that the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) organized its 2002 Creating Change Conference entirely around the establishment of an anti-racist platform. NGLTF Executive Director Lorri L. Jean understood that our progress depended on mending a long-standing rift between activists of color and white activists: “Institutionalized racism is one of the most significant factors hindering our success as a movement and if we were unified as a community, we could better pursue and achieve our goals.”
As I reflect on this holiday and Dr. King’s legacy, I rededicate myself to the challenge of building a safe and inclusive setting for both clients and staff. The Mental Health Program has a long way to go in recruiting a diverse team that truly reflects the various populations we serve. However, I am committed to attracting more providers of color, more women, more transgender individuals and more persons with disabilities. If you share my commitment, I invite you to help me in this endeavor and share your talents or rally others who will enrich our already strong base of clinicians through their presence. And I want more than mere tokenism. I am seeking multiple representations across a wide spectrum of diversity.
I write all of this as a white male who can only strive to be cognizant of the power and privilege bestowed upon me simply by virtue of my status. I acknowledge that it is more than a little presumptuous of me to speak for and about the African American experience. It is a separate journey from the one I know as a gay person. However, as LGBT individuals we share a common humanity that unites us in our quest for equality.
No less a figure than Coretta Scott King once declared: “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
Let us all endeavor to make room at the late Mrs. King’s metaphorical table for every member of our community. But let us also continue Dr. King’s efforts to not only integrate society but all the diverse, complex and ultimately enriching aspects of our individual selves.
Jason T. McVicker, LCSW, RDDP
Director of Mental Health Services
Center on Halsted
Horizons Youth Program
The Meaning of King Today
The anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth offers us an opportunity to explore the ongoing struggle for civil rights for all people. Although many have argued that King was and would be intolerant of homosexuality, most King biographers agree that he never spoke publicly about the issue. Furthermore, King’s longtime friendship with Bayard Rustin, the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington and an openly gay man, underscores his tolerance for all people.
We are a nation that continues to be torn by racial hatred, violence against LGBT people, and increasing gaps between the rich and the poor, and so King’s message of resistance and activism must continue to be taught and practiced. This is especially true for the most vulnerable among us—our young people. How would King respond to the outrageous number of LGBT youth who are homeless? What would he say to those adults who stand by while our LGBT students are physically and verbally attacked in the classrooms and corridors of our schools? What words of comfort would he offer to our LGBT youth who contemplate suicide as a viable option or who attempt to numb their pain of rejection with drugs and alcohol?
And what would Dr. King say to the LGBT community regarding its responsibility to end racism within its own ranks? It is too easy to point at episodes of violence against LGBT people in the African American community—such as the incident on the south side of Chicago over new year’s—and ignore the ongoing complacency of white LGBT people regarding the status quo. Perhaps the most profound gift we could offer our young people would be a model of community that truly recognizes the multiple layers of discrimination and takes on responsibility to dismantle it all. Please join us in renewing our commitment to King’s message: “Justice for All.”
Janine Denomme
Horizons Youth Program Director
Center on Halsted
Anti-Violence Project
Six gay men were injured in a recent shooting in Chicago at a party held at what was identified as “the Gay House.” Neighbors interviewed by media validated the tragic incident as something the residents should have expected. Others commented that “gays don’t belong here, and they should all move to the suburbs.” Concerned community members asked, “Is this a hate crime?”
The Anti-Violence Project will record this incident as hate violence. Clarence N. Wood, chairman of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, commented in a press release: “Violence against a person for any reason—because of their race, gender, sexual orientation or other form of difference—is inexcusable and cannot be condoned. The men who were shot are human beings. They could have been our brothers, cousins, uncles or friends. They are part of our community. They deserve support and concern like everyone else.”
At the Anti-Violence Project, we work from an anti-oppression model. AVP works to change public attitudes that lead to violence against or within LGBT communities. Violence is any act or situation where a person or a group harms others, denies them the right to be who they are, or hurts their quality of life. Violence can be direct (assault or harassment), or indirect (through discrimination), but any kind of violence can lead to feelings of helplessness or oppression. AVP works with the community to organize and speak out against prejudice and bigotry, insisting on equal rights for LGBT communities.
In memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
"Don't allow anybody to pull you so low as to make you hate them. Don't allow anybody to cause you to lose your self-respect to the point that you do not struggle for justice—how ever young you are. You have a responsibility to seek to make your nation a better nation in which to live. You have a responsibility to seek to make life better for everybody. And so you must be involved in the struggle for freedom and justice."
"What's Your Life's Blueprint"
Address by Martin Luther King, Jr. to students of Philadelphia’s Barrett High School
Laura Velazquez
AVP Manager
Center on Halsted
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