If you're an African American in this country you've got no business whatsoever supporting anyone and any policy that discriminates against another person because of their gender, religion, sexual orientation, or economic class for those who think along these lines share the identical mindset of those who felt that it was okay for people who look like you to have once been held as slaves, segregated, denied the right to vote, and lynched. To laugh along with those who make sexist & homophobic jokes is to laugh along with those same individuals who behind your back will call you the "n" word, make racist stereotypical "jokes" about black people having nappy hair, big feet, and flapping lips.
You people of color who laugh along with your so called "white" friends who mock people who are gay & female may think they are laughing with you but in truth they are laughing at you for friend or not these people think as little of you as of those you mutually mock. Demeaning a person because of their sexual orientation, gender, economic status, or religious beliefs is no more a laughing matter than mocking & demeaning someone because of the color of their skin.
Such attitudes are all cut from the same dehumanizing, bigoted, and cruel cloth of intolerance and we people of color in these United States, who ourselves have long been the victims of the worst kinds of intolerance imaginable, should ourselves be among the most intolerant of all forms of discrimination for as I said before we have been discriminated ourselves and therefore know as well as anyone what discrimination feels like and how wrong it is.
So when I hear people of color make homophobic references about people they don't like, I don't find these kind of jokes funny because I don't find anything wrong with a person being into members of their own sex. It's none of my business and I therefore I find it morally repugnant for someone to demean someone else because of who they are; be they of a different sexual orientation, gender, religion, or economic class. It's just not right that's all.
So I would like to see a day when every African American, before demeaning a person because of their sexual orientation, gender, religion, and economic class, to first look in the mirror and after taking a long hard look at themselves, take a moment to examine to examine their own conscience. I would like to know how they as a black person in these United States, knowing how black people in this country have been treated since before the dawning days of the republic, can honestly say that it is okay for a human being to be discriminated against & mistreated because that person happens to be gay, female, of a different economic class, or follow a different religious Faith or no religion at all. I would like that person to explain to themselves how the universal evil that is discrimination is no longer an evil because at that particular moment it is being applied to someone other than themselves.
As African Americans these are questions we must ask ourselves but more to the point we must recognize that because of our unique place in this country's history we are charged with a special obligation to speak out against discrimination in all its forms. We must be at the forefront of this fight and use our own personal history here in this country as an example of how wrong it is to discriminate; of how morally bankrupt it is to pass arbitrary judgment on another human being for any reason other than the content of their character.
This is our duty as black people in these United States and in fulfilling it we will be consecrating the suffering & sacrifices of our own people who suffered the sting of the master's lash, who died by the rope, and who marched, were beaten, and made to perish because they endeavored to make a better nation; not only a better nation for black people but for all people; regardless of who they loved, their gender, their economic class, or religious Faith.
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