Leaderboard

Pioneer1 I don't know where to begin, but I am only going to deal with some aspects of your argument, because I know that your mindset is so different from mine that there is no way we can do anything but agree to disagree. I see people as individuals and don't lump them into rigid groups. As a lifelong outsider, I am most interested in people who are different from me. Yes, there is usually some intersection of commonality, but I learn most from people who look at life through a different lens. As such, I tend to have friends who are also outsiders in some way. They have always been much more intriguing to me than people who spout some version of the party line. I have a hard time breathing freely around them. First, I want to say thank you for that humane paragraph about the death of my brotherfriend. You looked at him as an individual, not as an abstraction or part of a group that you have stereotyped. I'll begin at the end. I am truly disturbed by the Great Yam's policies which are gutting our social safety net and destroying what is left of the planet. But no, I am not "disturbed or repulsed" by people--whose Creator made them who they are--being who they are. I will not quote bible and verse to you because I am a spiritual person, not a religious one. But prostitutes were included in the group of people that Jesus gathered around him. "Love thy neighbor" includes the neighbor who is gay or transvestite. You do give white people a lot of credit and black people very little. Is it not possible for black men and women to decide on their own what they will and will not "condemn"? How do you condemn a person for being who s/he is anyway? It is somewhat amusing that you see the pool of heterosexual black women, assuming that you are restricting yourself to black women--and I am not saying you should--I believe that people are free to love whomever they love--as all being available to you. Black Lesbians are not the only black women who would not be available to you. Some would not see you as their type. Some don't speak your language or languages, if you are multilingual. And on and on. At any rate, unless you are looking for a harem, you are only looking for one woman. I am sure that the pool is not so depleted by the less than 10% of black women who are gay--I know that in most cultures 10% of the people are gay, but don't know the breakdown by gender or race--that would stop you from finding a life partner, if that's what you want. As far as the birth rate goes, being gay does not stop you from having children if you want them. Gays can have children either through adoption, with the help of a surrogate, or the children they had when they thought you were heterosexual. I know gay people who have children and grandchildren. Two black gay men I know, one of whom is another brotherfriend, adopted two little boys whose mother, a single parent, died. She was a relative of one of the partners. They raised those two boys--both heterosexuals, by the way--and now they are grandparents since one of the young men has a son. Not all heterosexual black women want children, can have children, or would make good parents. So the birth rate is not threatened by people being gay. As for fighting about this. I don't see anybody fighting about this except the people doing the condemning. It is not anything I see worth fighting about. Read the 19th century racists' moral justifications for slavery, read the 21st century racists' moral justifications for their bigotry. Just replace black people with homosexual and your argument is no different. As for staying neutral about black male and female gays, transvestites, bisexuals and those who are questioning, that would be a betrayal of my brotherfriend. He would stand up for me and I will proudly stand up for him. If they come for you in the morning...they will come for me in the afternoon. I feel protective of all outsiders because I am one myself. As I said, we will have to agree to disagree. But I am glad we are doing it civilly.

Christmas is about sales. There's very little Christ in it .

I don't understand heterosexual males or females who are so upset about males or females who are gay. What difference does it make to you who someone loves? Also, how does a black person not see that condemnation of gays involves the same dynamic patterns as racism? It never made sense to me. My brotherfriend, Alan, is gone now, but I miss him every day. He would have been another male in our son's life-- joining my life partner, my life partner's brother, and another gay brotherfriend--who was a sterling example of a kind, loving, intelligent African American man. Alan, a gay black man, was a director/actor/writer who was in my life for a few brief years. He encouraged me to collaborate with him on writing a play based on Ida B. Wells's autobiography. We had both read it as part of a black book club, focusing on reading books about African American History, that we had co-founded. Alan had given me comments on an early draft and was about to start writing his revisions when he contracted AIDS. He was in the first group of people to get mowed down by this disease in the '80s. He died on Christmas day at the age of 36. I stopped working on the play as I grieved his death, but I received the message that I must get back to work and finish the play. Twenty-three drafts later, I did that and dedicated the play to him. "In Pursuit of Justice: A One-Woman Play about Ida B. Wells," ultimately won four AUDELCO awards. My life was enriched by knowing Alan and having him as a friend.

Puleeze. The reason why i challenge so much of what Pioneer's says is that he and i have a different world view. I never have to work at disagreeing with him, - it kinda comes natural. i am probably old enough to be his mother and it always amazes me as to how set in his ways he is when it comes to his conclusions about blackness. Take our different views on homosexuality. i grew up during the '40s and '50s. My small, midwestern home town, a suburb of Chicago, was the location of a small ghetto island surrounded by a sea of white people, many of whom i went to school with. Growing up here, there were always males around - choir directors, hair dressers, slick haired guys who powdered their faces and gossiped - guys we called "sissies". They were a part of my community and weren't bad people. We just accepted them, just like we accepted people with low intelligence, calling them "not quite bright", and the sneakin-around-cheats who were "playin' on" their spouses", and the expectant couples, who "had to get married", and the the frequent imbibers who we called, "liquor heads". When i went away to the state university, i encountered a cross section of blacks from villages, towns, and cities located all over Illinois, everyone bringing their ways and customs and accents, all of us congealing into a group where blackness was our common denominator, where huddled together, interacting and learning about each other, we existed amidst a large white student body. As i grew older, i encountered a wide variety of black and white folks during a very pivotal and volatile period in American history when there was plenty to observe. To me, this explains why, in the present, when i interact with Pioneer our interpretations and impressions of black life don't jibe. Plus, our interests are also different. I am not Afro-centric. And he is not into meta-physical spirituality, or the thoughts and disciplines of "white" philosophers . My black experience apparently shaped a point of view different from his. And contrary to how he portrays himself, Pioneer rarely agrees with me. i am not arguing by myself. BTW, i found myself immediately disagreeing with his just-made remarks on another post about the sex habits of Millennials. My observation are that they are definitely not chaste prudes. They are who originated the "hookin' up" practice, a phrase used to describe one night stands. And smart phones are their favorite venue for exchanging nude pictures.

I have a feeling many celebrate Kwanzaa but since it's not commercialized we don't hear a lot. For that reason alone I celebrate it by honoring it with my thoughts and words. I did a separate blog post for each day of Kwanzaa. It put me in a positive community-focused frame of mind to start off the year. I did the original post on my melhopkins.com website but I also copied and paste everything to theleadstory.org. Imani: Golden Rule Kuumba : The Chosen Ones Nia: Reasons Ujamaa: Until the Lion Learns Ujima: Yes We Can Kujichagulia Goal Minds build Gold Mines Umoja No Man's Land