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Delving below the surface

Terry Lynn Howcott, M.S.W.

Don't think people in the African American community in Detroit can't see the peculiarity with certain media characters having this affinity, this itch if you will, to concentrate discussions on gay folk. Many of us shrug them off understanding that while they think their verbal pounding substantiates their aversion for us, it really confirms their unswerving fascination with us. They wield this stranglehold of the microphone, deliberately keeping misinformed about us, leaving us perpetually questioning how to just get better understood.
There are several things we might do to redirect our sails and change course: ask more questions about them, of their listeners, and of ourselves. Distill whatever we've learned from being victimized, identify our injuries, heal; and finally, kiss our passivity goodbye and revolutionize our approach.
How could a Mildred Gaddis, for example, have all this stuff to talk about – people eating out of public trash cans, masses taking decrepit public transportation to their workplaces, and Black so-called family-valued Christian Negroes kicking their children out in the streets for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Why this repetitious berating?
To their listeners, who crowned these people royalty in our community? Why don't they engage equivalently well-spoken people in face-to-face disagreement? Does it resonate they might be spoon-feeding one narrow view, while gutting the other? Should Christian right-mindedness suggest because one doesn't concur with a relationship between two adults they ought be prevented equivalent provisions for bereavement, sick time, medical coverage for their loved ones and other discriminations?
Can we be still while talking heads call citizens and pastors (some of whom are only heterosexual on Mon. thru Sat. between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sun.) to stand against our progress? Why do people perceive they advocate for us more vigorously than we will for ourselves? How do we plug in this brilliance, resourcefulness of our community so it influences situations that affect our lives that we might have as relevant a social landscape as in Atlanta or Chicago – in our chocolate splendor?
If we had magic wands, we'd whip em' out and make it so. But, instead we'll heal knowing when someone generates a seemingly gigantic view that's disfigured and controlled – they're behaving unnaturally. When they miss-communicate our intentions to bolster prejudice, they're living feverishly; meaning right around the corner, love and goodness of heart are riding the prevailing winds. There's something "illified" about their misconstruing and vilifying our concerns, shutting off microphones in people's faces who disagree, instructing people on how to live their spirituality, their love lives, and who claim a moral pecking order on top of which they neatly place THEIR OWN NAMES. Be still – feel the breeze against your cheeks from the flapping of those red flags.
We can learn from them, too. They've taught us how not to do it, which may make us smarter than if they'd taught us how. We can promise we'll tell the whole story with integrity and tastefulness. Since we can see delusions leaves people unwell, we can resist equivalently irrational conduct as those who condemn us. We can engage people with an opposing viewpoint; and enlighten people with intelligent discourse.
We can name the aches and pains we've endured at the hands of some of our skin-folk. We've recoiled with being termed, "those people" by Black people. We get noxious hearing someone, who somewhere deep is our sister, suggest she's so life-inexperienced she can't figure how to explain "two Mommies," never minding if we can explain two maladjusted, abusive parents of the opposite sex, so she can learn to explain two loving, adoring Mommies with impeccable values. We're embarrassed that they proudly highlight their limitations, when they could invite others to help them out of their intellectual cobwebs. They're so petrified with their lack of knowledge that they keep achievable furtherance of that knowledge at bay.
So, to you few with the microphones, it hurts that you're so reckless. Your fixation on perpetuating insensitivity is very painful. But, what is bizarre is your unwillingness to access your heartstrings, which could open the channels, leading you to humility, awakening your sensibilities that would have you at least trying to avoid hurting us so.
And for us, it's time we liberate ourselves from our depressed oppressors. It's time we participate more and direct our energies such that will do us progressive good before their ignorance and mean-spiritedness coupled with our own complacency swallows up our stunning potential. Silence was never that golden.

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