“There Is No Caveat Or Asterisk On The Phrase “Black Lives Matter.”

“For me, when thinking about comparing the plight of the LGBT community with that of Black people in America, I am unable to separate the fact that there are, and have been Black people in America who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender.

To me, looking at people in the LGBT community as being entirely separate in that comparison excludes the experiences of people of color in that community who have to learn to survive with racism, and deal with homophobia and other effects of heterosexism that can come from people who are white, and institutions run by people who are white, as well as from other people of color within their own communities.”

—From my note:  Playing Oppression Olympics Gets Us Nowhere On the Road to Equity, October 29, 2012

Here’s a quote I love from an article entitled, “Why You Can’t Be Pro-Black and Homophobic At The Same Time”.

“There is no caveat or asterisk on the phrase “black lives matter.” All black lives matter, not just the ones you are comfortable with.

You cannot be pro-black if you oppress black people. And, more importantly, you cannot love all black people if you oppress black people. You do not mean “black lives matter” if you protest when an unarmed straight black man is killed by the police because they are black, but don’t care about the the many transgender black women who have been murdered this year because they were trans.”

“If we are to liberate black people as a whole, then we must combat all forms of discrimination against black people, including anti-LGBT discrimination and that which we inflict upon them from within our own communities. The struggle must be multilayered, just like the identities of black people. Every chain must be broken.”

Every chain.

Ubuntu,

From Aspiring Humanitarian, Relando Thompkins-Jones, MSW, LLMSW

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